You may have seen the latest Steve Jobs WWDC Keynote and iPhone adverts and be wondering about how good it will perform as a GPS device (as you would any modern mobile phone) or for Location Based Services (LBS).
A lot of people are looking forward to the release of the iPhone, and I guess only time will tell as to how it performs, but I can see some things which may backfire with the fully online (or at least that’s what it seems) platform.
- Steve hasn’t mentioned anything about GPS support within the iPhone, but I don’t see it not having support.
- Unless there are some sophisticated caching mechanisms, maps are going to be unavailable in areas of low mobile network coverage.
- Points of Interest appear built into the phone are most probably the normal Google Maps, and possibly not very customisable.
- Other POIs are capable through the web browser, with AJAX these websites can appear as if they are native applications on the phone, but only through clicking on an address/location of some sort to trigger the Google Maps view of that point.
I hope to be proven wrong, but those are my reservations. If I am proven correct, this would surely be a major issue for anyone (like myself) who uses GPS/GIS in anger. Any ideas?
