Are smartphones making separate GPS units obsolete?

With the arrival of phones such as the new Nokia N95, complete with
built-in GPS and running smart2go software, things are looking up for
GPS fans. The Nokia will load maps locally as needed (comes preloaded
with maps for the locale where the phone was purchased, eg Australian
maps in Aus) and this is all FREE (well, apart from the small charge for
data by your carrier.) I know data charges are exorbitant, but the
amount of data transferred is actually very small.

For someone travelling the world, extra services can be purchased right
there from the phone, such as City Guides and turn-by-turn navigation.
And that's cheap too. Say you're in Paris for a few days - it will cost
about $5 for a week's worth of turn-by-turn navigation. Or you can just
work out the routes on your phone and navigate yourself at NO cost.

In contrast, my Navman (we'll ignore the initial cost as the phone also
costs money up front) comes preloaded with Aussie maps, and full turn-
by-turn navigation. Fine so far. But - now I want to go to a few
places on a round the world trip. So I have to purchase the maps for
Eastern Europe ($349), Western Europe ($349) and USA/Canada ($349) as my
trip will take me to a couple of cities in each area. This is a real
exercise, as I leave on this trip in just over 2 weeks. Those maps, at
a cost of over $1000 will be useless to me once I've passed through
Florence, Budapest, Vancouver, New York, etc.

So - we have a phone that looks like it should do a pretty good job at a
very small cost for individual city maps and pay just as needed, or we
have a dedicated Navman/TomTom/Garmin/whatever that will cost a fortune
in maps that are only needed briefly.

Which one wins? Looks like a no-brainer to me - I'm getting my N95
phone next week, I just sold my Navman, and if all else fails, I'll be
buying PAPER maps of the cities I'll be in for a few bucks each.

I suspect as more phones like the N95 come on the market, the dedicated
GPS units and their exorbitant charges for maps will become obsolete and
just fade away.

--

NightStalker

Good for you

I just bought an LG VX8300 for a Verizon account that offers GPS
capabilities for $3/day or somewhat more for a month of service. I'm
unlikely to use the service unless I find myself on a day trip somewhere
without the Nuvi 680 GPS I normally use as the Nuvi is probably be far
easier to use for addresses or finding restaurants, gas, etc.. The VX8300
will link to the GPS via Bluetooth to give the user semi-hands-free calling
and I do like using the GPS speaker and microphone for talking in the car.

What would be really neat, however, would be for the cell phone to deliver
traffic info to the GPS. The built-in traffic receiver for the GPS really
sucks so far as reception is concerned.

Mike

Hi. I am searching for feedback on the Nuvi 680.
Are you saying that the Nuvi 680's MSN Direct reception is really terrible?
Are you in an area that "should" have coverage, but don't?
That would be good to know.
Because it's a Microsoft product (MSN Direct), I am kind of expecting GPS
units to freeze up and crash on the Nuvi 680. I

--
Dana

The Nuvi 680 hasn't crashed on me yet, but transmitter reception seems
really poor. I'm in the west-suburban Chicago area and my daily commute is
from about 40 miles west to about 20 miles SW of the Chicago loop, almost
all of it along Interstates with little in the way of tall buildings to
block the signal. The coverage map indicates that I should get reception
throughout my entire commute, but I get no reception at all in the morning
anywhere along that route. There is a screen on the Nuvi that shows signal
strength from the MSN Direct transmitter - much like a cell phone display
with 3 vertical bars to show signal strength. There must be at least 1
green bar for GPS to sync with the transmitter and my morning commute never
shows any green bars.

The Nuvi sits in the car all day with the power adapter attached (which
contains the antenna); apparently the GPS syncs up to the MSN Direct
transmitter sometime during the day and I'll get 1 or 2 green bars for about
1/3 of my commute back home. Hanging the power cord over the rear view
mirror seems to improve the reception a bit on the way home but makes no
diffeernce at all in the morning. The traffic info seems accurate enough on
the way home and it seems to retain delay info even after the reception has
been lost. It also seems to automatically route around major delays, which
is kind of nice.

Garmin still hasn't responded to the email I sent to them a few weeks ago to
ask about the reception problem, which is kind of annoying, and they were
never able to resolve the reception problem I had with a Nuvi 350 and the
GTM 12 traffic antenna, which is a windsheld-mount antenna using the TMC
system. I never did get any kind of reception with that.

It looks like to me like one would need to be within 20 miles of the FM
transmitter to get consistent reception, at least in the Chicago area. I
drive a 2006 Honda CRV and also wonder if there is some sort of film on the
windshield that interferes with reception. When the weather gets warmer
here I may see if hanging part of the power cord out the sun roof improves

Mike