Forum User Trends - What Does the Furture Offer?

Reincarnation: Life sucks, you die, then life sucks again

As much as I love my Nuvi 1450, I believe that hand-held GPS's and portable automobile GPS's will be going the way of dinasaurs and newspapers. My 1450 is my hobby and I look for reasons to update it and add new customer POI's to it; BUT, if I'm pragmatic about the future of those kinds of GPSr's, I have to think that phone based GPS's are the wave of the future. It may take a few years, but I think our GPSr's are in the twilight of their technology.

Phil

So far mobile phone apps don't compare with dedicated gps units for many uses. Phones are still fragile compared to GPS units. My iPhone hates being exposed to sunlight (overheat) or rain (total fail). I think GPS manufacturers need to get better...something they have not done for nearly 10 years. We get modified and more dumbed down interfaces, when we are looking for improved search capability, not simpler or less detailed displays.

I've tried more than a dozen apps, all of them worked, most slowly, they ate the battery, harder to load caches onto, some need the internet or cell towers to be able to work, after being frustrated for about 6 months I've brought a etrex 10, not much different to my old etrex H, it's got paper less caching, the main reason for up grading, the etrex 10 is streets ahead of the smart phone and it's at the bottom of heap for handheld GPS's.

The demise of dedicated Personal Navigation Devices is brought to you by the same people that assured the public the advent of television would bring about the end of movies and radio. These are the same people that also prognosticated the cell phone would bring about the death of two-way radio. Next they will tell us the Internet will be the death of libraries and publishing. What's true is all these have had an impact on what was supposed to die but failed to take into account the ability of the affected goods and services to adapt.

I still wonder why the FAX machine still exists. It has been a "dead" technology for over 30 years.

The cell phone is also now a "dead" technology. Given sufficient Wi-Fi access ersatz "phone" calls (including video) can now be made. We have used Google's talk to communicate with my daughter at college.

PND, even if obsolete, may still successfully exist in a niche for a long time like the FAX. That is what I am trying to explore with this post.

Fax machines are being used a lot. When email stared to be uses more, the experts said that fax machines were going to be phase out like vhs. Now managers want email and hard copy.
Gps still in my mind a reliable source for directions. Until phones are cheaper to operate many of us will continue using gps. In car gps is the trend.