GPS on LG mobile phones

GPS on mobile phones has been round since AGPS was launched and has generally been available from at least 2003. AGPS is a cut-down version of GPS designed for low-power devices and is used on mobile phones.

Since I get a bit of extra information about phones by examining their internals, it appears that GPS could get in to LG mobiles in the future. The LG U880 was one of the first phones that I could find many references to GPS hardware and software within the phone and on developer sheets for the chips used in the U880.

I have also discovered that the java access to GPS is in a partially complete state. The access appears to be there complete with a permissions structure, yet when you give yourself permission and try to access the GPS unit, the mobile simply resets.

What is important is that normally, if a mobile does not support a feature like GPS, bluetooth, etc, the application trying to use it will quit before it starts running. My applications always crashed only when they tried to access GPS information. This implies the support is there, just not active or complete.

So are LG planning on getting GPS support on their mobiles?

If your phone had GPS support right now, what would be the killer application for you?

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Two applications that I can think of:
1. Type in your destination coordinates, and the phone tells you how to navigate from your current location (based on your GPS) to your destination
2. Location of nearest available parking spot in carpark, if parking station has sensors beneath each parking spot. Not sure if this is a GPS application though.

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How about stamping your photos (taken with your camera phone) with GPS coordinates; when you upload your photos to your PC you can use those coordinates with Google Maps to identify where those photos were taken, eg an amusement park.

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How about an automatic travel diary? Let the phone log your GPS coordinates while you travel. When you get home, reference these coordinates with Google Maps to recreate your travel paths.

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How about being able to send your GPS coordinates to your friends to tell them exactly where you are? Their phone would display your location highlighted on a map from Google Maps. Then you won't need to fumble around for the exact address that you and your friends are currently hanging out at.

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I like the photo stamp idea. Some other people have guides up on how to GPS tag your photos.

It would be great if the meta-data for any image you took automatically contained the GPS location (with an option to disable) so then web based geophoto services could just read the GPS coordinates out of the image itself.

If GPS wasn't available, which happens when you are in doors, the nearest towers' GPS coordinates could be used.

Looks like a LOT of people are interested in this idea but the effort to do it at the moment is more than its worth for casual photo GPS taggers. Getting the phone to automatically do it would be excellent.
Dreams 2 Text: The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
GPSPhotoLinker: Overview

I actually think it is possible to get this working since both the camera and GPS can be accessed from Java on phones that support both. In essence, you would have a java program that functioned as a camera. When it takes an image, it stuffs the GPS location into the metadata ready for use.

If anyone is interested on doing up a phone application to do this I would be in for it. I don't really have much time so its not something I can do by myself.

I do have a Motorola E1000 which seems to have everything needed, GPS java access, camera accessible from java, etc.

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Hi Ryan, just came across this; thought you might be interested:
GPS Track

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