Sprint GPS service provider?

My girlfriend also has this feature. I was wondering if it actually uses GPS sats or if it uses cell towers to determine your location?

I was checking a little deeper and went into one of the Instinct navigation traffic/map screens and there was TeleAtlas with a copyright symbol, along with TeleNav and its copyright symbol. So I know TeleAtlas provides the mapping spftware, but still no clue as to who provides the GPS service.

Yes, it really is GPS using the satellite system.

I was able to find this for you:

About TeleNav

TeleNav, Inc., a privately-held company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, was the first to launch a cell phone GPS system in the United States. Deployed by 15 carriers in 21 countries, TeleNav is a global leader in wireless location-based services (LBS). Currently, the company’s solutions are available in four continents, including North and South America, Asia and Europe.

TeleNav’s solutions include GPS navigation, Mobile Resource Management (MRM), asset GPS tracking (AVL), social networking and local search. The company’s flagship product, TeleNav GPS NavigatorTM, is comparable to in-car systems found in luxury vehicles, offering a superior experience with functionality, such as automatically-updated maps and business locations, full color 3D moving maps, traffic alerts and one-click rerouting, location-sharing, business reviews, speech recognition, Wi-Fi hotspot finder, lowest-price fuel finder and more. TeleNav’s enterprise application, TeleNav Track, incorporates GPS-enabled tracking, time sheets, wireless forms and navigation. TeleNav Track is a widely adopted service with over 8,000 customer organizations using it today.

TeleNav products are available on more than 200 wireless devices and run on all major mobile platforms currently available. TeleNav’s partners include Sprint Nextel, AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Alltel, Boost Mobile, Qwest, SouthernLINC Wireless, Rogers, Bell Mobility, T-Mobile UK, T-Mobile Austria, China Mobile, Vivo Brazil, NII Holdings, Research In Motion (RIM), Motorola, Samsung, Sanyo, LG, Palm, HTC, Hewlett Packard, Nokia, NAVTEQ, Tele Atlas, deCarta, INRIX, Qualcomm and SiRF Technology Holdings.

For more information on TeleNav, please visit http://www.telenav.com.

Thanks, Bob. I was just getting ready to do a search myself. Nice to know it's a compnay with a track record. I've watched my father-in-law try to use his cell phone for GPS navigation. He almost drove off the road trying to look at the screen. I'll stick with my Garmin, but it's nice to know that the cell phone GPS is available if I'm trying to get somewhere on foot in a different city.