2008 has been a full year of mobile manufacturers telling us where to go. It's not an exaggeration to say that nearly all new mobiles and smartphones over AU$600 now come with a GPS receiver as standard. Though what each do with this chip is of more importance.
Unfortunately, we're seeing more phones with the hardware on-board but no pre-installed navigation software. Apple made a huge fuss mid-year when it announced that the latest release of the iPhone would include GPS, but to date the best mapping software available for the iPhone is Google Maps which doesn't include turn-by-turn navigation. This is a crying shame, the iPhone would be perfect to pull double duty as a navigation device.
We've also seen phones with GPS for geo-tagging photos. Several Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot releases fit into this category, but the Wayfinder navigation software that comes with these handsets is far from our favourite. To date, Nokia is doing the best job with version 2 of Nokia Maps coming pre-installed on all new compatible handsets, though it wouldn't take much for someone to licence TomTom maps and take the lead.









