Justin | GPS Obsessed

Samsung i8510 Innov8, Samsung i740 Both Get GPS…And Impress

by Justin

Samsung’s GPS-enabled i740 has been officially released in the Ukraine minus increasingly important 3G connectivity. Features include:

Tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 connectivity
Windows Mobile 6.1 OS
3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus
2.8? 320×240 QVGA, 262K color TFT display
FM Radio
GPS Navigation
USB 2. and Bluetooth A2DP
150 MB of user memory
microSD memory card slot
1500 mAh battery
Dimensions: 107×59×13.9 mm

Lucky Ukrainians should expect to pay 285 Euros for the i740 smartphone.

Meanwhile, across the pond in New York City the previously rumored Samsung’s i8510 Innov8 impressed. Features? Let’s just say they make the i740 look like a toddler’s toy from Toys ‘R Us.

Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz), dual-band WCDMA (900/2100MHz)
Symbian 9.3 S60 3rd Edition FP2
2.8? 16m color QVGA TFT display
Built-in GPS receiver and accelerometer
WiFi
8 megapixel autofocus camera with image stabilization and face, smile, and blink detection
Video recording QVGA @ 120 fps or VGA @ 30fps with full editing suite onboard
16GB internal storage, microSD card slot
Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
106.5mm x 53.9mm x 17.2mm (3.9? x 1.9? x 0.6?)
1200mAh battery

Wow! That’s really all we can say.

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July 25, 2008 No Comments

comScore: Mobile Maps More Popular Than Online Maps

by Justin

This summer it’s a safe bet to say that you’re spending a fair amount of time on the road, whether in your car or on foot, and no matter how you move comScore reports that there is a good chance you’ve used mobile maps to find out where you are and where you’re going. In the 3-month period ending May 2008, 8% of American mobile subscribers and 3% of European subscribers accessed maps in some form from a mobile phone. Now these may not seem like huge numbers but that represents a growth rate of 82% in the US and 49% in Europe. Those numbers looking bigger now?

For the most part those accessing mobile maps on their cellphones are looking for driving directions. In the US the iPhone counts for the most mapping use, while Nokia’s N95 takes the cake in Europe. Check out the full release after the jump.

[Read more →]

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July 25, 2008 No Comments

PaPeRo: A Robotic Connection Between You And Your In-Car GPS

by Justin

Always a country to innovate and try something new, Japan is working on putting a robot between you and your car navigation system. More specifically, Japan-based NEC Corp. demonstrated PaPeRo, a human machine interface, at AT International 2008 and PaPeRo just happens to be that robotic go-between. PaPeRo is a home robot used as a human interface machine that happens to understand you when you tell it, for example, you’re looking to head to Tokyo. The robot can recogize your voice and upload the spoken info to its server via a home network. Once uploaded to the server, the robot crunches the bit and bytes mathematically taking into consideration your previous conversations.

From this the robot can supposedly determine the best route from your current location to Tokyo, transmitting that information to your in-car navigation system. In fact once you hop in your car you’ll find PaPeRo right on your navigator’s screen confirming the transmission of its instructions have been transmitted to the vehicle. Pretty wild, eh? We think plain ol’ voice recognition built in to the GPS unit performing the same function is just a whole lot simpler though!

via techon