July 18th, 2008
iPhone 3G GPS - Is it too small in the antenna department to be any good?
Ever since reading David Pogue’s review of iPhone 3G I’ve been puzzling over something he said in relation to the GPS receiver. Specifically, is it too small in the antenna department to be any good?
Here’s what Pogue had to say about the iPhone 3G GPS antenna:
Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with the G.P.S. According to Apple, the iPhone’s G.P.S. antenna is much too small to emulate the turn-by-turn navigation of a G.P.S. unit for a vehicle, for example.
Instead, all it can do at this point is track your position as you drive along, representing you as a blue dot sliding along the roads of the map. Even then, the metal of a car or the buildings of Manhattan are often enough to block the iPhone’s view of the sky, leaving it just as confused as you are.
At the time I found that to be a very curious statement given that I’ve handled countless GPS receivers and GPS-enabled devices that don’t seem anywhere near the quality of the iPhone that can handle turn-by-turn navigation.
In an email Pogue told me that he’d been told by Bob Borchers, senior director of worldwide iPhone product marketing at Apple (he’s also the guy that’s featured in the iPhone tutorials), that the iPhone 3G’s GPS chipset was weak and that the antenna was small. Pogue was also told that the tiny metal ring that you can see around the camera lens was part of the GPS antenna. When Pogue asked for confirmation that there would be no turn-by-turn software for the iPhone 3G he was told that the GPS was intended for quick “where am I” checks rather than navigation.
Loading ...However, to complicate matters, Apple product head Greg Joswiak told ExtremeTech a different story:
What’s the deal with GPS driving directions? Many developers have said that Apple’s SDK license agreement prohibits the development of driving-directions apps, and the New York Times’s David Pogue muddied the waters by saying that the iPhone’s GPS isn’t physically capable of providing driving directions. “According to Apple, the iPhone’s G.P.S. antenna is much too small to emulate the turn-by-turn navigation of a G.P.S. unit for a vehicle,” Pogue wrote.
That’s wrong, Joswiak said; the iPhone’s GPS is just like the GPS in other phones, many of which do provide driving directions. Rather, there are some murky “complicated issues” preventing driving directions apps at the moment. “It will evolve. I think our developers will amaze us,” he said.
I’m speculating that those “complicated issues” revolve around liability in the event that the GPS receiver taking you for a nosedive into a bay somewhere.
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Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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| 07/18/08
