Columns by PC Magazine: Cell Phone Nav: The Next Big Thing


By Bill Howard

Odds are, once you try cellular navigation, you'll be hooked. For business, it's a no-brainer.

You have just enough time to make that 2:30 appointment if you don't get lost. But your car has no navigation system, and you're not getting far with the gas station attendant you just queried. No problem: Whip out your cell phone, and you have turn-by-turn (TBT) directions. Or you will shortly. The GPS directions service is the best example yet of location-based services (LBS) for cell phones, and it should be widely available in the coming year.

Move over, pictures, texting, and music. Navigation is the next big thing on mobile phones. It's cool, it's affordable, and it works spectacularly well, considering that you're looking at a 2-inch screen. And compare its price—an additional 10 bucks a month on your cell phone bill—with $1,500 to $2,500 for a navigation system in your next car or $750 for a dash-top system.

Here's how it works: You call up an embedded Java navigation applet, key in the destination address, and hit Send. The phone uses cell-tower triangulation to get a quick fix on your location while the phone-company server downloads directions and a map. The display shows directional arrows or a street map, turn-by-turn directions (on-screen and spoken), the distance to the next turn, and the distance and time to your destination.

We tried both current and prototype services and were impressed by their quality and accuracy. Cell-phone navigation is just about as good as current built-in, dash-top, and PDA-based navigation solutions. You have no upfront cost beyond buying a new phone, the data is always up to date, the services work in every car and rental car you use, and you can still receive calls.

Several companies provide navigation services. Motorola's ViaMoto is offered in rental cars (Avis Assist; Alamo/National Navigation Station) for $10 a day. Nextel subscribers can also get ViaMoto. Nextel and Sprint support TeleNav, and Verizon is expected to in 2006. Garmin offers Garmin Mobile on the Sprint network. Networks in Motion's promising AtlasBook is expected to be out in early 2006 on CDMA phones, meaning Sprint or Verizon. Others have nav, such as ALK's CoPilot Live, on smartphones (phone PDAs). A Microsoft/Fiat joint venture will incorporate a simple GPS data display in the instrument cluster and use a GSM Bluetooth cell phone to get trip downloads.—Continue reading...