You may be surprised to hear me say this, but here is it — the iPhone doesn’t need GPS.

Macworld disagrees (via Directions Magazine). Specifically, Macworld said:

Add GPS support … [the iPhone] would be the ultimate mapping application if it knew where you actually were at all times

They’re confusing the issue. Geolocation does not mean GPS. GPS is a specific technology implementation of getting a location fix. It is also frought with complications that are most apparent in areas that people may use a mobile phone to find out what’s going on around them - that being urban areas, indoors, or anywhere that doesn’t have good sky coverage.

I have an N95 - that’s because I’m a geo-geek. I wanted to have programmatic access to my precise location so that I could write prototype applications for mapping, geolocation, and so forth.

I am not an average user

In fact, one of the most complained about features in the N95 has been it’s slow to fix GPS. Nokia finally got it better, from 74 seconds to 57 seconds, with their firmware upgrade.

That’s still almost 1 minute from turning GPS on (which doesn’t always happen automatically) to getting a location fix. That’s also probably in a decently clear area. This is all well and good - now I can see a moving dot in MGMaps (though not GoogleMap yet), or precisely geotag my photos.

Another problem with GPS - it’s a battery hog. I’ve killed my battery in several hours when using GPS, and even shorter if I leave the GPS on and indoors - leaving the processor to be constantly trying to calculate find GPS signals and parse their GOLD-codes (read more about how GPS works).

Personally, I get rather frustrated standing there (and anyone else waiting with me more so) staring at my phone, hoping for a fix so I can then take a photo. And remember, I’m a geek, I live for this pain - your average user won’t.

But I want my geo-aware iPhone!

My point is, geolocation does not mean having a GPS. There are numerous methods of automatically locating yourself that doesn’t require listening to satellites 24,000 miles away.

Cell Towers and WiFi are both simple, and accurate, methods of getting your location within 10 feet. This is the type of accuracy you may expect from GPS anyways. But you can get a cellular location or WiFi location in seconds - not a minute.

It also works indoors - and best of all (with respect to this post), the current revision of the iPhone has the hardware already. In fact, it would just be a software update to turn on geolocation on the iPhone.

The future is now

So I hope to hear less of people bemoaning the iPhone’s lack of a GPS chip - and instead ask the more reasonable question “Why doesn’t the iPhone do geolocation by cell or WiFi?” And while you’re at it, ask that the location gets exposed with Javascript hooks through Safari so web applications can make use of it.

You can still have your geotagged photos (what’s more interesting, that you were at [-23.538809, -46.618423] or São Paulo, Brazil?), find friends in the area, local pub search, or even maps near me.

If you want to see how something like that works - install the Loki Toolbar - which uses WiFi Geolocation - and then go to Mapufacture Search for automatic ‘nearby’ searching - no GPS required.

I usually lament that the MidWest has a dearth of technology conferences (that aren’t directly associated with automotive at least). However, I was very surprised to find out that just several miles away, next week there is the Mobile Location Enabled Services conference.

The agenda looks really good, covering topics such as mobile-social networks (mososo), user-centric mobile navigation, and the legal and monetization aspects of LBS. Speakers are from Symbian, Loopt, Cingular, uLocate, and a lot more.

So, sounds like a good warm-up to Where2.0 and also maybe bang on some carriers/providers and their lack of opening up their API’s to LBS developers. (unlike Sprint, which is ahead of the learning curve so far)

Imity - the bluetooth proximity location service that showed up at Where2.0 last year and has been teasing me with their cool software has just open-sourced their code! (via O’Reilly Radar)

As of today, our phone client is open source. New features, bug corrections, builds for new phones, it’s all open for your mad Java skills (or whatever you feel like porting to).

So yes, it’s in Java. Last time I tried to get a J2ME toolchain built on Mac or Windows it was 3 days of frustration before I gave up. Perhaps their service API is simple and could be done in Py60 or Mobile Processing.

If you haven’t heard of Imity before, the concept is that while geolocating you in the world is neat and all, what really matters is who is near you. It doesn’t matter so much that you’re at a conference center, what matters is that there are dozen people around you, some of you whom have met already, or will meet again. Imity tracks these proximity locations of other users, connects you when certain ones are nearby.

Really, geolocation is a good mix of the two. Sometimes it is just about me, where I am, and what there is to do there. And other times it’s about connecting me with people - and perhaps we go off to do some of the fun things in the area.

Imity also did some very cool stuff by prototyping their concept and code in Second Life, the virtual reality world. It was a great demonstration of using Second Life as a rapid prototyping environment (no need to build into real handsets and find other users in the world), and also did a good job at marketing.

Check out the Google code page for the software.

After years of the mobile LBS market being bubbling under the surface, this Spring/Summer 2007 looks like it might finally open up.

This morning Research in Motion announced a new API for their Blackberries that includes support for API for J2METM”>JSR 179, the Location API for J2ME. Blackberries have had GPS chips for awhile, RIM even had a competition last year to create an LBS. However, I think this is the first time the API has been publicly debuted. They also released a mapping API via Blackberry Maps (not sure what they are yet)

In addition to the LocationAPI, RIM’s APIs also added a lot of other functionality for XML parsing, multimedia, camera, and file system. Definitely building a nice mobile-computing system.

That now adds to the upcoming FIC/OpenMoko Neo1973 which has a GPS chip and agpsd for location based applications, the Apple iPhone, uLocate’s WHERE Widgets for Sprint phones, the Nokia N800 and N95, both with location support via WiFi/GPS.

There have been a lot of mobile location based games, and services. But now that the API’s are becoming open and very easy to use (with the potential exception of Apple’s iPhone), small/independent developers can really produce innovative and interest applications for the devices. These mobile platforms serve as great devices for both publishing (geoblogging, geophotos, geotagging) and consuming (georss, kml) information from the geostack.

I am desperately in need of a new phone. My trusty Nokia 6600 has served me well, and still continues to chug along, but is plagued by bad sound, connection, small memory, and slow processor. I’m still drooling over the new Nokia N95, but not sure when I can actually get my hands on one (or afford it).

However, there is another drool-worthy phone coming out in January. On the same vein as the Nokia N770 tablet, which is very hackable, the OpenMoko phone is a fully hackable mobile phone. GPS, quad-band GSM/GPRS, SyncML, microSD cards, apt-get install, Linux, GTK goodness. Future versions are expected with WiFi and Bluetooth. via Koen’s Blog

Also check out the LinuxDevices article which sports images including mapping applications.