Well now, we told you that TomTom is bringing full-on, real GPS driving to the iPhone, but apparently they’re going to be the exception that makes the rule. Engadget has dug into the developer agreement for the iPhone SDK and came across this little nugget related to what developers can and cannot do with the Location services:
Applications may not be designed or marketed for real time route guidance; automatic or autonomous control of vehicles or aircraft, or other mechanical devices; dispatch or fleet management; or emergency or life-saving purposes.
…While we’re (reticently) on board with the requirement that you can’t make an app that will drive your car for you, the rest seems pretty egregious. No control of ‘mechanical devices?’ Sounds like that sweet iPhone-driven Lego Robot is verboten. No ‘fleet management?’ Sorry UPS, no iPhone for you. The big one, of course, is no ‘route guidance.’ Pish posh, we say, TomTom said they’re coming and we’re guessing they weren’t lying. We have previously said here we were slightly worried that Apple would be overly-stringent about what apps they would let into the App Store — here’s to hoping that rules like these don’t get strictly enforced.
Ready for developers to take advantage of the new features in the iPhone 3G, namely GPS? Well don’t worry, TomTom, makers of popular GPS units and GPS software, has already developed navigation software for the iPhone 3G. A TomTom spokesperson was quoted as saying,
“Navigation System runs on the iPhone already”
There is no official release date or press release but be prepared for an onslaught of GPS software to take advantage of the GPS in the iPhone 3G and not just from TomTom. Who knows which will be best? Will it be TomTom, Garmin, or a totally unknown company? This should be fun.
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Monday we asked you “What’s the iPhone 3G Chip and When Will it Ship?“. Tuesday it was “What is the iPhone 3G Going to Look Like?“. Wednesday brought “What Surprises Will There Be in the iPhone 2.0 Software & Services?”. Thursday questioned “What 3rd Party iPhone SDK Apps Will Be Available Launch Day?” Today we want to know what else the iPhone 3G will feature, both now and into the future?
GPS is the biggie (right after 3G!). What about a front-facing camera? VGA screen? Stereo Bluetooth? Wireless N? Full-sized querty keyboard? … (Ha!) What do YOU think?
To give you some help, here’s a HUGE roundup of all the iPhone SDK 3rd party apps rumors. Epic-style. Because let’s face it, roughly 0.01 seconds after Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from his pocket back at Macworld 2007, and someone, somewhere, put aside their childlike sense of wonder long enough think: “Nice! What’s the next gen going to be like?”
Complementary, contradictory, obvious, confusing, all but confirmed or from left field via outer space, the rumors have flooded the internet ever since. It’s become almost impossible to keep track of them all.
Three days from today Steve Jobs takes Moscone Center stage for the sold-out WWDC keynote, and according to everyone and their newsfeed, announces the iPhone 3G. In eager anticipation, every day this week, TiPb wil be asking you to tell us what you think the next generation iPhone will be, from 3G to GPS, release dates to price points, colors to casings, 2.0 software to .Mac .Me services, and this weekend we’ll wrap it all up with a look into the WWDC/iPhone 3G Crystal Ball, and a roundup of the very best of YOUR predictions.
So come on, let’s get in on!
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Om Malik says GPS on the iPhone is locked and loaded:
[T]here is one thing that’s for sure: The new iPhone has Global Positioning System (GPS) built into it, thanks to legal requirements put in place by the FCC.
The GigaOmster further says that new-to-the-space-space Broadcom has nailed the contract, which is great for them but panic-inducing for the stand-alone GPS market. (We know Google sees positively HUGE maps usage from the GPS-less iPhone already, so that makes the kind of sense that does.)
But Brian Lam of Gizmodo thinks the whole GPS on the iPhone thing is pretty poorly thought out:
No thanks. Don’t need it. I’m fine with the current location technology. It works for walking and that’s all I need it for.
Lam’s reasons? Current cell and WiFi location services are much quicker than GPS, they better suit walking and the iPhone is less useful while driving anyway, GPS kills battery life dead, and GPS chips would significantly fatten up the iPhone.
Personally, both 3G and GPS are still bleeding edge tech when it comes to realistic day-to-day usage in everywhere, USA when not hooked up to a generator, so while nice to have as an option, and fetishized by the tech media and the blogphere commentorati, neither will have the impact on my life that the 2.0 software update likely will. It just ain’t mainstream enough for me to be melodramatic about yet.
What do you think?
