iphone 3G with built in GPS chip!

It'll be interesting to see how well it works.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/gps.html

I hope that "A-GPS" won't be a pay to play service. That would rule out the iphone as a replacement for a stand alone GPS unit, if there is a monthly fee involved.

I doubt it will have a monthly fee for all functionality. There is a possibility that they will charge for turn-by-turn directions.

You have to pay extra for the services it provides besides your phone service, i.e. texting, internet access, etc... So even if they don't charge, you are getting charged...

Check out other phone which have GPS with turn by turn navigation.Iphone is way overrated.....

There are new phones available with 5 MP camera,3G,full functional GPS,Excellent multimedia support and Wifi...(Samsung,Nokia,Blackberry)

Its just matter of preference or herd following...

I hate the fact that you need to pay for GPS service if you go through your Cell provider. That's ridiculous. The signals are free so why must a person pay for the service? The chip is included in the phone, and so, is part of the purchase price of that said phone. It's just another way of nickel and diming the the consumer.

Because the GPS chip is embedded, it appears it is a standard feature. I quote the site:

Get the signal.
In addition to A-GPS, iPhone 3G uses signals from GPS satellites, Wi-Fi hot spots, and cellular towers to get the most accurate location fast. If GPS is available, iPhone displays a blue GPS indicator. But if you’re inside — without a clear line of sight to a GPS satellite — iPhone finds you via Wi-Fi. If you’re not in range of a Wi-Fi hot spot, iPhone finds you using cellular towers. And the size of a location circle tells you how accurately iPhone is able to calculate that location: The smaller the circle, the more accurate the location.

It doesn't sound like a paid option to me, but I may be wrong...

I have a smartphone with a GPS chip in it...the real thing. It is a Moto Q. It was designed to be used with a $10 per month fee service but I found a hack on line that changed teh com port of the GPS and now I 'get to use it for free'. It works great with Google Maps (same demo that Apple has) but does not work so great when I am in the car. I have to have the phone in the window and it always points North which can be confusing if I am driving SE. Since owning this I have purchased a Nuvi 760. No comparison for functionality...Nuvi wins. Moto Q will get me out of a bind but not as great as Nuvi.

My iPhone already has GPS. It can only find my location on the map, not route. Will the new iPHone have routing? Can I get routing with a software upgrade for my iPhone?
thx,
Jen

Garmin didn't react too well to the news, down 5.63% today and well off of its high. You can almost see the handwriting on the wall that GPS receivers are becoming commodities and probably in a few years a very good unit will be under $100 and they'll be everywhere.

I think the huge price drop makes it an attractive "all in one" device.

The major goof as far as I'm concerned is You have to be an AT&T customer. I would bet there is a hack to unlock it, but why bother? I still think the original
buyers got stung, after the announcement of the low price with more features.

Bob

I have noticed you say that several times. I have used Cingular/AT&T for years without a problem. I live in a hilly area of Los Angeles and it is one of the few, if not the only, service(s) that works well at my home and most other places I venture.

I was furnished a Nextel at work and it didn’t get service at my home and many of other places I went. It worked ok while on the job because they installed an antenna in my office and on the building….

My wife also had Nextel and many places we went I would get service with AT&T and she wouldn’t, the reverse never was true. We loved the push to talk feature, when we both had Nextel, but what good was it when you couldn’t get service? When Nextel joined Sprint she thought the service would improve but it didn’t for her. She is now an AT&T subscriber. (and we save quite a bit of money… )

Just curious, I’m not going to get an Iphone anyway, I’m happy with my Blackberry…

Also if it's like AT&T/Blackberry, the service will not be free...

It's not AT&T's service I have a problem with per say, it's apple and the fee's the two decided for the Iphone, Of course I only checked when it first can out, and my friend received a bill for AT&T about 3 inches thick. At that point I decided I would wait for the knock off's with regular fees like I pay to verizon..

Now let me tell you what took me to Verizon, I lived in NYC for couple years 2000, 2003, while there I decided to not have a land line and just stay cellular. Well the day the World Trade centers came down was havoc, now consider this The World Trade Center being the tallest structure around roofed the cell antennas for every provider in Manhattan. well after walking around close to ground zero before they closed the whole lower half of Manhattan off, I noticed people talking on cell phones, when I approched and ask what service they had I found it to be Verizon, and was told they had about a 20min interuption in service and then back up, while everyone else was in a heap with the towers.

