Garmin takes on iPhone with satnav mobile
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Make calls, plan routes Is it a satnav, or is it a mobile phone? Garminâs hoping youâll think its latest device is both, because the NÃ¼vifone lets you find locations and make calls through a fancy touchscreen UI.â¦
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Built in GPS in N-series phones Nokia last week kicked off its plan to bring GPS-based satellite navigation onto its N-series "multimedia computer" handsets with the acquisition of German route-planning software developer Gate5.â¦
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Fighting for virtual territory In sat nav, as in other forms of consumer technology, content is king. Or at least navigation hardware providers Garmin and TomTom believe so - the bell rings today for round two of their fight to acquire map-data firm Tele Atlas.â¦
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TechWeb - The mobile smartphone includes a 2.8-inch VGA touch screen, A-GPS for location and navigation services, and GSM850/900/1800/1900 compatibility.
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Consumer GPS company Garmin has announced for the third quarter of 2008, its first entry into the cellular handset market: the nuvifone (with a small "n").
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Although it is intended primarily for GPS applications, uPlay is saying the new features makes its latest device 'the Apple iPhone of GPS.'
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Silicon vendor Atheros Communications has agreed to acquire u-Nav Microelectronics, a GPS chip maker, for approximately $54 million in cash and stock, the companies announced after the close of trading Thursday.
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Those waiting for a solution to use the iPhone on a network other than AT&T may have found it: a six-man team has claimed to crack the SIM lock. This means the iPhone will work on T-Mobile and other GSM carriers overseas.
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The company seems to be focused on developing a solution that would enable users to access complete directions and maps using a portable device.
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(InfoWorld) - A company that unlocks cell phones in Europe said it is close to having an application that will allow customers to unlock their Apple iPhones so they can use SIM cards from carriers other than AT&T to activate the phones. In an interview this week in New York, John McLaughlin, founder of Belfast, U.K.-based Uniquephones, said he has engineers working around the clock in several countries who are close to cracking the complex security system Apple has set up to ensure customers can only use iPhones with AT&T Wireless service. The race by hackers to unlock iPhones has been on since the phone was released last Friday. Currently, AT&T Wireless has an exclusive deal with Apple to provide service for iPhones, and customers must agree to a two-year service plan with the company. However, customers have complained that the carrier's wireless service is slow, and according to McLaughlin, there has been tremendous interest in the ability to unlock the phone. By Sunday night, he said, more than 150,000 inquires had come in through the Web site he set up to request IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers from customer iPhones. While not everyone would volunteer their IMEI numbers, they still expressed interest in learning how to unlock their iPhones, McLaughlin said. When the site was set up, he thought it would be an easy case of supplying unlock codes from AT&T to unlock iPhones. But sometime over the weekend after iPhones went on sale, unlock codes from AT&T for about 6,000 iPhones disappeared from the carrier's database, and McLaughlin's team also realized it would be a more complex matter than simply providing an unlock code to release iPhones from AT&T's grip. There is at least a two-step process to unlocking an iPhone, McLaughlin said. His team has been able to unlock the activation process to the AT&T SIM card specific to an iPhone so another AT&T SIM card can work with the phone and be activated through iTunes. However, any attempt to change the firmware of an iPhone so it can support another carrier's SIM card breaks the phone, he said. The key to unlocking the phone is breaking the encryption process that protects the token sent through the iTunes activation process to an iPhone's firmware, McLaughlin believes. Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD John" because he cracked the DVD encryption scheme, claims he's been able to unlock the iPhone beyond the activation process that requires an AT&T account but said the device can't be used as a phone when that happens. Even after an iPhone were unlocked, it still could only work on carrier networks that support the GSM network, which is what AT&T's service is based on. In the U.S., T-Mobile is the only major carrier on a GSM network. And there is no guarantee Apple will not lock down the phones again in a future firmware update through the iPhone synchronization process or create a new way to unlock the next wave of iPhones they put on the market. That is, in fact, exactly what one analyst said will happen. "I assume that someone will succeed in unlocking the iPhone," said Avi Greengart, principal analyst, mobile devices at Current Analysis. "I also assume Apple will close whatever loophole is open the next time they synchronize [the software]." It's also likely there will be complications with special features of the phone that are designed to work only on AT&T's network, such as the visual voicemail feature, he said. Greengart said that he sympathizes with those that might want to use an iPhone with another carrier but "that's not the way the product was designed." "Exclusive agreements are not that unusual in this industry at all," he said. Aaron Santell, an iPhone user in New York, said that he would have preferred to use the service provider he has for his Blackberry device, Verizon Wireless, when he purchased an iPhone. But using AT&T's service is "a small price to pay" to use a device that provides such a rich user experience as the iPhone does, he said. As one might imagine, unlocking phones is a thorny issue with carriers, which certainly don't condone it. Carriers will give users unlock codes upon request for a fee, but they don't encourage the practice. In the U.K. and Europe, third parties have been unlocking handsets for several years, although there is no law that specifically protects them, McLaughlin said. However, in the U.S., it is legal to unlock mobile handsets under an amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that was passed in November 2006. McLaughlin said that even though it's legal in the U.S. to unlock phones, he anticipates that if his team is successful, Apple may take legal action against them based on their tinkering with the firmware. "They'll probably come after us for copyright infringement," he said. Apple did not reply to requests for comment Thursday. McLaughlin plans to charge customers about $49.99 for software to unlock iPhones. Even if Uniquephones is not the first to offer unlocking capability, it won't be hard for them to replicate what others have done once the encryption is cracked, he added.
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Mobile Complete is looking to make it easier to test applications and Web sites built for the Apple iPhone.The company is adding the iPhone to the list of about 750 handsets supported by DeviceAnywhere, an Internet service that lets developers from their own desktop computer develop and test applications for various mobile units without having the units themselves physically in hand. The handhelds become remotely accessible."The iPhone is obviously a very hot device, and a lot of people want to build for it," said Faraz Syed, Mobile Complete's CEO.Mobile Complete's addition of the iPhone to DeviceAnywhere dovetails nicely with Apple's announcement Wednesday of an SDK planned for the iPhone, due in February. With this SDK, developers can build downloadable, native applications, Syed said.The iPhone is likely to be the destination for a variety of applications and games, including social networking and media-sharing applications, said Syed. "I'm expecting a lot of those to show up on the iPhone," he said.With DeviceAnywhere, handset manufacturers, developers, aggregators, and service providers gain the ability to remotely access and control physical handsets connected to live networks. Developers gain real-time interaction with devices connected to live, global networks, and they can log into the system, choose from devices such as the iPhone, and start testing applications.Among the handset brands already accessible on DeviceAnywhere are Nokia, LG, Motorola, and Samsung.DeviceAnywhere is subscription based, with prices starting at $18 per hour.
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A service starting next month in Paris will allow a cellphone or GPS navigation device to search a parking lot database for nearby parking spots.
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The Garmin NÃ¼vi 680 can tell you not only where you are, but even where the cheap gas is.
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Acer is adding a GPS-enabled Windows Mobile PDA to its line of Ferrari-branded computer gear.
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Have your say Reader Review When Reg Hardware covered the no-show and then the late appearance of Nokia's free navigation software, Smart2Go, we invited readers to download the code and give it a test drive. Rather a lot of you did, and here's a selection of some of your experiences with the app on a range of handsets...â¦
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Synchronica said its Mobile Gateway 3.0 software supports over-the-air synchronization between Microsoft Exchange and the Apple iPhone.
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Company to offer 3 devices with Bluetooth and GPS capabilities.