Mobile Phone with GPS

warrenaldo

Folks,

Im looking for a new phone - pay as you go. Im going to buy it online andmake sure it will take my sim card.

I want to get a phone with built in GPS for Ireland. I see the Nokia N95 does the trick but is this up to scratch for Ireland.

When i use the GPS - will this be free?

Can anyone help as i dont know too much about this topic?

helios

Using the GPS is free and isn't dependant on your network. Maps are available for all countries in the world, so you'll be ok with Ireland. The only time you would be charged for using the GPS is if the program needed to download from the internet, but there is an option to disable that.

warrenaldo

great stuff helios - could you reccommend a phone that would do the job?

helios

If you can get the N95 on PayG that would work. I don't think many of the networks offer many mobiles with builtin GPS at the moment. You might need to wait for new phones to come in, or buy one on off-network and use it with a PayG SIM...

alkev

Nokia n95 8gb fits the bill. Used it last week in London and Paris and and the GPS was fantastic, finding nearby places of interest, restaurants, pubs ATMs etc.
Maps can be downloaded free from Nokia.

cormie

Look at post 14 here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055315601

Seems you have to pay for the navigation function, as in for it to plan a route for you and guide you as you go.

coylemj

Consider buying an ordinary Symbian phone such as the Nokia E51 which can take the Nokia maps and then you buy a GPS Bluetooth receiver to feed the positioning data to the phone. Overall this is probbaly the cheapest solution, the receiver will cost 30-40 euros and you won't have to buy a top notch model phone.

Any kind of navigation capability e.g. how to go from A to B or show me nearby restaurants will cost you money, typically a subscription service or you can buy the Route 66 maps as a one-off purchase.

mkennedy

Any kind of navigation capability e.g. how to go from A to B or show me nearby restaurants will cost you money, typically a subscription service or you can buy the Route 66 maps as a one-off purchase.

o2 xda orbit II comes with copilot and inbuilt GPS and there's no subscription for voice instructions.
Will probably work with most other satnav apps as well.
Just something else to consider.

Having said that i've learnt that the N95's GPS chip now probably works with more satnav apps than it did initially.
The chip still wouldn't be as good though.

coylemj

There's another issue you need to bear in mind: If you buy a phone with the GPS receiver built in, it means that the phone needs to have a view of the sky for a good signal. Sometimes when you're in a domestic house you can get a signal indoors but if you're sitting in a car or on a plane where you're surrounded by metal, you will not be able to get a signal unless the phone is beside the window with a good view of the sky.

If you purchase a seperate GPS Bluetooth receiver then in a car for example you'll be able to put the GPS receiver on the back shelf or up front at the bottom of the windscreen and the navigator person will be able to pick up the signal and use the phone as a GPS navigation device, something you will not be able to do if the GPS receiver is built in to the phone.

Another slightly more trivial example: a couple of weeks ago I was flying to the UK with a few colleagues, I had a Globalsat BT368 GPS receiver and a Nokia E51 which was in flight (offline) mode. While holding the GPS receiver against the botton of the window beside me, I was then able to hand the phone around to my colleagues and they were able to watch the planes progress across the south of England, it went down very well as a gimmick.

CantGetNoSleep

coylemj wrote: »

There's another issue you need to bear in mind: If you buy a phone with the GPS receiver built in, it means that the phone needs to have a view of the sky for a good signal. Sometimes when you're in a domestic house you can get a signal indoors but if you're sitting in a car or on a plane where you're surrounded by metal, you will not be able to get a signal unless the phone is beside the window with a good view of the sky.

If you purchase a seperate GPS Bluetooth receiver then in a car for example you'll be able to put the GPS receiver on the back shelf or up front at the bottom of the windscreen and the navigator person will be able to pick up the signal and use the phone as a GPS navigation device, something you will not be able to do if the GPS receiver is built in to the phone.