[More on the Broadcom GPS story, with thanks to reader southerntraveltourism]
One of the hottest and most persistent rumors for the next generation iPhone is GPS, either built in or via BlueTooth hardware module (the former favored by techies, the latter by battery-lifers). One of the most constant and most rewarding (at least sometimes…) factors of the 2.0 firmware beta is developers raking through the code to find every new string and buried screen setting.
Put them together and what do we get? According to some “private” updates delivered to “select developers” (check out the screen shots), we get Geo Tagging!
For the non-world traveling cameraphiles among us, Geo Tagging involves adding location-specific metadata to your photographs. For example, snap a pic of the Eiffel Tower, and the camera records not only time, date, camera, lens, etc. but the longitude and latitude of precisely where you were standing when you decided to take the 297 billionth shot of that ginormous mechano cliche…
Why’s that important? Well, it saves you the effort of manually recording where you were when you took each and every snapshot, it allows social services like Flickr to search and sort images based on location information, and it enables freaky-cool next gen image manipulation and compositing technologies like Microsoft’s Photosynth to positively blow our minds.
Now, reports don’t actually indicate anything about GPS, only location-based services (like the current gen’s Google cell tower mapping and Skyhook Wi-Fi router mapping), but these can sometimes only narrow location down to an area roughly the size of a town — not always very useful. For real Geo Tagging, GPS (which gets down to under 20 feet) seems a must.
Of course, this also rather nicely dangles the question of what type of camera will the iPhone 3G sport? 2 megapixels like before? 3? 5?
Apple is hiring photo techs, after all…
What do you think?
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Joking that the iPhone Risk map was getting a little crowded up in Europe… turns out not to be a joke anymore:
Swisscom on Wednesday confirmed it will begin selling Apple’s iPhone in Switzerland this year, possibly bolstering a recent report on the matter which also stated that the handset would arrive with video conferencing and other fresh features.
What fresh new features? As if borrowing from Kevin Rose’s twitter feed, GPS, bi-direction video iChat Mobile, and mobile TV.
Checking the score board:
| |
Europe |
North Am. |
South Am |
Asia |
Africa |
Oceania |
Antarctica |
Total |
| Launched |
5 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
6 |
| Announced |
6 |
2 |
15? |
3 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
30 |
| Rumored |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
| Total |
13 |
3 |
15? |
3 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
38 |
Personally, I’m not sold on 2-way iChat yet, or Mobile TV unless Apple can break it out of the carrier-controlled sandbox in which it now languishes. This is a little too close to rumor-regurgitation for now. GPS, on the other hand, seems likely.
What do you think?
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Chad brought us a look at the rumored back-in-black iPhone 3G a while ago, and now Engadget claims to have some confirmation!
So we’ve got it on authority that the second-gen iPhone is already well into testing, and numerous units are floating around in super secret pockets. A trusted source got a chance to check one out.
According to Engadget’s source, the iPhone 3G is roughly the same size and shape, has GPS for realz, the glossy black backing we see in the pic, chromed up volume buttons, no removable battery (’natch), flush(!) headphone jack, same screens size and resolution (what? where’s my Nano-res 200dpi 640×480?!)
July is rumored, but who outside the jobspod knows for sure?
“Phone different, real posts no gimmicks”
[With apologies to Eminem and - ahem - our readers.]
Rumor’s back. Back again. iPhone packed. Tell your friends.
From VP. Close to APPL. Kevin tweets. He’s top lvl.
3G soon. GPS spin. Here by June. FTW!
Kevin’s back. Back again. {interweb hums}
For those of you who aren’t up on either your Eminem or your Twitter, the story here is Kevin Rose posted up another teaser, this time on Twitter, that he has the inside line on the 3G iPhone with the above specs. He’s playing with us, right?
Right?
George “Geohot” Hotz, the hacker who gained so much fame and notoriety for unlocking his iPhone and trading it in for a sweet Nissan, had been working on getting tower trianguation working on his iPhone. Tower triangulation is essentially a poor-man’s GPS solution; one can compare a cell tower’s ID with known geographical coordinates. If one can read from multiple towers, one can triangulate one’s own location. In a post on his blog, he stated the idea is unfortunately currently not feasible:
I was working with the firmware to try to read the signal strength from many towers for the GPS project. But this would require extensive modifications to the firmware.
The tense of his first sentence says it all: was.
Next up for George Hotz aka Geohot: Tower Triangulation. Tower triangulation is where you’re able to determine a rough position by comparing the various signal strengths of surrounding cellular towers.
“I believe the towers are public record and you can use an AT command to get signal strengh.”
It’s not as accurate as GPS, by any means, but I’d rhetorically kill for a function on Maps.app where I could search for gas “close to here,” for example. Also next up for Geohot: college at RIT.
