Re: Do Android phones ork well as GPS units?

In article <_rKdnc4u4JeFQL3QnZ2dnUVZ_gadnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, rgilbert88
@comcast.net says...

On 1/2/2011 11:45 AM, Evan Platt wrote:
On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 02:34:37 +0000, Jeffrey Kaplan<nomail@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Depends on the phone, and whether you are ever outside of cellular
service.

Depending on the phone, cellular service isn't needed for GPS.

I think it's important to specify what you are trying to do!
If latitude, longitude, elevation, and time are all you need/want
from your phone, it's easy.

Most of us expect a little more. I want a map display with my current
position marked on the map. The display on just about any phone is
a little too small IMHO. I use a GPS receiver plugged into my laptop
running "Street Atlas USA" that can give me an easily readable display.

Google Maps turn-by-turn navigation works just fine for my purposes, on
my T-Mobile HTC MyTouch 4G. Just tried it for the first time yesterday.

There were a couple minor glitches, the biggest one being that
Victorville's 7th Street is NOT Interstate 15; it's BUSINESS LOOP 15,
but instead of the green Business Loop shield, Google displayed a red-
and-blue standard Interstate shield.

Since much of Google's mapping data comes from third parties that also
supply data to other mapping sites and GPS manufacturers, I suspect that
many standalone GPS units will have the same glitch.

I had my phone plugged in, since the use GPS causes your battery to
drain faster than it otherwise would. I don't know for sure if the GPS
downloads count as data downloads, but I'm pretty sure they do.

(T-Mobile has an "unlimited" data plan where you don't ever get charged
per megabyte, but they do reserve the right to slow you down if you hit
5GB in any given month, so this IS a concern for me.)

--
Steve Sobol - Programming/Web Dev/IT Support
Apple Valley, CA
sjsobol@xxxxxxxxxxx
.

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