iPhone 3G Map Experiences
Below is a roundup of the experiences, limitations, insights and hopes for the new iPhone as it relates to GPS, location and location-based services.
The Dallas Morning News blog loves that you can click on a phone number on a website and have the iPhone dial it automatically. Why, asks Andrew Smith does the phone not offer the ability to grab and address from the Web and offer directions to it?
Melissa Perenson at PCWorld didn’t feel AT&T’s map of 3G coverage reflected reality. “I’ve yet to experience AT&T’s 3G network the way it’s meant to be. I’ve driven a nearly 2-hour stretch on Long Island, New York—a stretch that is clearly marked on AT&T’s coverage map as being 3G capable. Along one stretch of the major highway I achieved wildly varying data rates, spanning from 96 to 350 kilobits per second. Not once did I get above 400 kbps on the iphonenetwork.com bandwidth test.” She was also disappointed by the navigation apps.
Dan Moren at MacWorld discovered some oddities when geotagging photos. “One of the iPhone’s new features is the ability to geotag photos—that is, imbue them with geographical data about where a picture was taken. This metadata is stored in the photo file, and you can use it to locate the photo on a map (Leopard’s Preview application allows you to view this info if you hit command-i then click on the exclamation point bubble tag). Unfortunately, it seems there’s a wee bug in the iPhone 2.0’s geotagging implementation. For some reason, it flips the longitude data from East to West.” Turns out the problem only occurs “[w]hen you drag an image out of iPhoto and into the Finder.”
Ben Patterson at Yahoo Tech found the GPS and navigation apps wanting. “It’s a cool feature if you’re looking for the nearest Starbucks or ATM, but as a substitute for a dashboard GPS system, the iPhone’s GPS capabilities fall well short.” But he’s optimistic they’ll get better as more developers take on the challenge.
Jessica Dolcourt of C|net Asia’s crave blog explored the eBay app for the new iPhone. She describes it as “eBay Light” and asks “why not clip in to that GPS capability to show users any listed sale items nearby, an estate sale in the neighborhood, for instance?”
AppleInsider’s Alden Malley opened up the phone and reports on the chips inside. “That’s not Infineon’s only win [GSM and 3G] for the new iPhone, however. It also handles the power management and, more importantly, the GPS chipset. Apple uses a PMB 2525 Hammerhead II chipset rather than examples from SiRF and other common GPS chipmakers. The component is accurate to “within meters” and prevents major positioning errors in cities, where buildings can bounce the signal and miscalculate the phone’s location.”
Mike Barrett at Pocket GPS World had a tough time trying to test out the GPS-enabled apps in the UK. He concludes: “All of the location aware applications had to wait for the GPS to get a fix. The best indication that this was happening was a spinning icon. The most obvious missing GPS application is just a simple Satellite strength and position status display. Assuming of course that the API provides this sort of raw data, if not it should!!!”
Alex Iskold at ReadWrite Web puts the iPhone location awareness in context. “And we’re now seeing a true blend of physical and digital. When you’re at a restaurant, see what your friends thought about it. When in a bookstore, look up reviews on Amazon. If in Paris, access an instant map. Sure, you could do this before, but this iPhone platform takes the experience to a new level. It takes it to the mainstream.”
