The iPhone 4 and upgraded GPS functionality
Having gone from an iPhone 3G directly to an iPhone 4, your author was amazed by the leap in GPS performance between the two Apple handsets. Suddenly, the phone all by itself offered a superior GPS experience.
The difference in GPS functionality on the iPhone 4 was truly amazing, just from a subjective point of view. We are given to understand that one of the big differences was in the antenna, which allow the handset to receive much weaker signals than was possible with Apple’s older models, a fact that offsets the woes suffered by the new antenna design. We can also expect to see the iPhone 4 3-axis gyroscope used by GPS applications soon, which will bring improvements to dead-reckoning navigation applications.
The faster processor is also a giant boon to the usefulness of GPS navigation on the iPhone 4. On the 3G, there was what seemed like an enormous lag between what you did behind the wheel and what showed up on the display. If you care to drive a little recklessly, or if you are navigating for someone else, you will see that you are now able to watch yourself make turns in more-or-less real time on the iPhone 4.
The new display, with double the pixels, takes away any hint of the display being difficult to read. Both the road graphics and the text display areas are perfectly crisp and clear. Nor can we forget multi-tasking, which allows you to put the GPS app in the background (and continue to get voice navigation updates) while the phone is doing other things in the foreground, or even if the display is dark. That latter is a feature that will go a long ways towards extending the already-longer battery life of the iPhone 4.
All of this combines to give users a much more positive GPS navigation experience with the iPhone 4. Gone are the days when you need to spend the big bucks for an accessory like the TomTom car kit. The iPhone handles itself remarkably well without any augmentation at all. You’ll need to plug it in on longer trips, but most of us would do that anyway.
One of the reasons that I bought my first iPhone was to keep from carrying so many devices around. That worked when what I needed was a new phone and a new MP3 player at the same time. Now, the iPhone 4 gets along so well with GPS navigation apps that we can add that function to the one-device, many functions theorem. And we have not even started to talk about all the other apps yet…
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