I guess it's Apples Idea of gouging that has turned me off to the Iphone. And AT&T going along for the ride on that ridicules overpriced phone. The first users of the Iphone were looking for status and got a phone with Battery problems, then the second set got a break in the price, and Pis*ed off the original owners. Now in July it will come out again as a new series of phone, even lower priced than the last.

Like I said I am happy with any knock off I can see coming down the pike and taking a bite out of apple.

I guess I have never been one to buy the over priced Apples. please no flamming from those of you that have been ripped off by Apple in the past, because your not going to change my mind.

Bob

I personally don't use the apple products and so I wasn't even aware that AT&T was the only one that provided service until, I guess when I read it here. My son, who happens to be a fireman, and has every new gadget that exists (well maybe not everyone), changed his blackberry for an iphone. I think he liked the bigger screen. He told me that the voice calling feature doesn't compare with the blackberry's but he didn't knock it in any other way... I also have friends who live in Idaho who switched from AT&T to Verizon because of reception problems where they live....

I have a 1st generation iphone, it's handy but the AT&T gouging on the data plan is just too expensive. With the new iphone, the data plans are increased to $30. A couple months of data and you might as well buy a new gps and another phone...

nobody mentioned this..
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=11413

no monthly fee.. turn by turn..very cool you just need the right phone and I know Iphone is not compatable with garmin mobile xt because iphone does'nt have a micro sd port.

Hi All,

Nobody is alluding to the fact that, although the "new" iPhone 3G appears to be the cat's meow, the phone is woefully under-powered.

It's the equivalent of building an Indy car and outfitting it with a "2-gallon" gas tank.

I'm holding off buying the "new" iPhone 3G, until I can find a surgeon who can implant an electrical outlet in my chest, so I can keep the phone sufficiently charged.

Regards,

Tailspin

Nüvi 670 & 1st gen iPhone owner.
Mac User

Haha, electrical outlet in your chest, I guess Ironman wouldn't see that as an impossibility.

Anyways, I wouldn't really use the iPhone as a car GPS due to poor software options currently. There is a new software that is coming out for turn by turn gps but it looks very simplistic at best, let's not even talk about how to add POIs on that thing...

May be because for an additional $30.00 bucks or so you can buy a full featured Garmin Nuvi 200 that loads POI's! I would do that before I would use a cell phone.

Bob

I just went through this whole mess trying to have GPS on my Blackberry 8300 (which I thought was the 8310). I am an ATT user, no contract though, and when I got the BB I chose it for using GPS down the road. So a month ago I bought the Garmin Mobile for Blackberry with built-in GPS. It didn't work, no signal it said could not acquire satellites. That is when I discovered I had the 8300 BB, which does not have built-in GPS, but is just "GPS CAPABLE." I felt duped of course, but what can you do. So now I had the Garmin Mobile, but I needed to get the $150 package, which was for the DIFFERENT cell phone without builtin GPS--they are NOT THE SAME evidently.

That is when I became a frequenter of the Blackberry user forums, and wound up deciding to cut my losses without sinking more money into the BB--which would not give me the navigating setup that I wanted in the long run.

Then I found the Garmin Nuvi 880, and it was all I really wanted (except it doesn't do dead reckoning).

Part of my decision to go with the Nuvi 880 was that there would be a fee to use the nav services. That ATT and some of the other providers actually turn off the free capabilities of the phones and require a subscription to their service of course for more money. The BB forums are all adither about that one.

After making our first road trip last week, I am a happy owner of the 880, and my hubby is also more convinced it might work. He does not like anything telling him how to go someplace, but after a few trips using his personal navigating choices, I put my foot down!!

For my money, it really WOULD be nice to have only one device to do it all (including camera).....but I don't think the all-in-ones are good enough to deliver for me.

I find Apple Products to be similar to McDonald's.

Both have global advertising, and both claim to be the largest in their respective markets.

Having more sales on hype and advertising doesn't necessarily make them better than the other guy.

That said - I have tried the new 3G iPhone at work, and it is a pretty good device. But, I also find that for what it does, it seems overpriced and underpowered. There are many out there that love them and find them to be the best thing around, but for me, it's not worth it - yet.