Andrea Bauer

Although Galileo, the European alternative to GPS, has been beset by endless delays and even the ignominy of having its access system hacked almost immediately, the project continues to make slow progress this week with the transmission of its first navigation message. GIOVE-A, the first of a planned 30 satellites, has been floating overhead since the beginning of last year, but had only been sending "general signals" until the test last week, when the bird sent the data needed to measure the distance between itself and a ground station in Guildford, England. That's a big step, since the system is supposed go live next year and be fully operational by 2011.

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Posted by Mobile Innovation at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's a great feature to have a built-in GPS receiver. What's really great about N95 is that you can download all the maps you need for free. Just go to smart2go.com and download the Nokia Maploader. Use maploader to download maps and store them on a microSD memory card. That way your phone doesn't need to use the network to download maps saving your data charges. It also saver battery life.
You can search for an address or enter the starting point and end point and the N95 will find a route. If you plan to use it as a car navigator with turn-by-turn instructions, you have to pay for a subscription service. Except for the turn-by-turn navigation, there are no other subscription fees. The Maps application is easy to use. You can pan, zoom in/out and change between 2D and 3D views.
The points of interest (POI) database that comes with the maps is very good and you can search for things nearby. The POIs are grouped into dozens of categories and in the settings, you can choose which categories are shown on the map.

In conclusion, the N95 doesn't quite offer the performance of dedicated GPS navigators.

Posted by Mobile Innovation at 08:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)