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GPS acquisition has also been surprisingly fast for a cellphone

Summary: GPS acquisition has also been surprisingly fast for a cellphone AGPS devices use traditional GPS receivers but help speed up location acquisition and accuracy by using cellphone towers to triangulate As far as we know the iPhone 3G is the only device out right now that not only has AGPS but takes advantage of Skyhook s proprietary WiFi based location system giving it a total of three ways to help find where you re at We were able to acquire GPS in as little as a second or two although depending on your location and reception you might see that take longer It s important to note though that the iPhone s was clearly intended to be a location aware smartphone not a dedicated GPS device There s a big difference That said there s an enormous amount of interest by people hoping they can add one more to the pile of devices their iPhone has taken over for It s pretty clear why people might want the iPhone 3G to replace their car s dedicated GPS nav too It s not just a location aware device with a large bright screen it s also connected with service you re already paying for thus able to get traffic updates routing information and so on The Google Maps app doesn t provide turn by turn route guidance though so while it does provide directions you can only use it as a stand in and not as a full replacement for a proper GPS device This problem might be solved later by some intrepid 3rd party developer like say TomTom or Telenav but there s been as to whether this might actually happen and what actually is And even if this GPS software does eventually come out the speaker on the iPhone 3G simply won t be loud enough to be heard over most road noise so you d also have to make use of a line out In other words don t sell your GPS device just yet okay little mister sometimes takes minutes to load a small page first gen iPhone Interestingly in one test our iPhone 3G had worse reception on AT T than a Nokia N78 yet managed speeds of over 100Kbps faster So ultimately where 3G coverage is decent you should be seeing speeds that will no longer have you tearing your eyes out as was so often the case with At the end of the day it s the 3G data that s important enough to become part of the new iPhone s namesake Speed testing the iPhone 3G hasn t been disappointing in the slightest We ve seen speeds between 300 500Kbps in the US roughly equivalent of other HSDPA devices we ve tested and in networks abroad where the data rates are even faster we ve gotten consistent data rates of over 700 800Kbps It s pretty clear the iPhone 3G isn t hitting hardware limits right now so much of what you can prepare to see in terms of speed in the US will depend directly on reception with AT T s network which doesn t have the most outstanding reputation nor the broadest 3G rollout GPS acquisition has also been surprisingly fast for a cellphone AGPS devices use traditional GPS receivers but help speed up location acquisition and accuracy by using cellphone towers to triangulate As far as we know the iPhone 3G is the only device out right now that not only has AGPS but takes advantage of Skyhook s proprietary WiFi based location system giving it a total of three ways to help find where you re at We were able to acquire GPS in as little as a second or two although depending on your location and reception you might see that take longer It s important to note though that the iPhone s was clearly intended to be a location aware smartphone not a dedicated GPS device There s a big difference That said there s an enormous amount of interest by people hoping they can add one more to the pile of devices their iPhone has taken over for It s pretty clear why people might want the iPhone 3G to replace their car s dedicated GPS nav too It s not just a location aware device with a large bright screen it s also connected with service you re already paying for thus able to get traffic updates routing information and so on The Google Maps app doesn t provide turn by turn route guidance though so while it does provide directions you can only use it as a stand in and not as a full replacement for a proper GPS device This problem might be solved later by some intrepid 3rd party developer like say TomTom or Telenav but there s been as to whether this might actually happen and what actually is And even if this GPS software does eventually come out the speaker on the iPhone 3G simply won t be loud enough to be heard over most road noise so you d also have to make use of a line out In other words don t sell your GPS device just yet okay little mister sometimes takes minutes to load a small page first gen iPhone Interestingly in one test our iPhone 3G had worse reception on AT T than a Nokia N78 yet managed speeds of over 100Kbps faster So ultimately where 3G coverage is decent you should be seeing speeds that will no longer have you tearing your eyes out as was so often the case with At the end of the day it s the 3G data that s important enough to become part of the new iPhone s namesake Speed testing the iPhone 3G hasn t been disappointing in the slightest We ve seen speeds between 300 500Kbps in the US roughly equivalent of other HSDPA devices we ve tested and in networks abroad where the data rates are even faster we ve gotten consistent data rates of over 700 800Kbps It s pretty clear the iPhone 3G isn t hitting hardware limits right now so much of what you can prepare to see in terms of speed in the US will depend directly on reception with AT T s network which doesn t have the most outstanding reputation nor the broadest 3G rollout

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