Smartphones With GPS: More Misses Than Hits

Almost a month ago, I was admittedly more than a bit down on traditional GPS hardware and/or software manufacturers in light of the release of v2 of Google’s open source Android O/S, which includes turn-by-turn GPS navigation capabilities. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over my years as an engineer-then-tech journalist, it’s that rarely if ever are things as simple as they might seem at first glance. So it was that my friend with her Nokia E71, along with my iPhone 3G and I, set about to do some hands-on testing of GPS on cellular handsets. I had limited prior experience with the concept, aside from a few brief flirtations with the free xGPS program. She, on the other hand, had previously used a BlackBerry 8830 coupled with Verizon’s GPS service.

For her E71, we went with Garmin’s Mobile XT Maps, a product with which I’d previously had an underwhelming installation experience in its Windows Mobile incarnation. And for my iPhone 3G, I selected Navigon’s MobileNavigator and mated Traffic Live add-on, which were on sale at the time I obtained them. One thing we both immediately noticed, with which she was already familiar from her BlackBerry past and which I also suspected in advance by virtue of my past dabbling with GPS technology, is that any degree of meaningful use of either program on either platform resulted in a substantial negative impact on between-charges battery life.

MobileNavigator, at least in its current incarnation, is also fairly buggy. I was able to consistently crash it the first few times I attempted to enter a ‘home’ address into it. The fifth-or-so time I tried, however, the function inexplicably worked. The program has also frozen up on me several times while in use (in one case forcing a full reboot of the iPhone 3G), and on one other occasion the upcoming-action voice prompts inexplicably ceased until I quit and relaunched the program.

Sluggish operation is the third major lowlight. As a general rule, I can easily discern the faster processor in my iPod touch versus that in the iPhone 3G, by virtue of the former system’s speedier program launches, menu screen switches, and other attributes. And I particularly notice my iPhone 3G processor’s pokiness with MobileNavigator and Traffic Live. The program takes 35 seconds just to initially launch. Menu transitions are molasses-slow. And indicative of the degree to which the system is performance-strapped, the audio prompts are sometimes dropout-filled and otherwise garbled. Admittedly, the synthesized voice Navigon uses is much more human-sounding than the one xGPS employs, but that’s only a meaningful attribute when you can hear and understand MobileNavigator’s synthesized voice…and xGPS is free and has never stuttered on me.

Speaking of speed, let’s look at wireless connectivity. Neither my friend’s phone nor mine supports the 1,700 MHz band used by T-Mobile’s 3G network, so dynamically downloadable map data such as that relied upon by xGPS isn’t very palatable. Both Garmin’s Mobile XT Maps and Navigon’s MobileNavigator instead rely on locally stored map data, which alleviates download latencies but comes with notable tradeoffs:

• A substantially larger amount of local storage consumed, and
• Inevitable eventual data obsolescence

Even given its reliance on local map data, I was still able to discern the downsides of cellular data download delays with MobileNavigator. Specifically, getting Traffic Live updates in EDGE coverage areas (not to mention GPRS-only venues) was so tediously slow as to make the feature unpalatable to use. Would AT&T’s UMTS network, for which the iPhone 3G was designed, produce a more uplifting experience? Perhaps. And would the speedy CPU in the latest-and-greatest iPhone 3GS, which is even faster than that in the iPod touch, also help move things along? Undoubtedly. But I can’t particularly recommend my hardware-plus-software-plus-cellular service combination.

Speaking of AT&T, and specifically of its GPS subscription service (which is analogous to the per-month plan my friend previously had with Verizon), I do like that both Garmin and Navigon’s products are one-time-charge in nature. Do the math. At $10/month for AT&T Navigator, you’ll overshoot the one-time price I paid for my MobileNavigator-plus-Traffic Live combo in three-quarters of a year. And even less expensive GPS-on-iPhone one-time-charge software options are also available.

But the cost analysis also brings to the forefront the bigger-picture issue of whether or not it makes sense to go with any software-on-cellphone GPS solution (at least until gratis turn-by-turn Google Maps is available for that particular cellphone, of course). After having forgotten to disable screen auto-lock on my iPhone, I discovered upon re-enabling access to the handset that Mobile Navigator had auto-terminated itself on lock. More generally, Apple’s multitasking-only-with-our-apps policy means that it’s not possible to simultaneously juggle (for example) making or taking a phone call while navigation is in progress.

Contrast this undesirable situation with that involving a dedicated GPS system. A Dealnews or Techbargains search will reveal plenty of units available for around the same price (or less) that I paid for my Navigon software combo. They’re speedy and (generally) dependable, and you don’t have to worry about excessive GPS usage draining the battery on your handset, therefore precluding you from initiating or receiving calls…which is still the primary reason for having a cellphone, right? The same arguments, of course, apply to simultaneous GPS-plus-email, web browsing, Twitter, Facebook or other data-centric cellphone function.

I understand the underlying business motivations for why handset manufacturers and their service provider partners squeeze an ever-increasing payload of features into newer hardware generations. But I wonder how many of those features get used by a meaningful number of consumers, for a meaningful amount of time. And I therefore wonder what that answer says about the likelihood (or not) of a sooner-or-later handset evolution stall.

Your thoughts, readers?