Another slightly more trivial example: a couple of weeks ago I was flying to the UK with a few colleagues, I had a Globalsat BT368 GPS receiver and a Nokia E51 which was in flight (offline) mode. While holding the GPS receiver against the botton of the window beside me, I was then able to hand the phone around to my colleagues and they were able to watch the planes progress across the south of England, it went down very well as a gimmick.

Where would you buy one of these receivers?

5h4mr0(k

CantGetNoSleep wrote: »

Where would you buy one of these receivers?

I got one last week from ebay. It was even cheaper than the same model on DealExtreme. (It worked out around €38 delivered.) Just search there on GPS and bluetooth - there's a number of different ones. I ordered it on Monday evening and it arrived in Friday's post.

coylemj

5h4mr0(k wrote: »

I got one last week from ebay. It was even cheaper than the same model on DealExtreme. (It worked out around €38 delivered.) Just search there on GPS and bluetooth - there's a number of different ones. I ordered it on Monday evening and it arrived in Friday's post.

Would you care to tell us the model?

I have two Bluetooth GPS receivers, I got one brought over by a friend from the US and the other I bought mail order from dealextreme. The sexiest unit to look at is the Globalsat BT368i but although it's more bulky and not as nice to look at, the one that's by far the quickest to get a fix is the Holux M1000-B. In every test I've done the Holux gets a fix much faster than the Globalsat, possibly because it has a bigger battery - rated at 22 hours v. 10 hours service for the Globalsat.

The Globalsat BT368 is a sealed unit so when it's battery eventually wears out you'll have to throw it in the bin. The Holux M1000-B uses a Nokia BL-5C battery, the same battery that powers the popular Nokia 6230 phone and which is likely to be available for several years to come as an accessory. Apart from it's looks, the big advantage for the Globalsat BT368 is the fact that after 10 minutes of sending data to a bluetooth 'master', if it gets no acknowledgemt it switches off so if you leave it on the shelf in the car it will not keep churning out the GPS data until the battery runs down which is precisely what the Holux will do.

http://www.holux.com/JCore/en/products/products_content.jsp?pno=223

http://www.globalsat.com.tw/eng/product_detail_00000109.htm If you buy outside the US

http://www.usglobalsat.com/p-537-bt-368i.aspx For sale within the US, this comes with a very useful mains (110/240V) charger with US flat pins and a two-pin 'Euro' adapter. The charger has a USB socket with 5v DC output - any battery device which takes a charge from a USB cable can be charged from this unit so its an invaluable addition to any gadget junkies toolkit!

5h4mr0(k

The one I got is the G66 "touch GPS" by GlobalTop. ($89.90 from DealExtreme or "Buy It Now" price of about €40 on ebay). It's a sealed unit as well. Battery charges from USB. Power's itself down if it doesn't have a bluetooth connection for 5 mins (or it might be 10 - not sure). It comes with a 12v car charger.

For the price it's a great little gadget.

I'm using it with my phone - Sony Ericsson k750i - which I've installed a free Java program called TrekBuddy. It will run on pretty much any Java enabled phone.

coylemj

G66 looks nice, it's by far the slimmest of these units but is longer and wider than the units I have, I suppose it's swings and roundabouts. The MTK chip in the Holux seems to outperform the Sirf chip in the Globalsat. I see the Globaltop G66 also uses MTK, how fast is the G66 to get a fix if it has reasonably up to date satellite data?

The user manual looks like it was translated from a foreign language by someone not very good at English, example.....

Global position system (GPS) is obtained by American Ministry of National Defense, and they got the full responsibility about the preciseness and the maintenance. Any changes may cause the capacity and preciseness of GPS differed.

5h4mr0(k

It can be pretty quick at getting a fix, when outside the car. A few seconds maybe. The user manual isn't great, but there's not much too it. I'd been using it with my phone for about a week before I looked at it.

It is very thin - just wide enough to allow the USB to connect. Like a thick credit card. The back of it is a non-slip surface - it doesn't move a bit on the dash.