Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
|
All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
|
|
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Field-testing the Nokia N95: Use of GPS
Update 20070430: I found a way to get rid of the permission warnings when accessing GPS, so I updated the text about that.
As everyone's been so positive about this phone, saying it's the perfect smartphone (except for the short battery up-time), and I needed to test its GPS capabilities, I took it for a spin in the 'hood.
First off, the phone itself is slick, and being able to slide the front in two ways - up to to reveal a numeric keypad and down to reveal a multimedia keypad - is smart, yet I have a few gripes about the UI:
The navigation buttons right under the display are very poorly designed from a usability perspective, and are clearly designed only for aesthetics. Not that they look very aesthetic to me.
The multimedia buttons at the top are not real buttons, as they are put under a flat plastic film. That means there is no button feel before you press. Not good.
That said, to call a smartphone perfect it has to fulfil the following criteria in my way of thinking:
Connectivity/communication-wise the phone is really nice:
About GPS then:
Nothing reveals that the phone has integrated GPS, except of course all the included location-related applications. The form factor of the phone doesn't seem to be affected, but to be frank I haven't compared with other N series phones.
As I primarily wanted to test my own location-enabled application, that was what I focused on.
I noted that the GPS sensitivity is pretty low. Oddly my Nokia LD-3W GPS module is way more sensitive, as I could use it while walking around, while the N95 had a hard time finding enough satellites to get a decent heading. I verified that it wasn't a problem with my application, as the embedded ones often didn't get any coordinates either.
Interestingly the N95 can access Bluetooth GPS modules via the Location APIs in Symbian OS and Java ME, so in the future applications need only go via the Location APIs. Not so now though, as there are way more phones that have e.g. Java ME and Bluetooth than the Location APIs. Almost all vs almost none. The requirement to support a reasonably precise location in USA and Japan will drive integration of GPS into phones.
When it finally was able to retrieve location information from the internal GPS I got one message asking for permission to use location information. After that I didn't get more questions. Still, this was not until I had changed my software to use a location listener instead of synchronous access, so that's a pointer to others out there working on location applications in Java ME.
My verdict is that it could have been more sensitive on the GPS reception, and as everybody else has said, had a much better battery life, possibly simply solved by better power management (of GPS etc).
Comparing N95 and LD-3W:
As previously mentioned, a separate GPS module works with pretty much all new phones, as the only requirement is Bluetooth and Java ME. Also, prices are going down fast. Hence this is a good alternative to anyone that's already got a good phone, but only wants to add GPS. Keep in mind though that no applications are included with the module, so that's an extra cost that's not negligable. Mobile navigation software is still rather expensive.
Regarding battery life: If I don't connect to the LD-3W via Bluetooth it shuts down the GPS receiver, and in that mode the battery lasts for several days (empirically verified, at least 4). There might be a lot of other things that make the N95 a battery under-achiever, but maybe they made the (wrong) decision to always keep GPS active. Other GPS modules switch off entirely when there's no Bluetooth connection, but the LD-3W is always accessible while turned on (that didn't come out right...).
The LD-3W also seems to have a quick start mode where it hasn't yet shut down GPS, and where hooking up via Bluetooth and getting correct coordinates take mere seconds.
An interesting feature of the LD-3W is that it has a rubber lining, so that it stays better on top of the dashboard etc. Not 100% reliable though. It's fallen on the floor several times while I've been driving.
Overall I think the LD-3W is very well designed, and certainly one of the better GPS modules available.
As everyone's been so positive about this phone, saying it's the perfect smartphone (except for the short battery up-time), and I needed to test its GPS capabilities, I took it for a spin in the 'hood.
First off, the phone itself is slick, and being able to slide the front in two ways - up to to reveal a numeric keypad and down to reveal a multimedia keypad - is smart, yet I have a few gripes about the UI:
The navigation buttons right under the display are very poorly designed from a usability perspective, and are clearly designed only for aesthetics. Not that they look very aesthetic to me.
The multimedia buttons at the top are not real buttons, as they are put under a flat plastic film. That means there is no button feel before you press. Not good.
That said, to call a smartphone perfect it has to fulfil the following criteria in my way of thinking:
- alphanumeric keypad (yes, it's mandatory on a phone optimized for information access!)
- landscape display (for information access, video viewing etc)
Connectivity/communication-wise the phone is really nice:
- standard USB connector for the PC connection; that's the way it should be on all phones; it didn't seem to charge from USB though, but I might be wrong
- standard stereo headset connector
- integrated Wi-Fi that worked quite well, but wasn't very sensitive: more than 5 meters away from the access point and it lost the connection
- HSDPA makes mobile network access snappy; 3 supports this now in my area
About GPS then:
Nothing reveals that the phone has integrated GPS, except of course all the included location-related applications. The form factor of the phone doesn't seem to be affected, but to be frank I haven't compared with other N series phones.
As I primarily wanted to test my own location-enabled application, that was what I focused on.
I noted that the GPS sensitivity is pretty low. Oddly my Nokia LD-3W GPS module is way more sensitive, as I could use it while walking around, while the N95 had a hard time finding enough satellites to get a decent heading. I verified that it wasn't a problem with my application, as the embedded ones often didn't get any coordinates either.
Interestingly the N95 can access Bluetooth GPS modules via the Location APIs in Symbian OS and Java ME, so in the future applications need only go via the Location APIs. Not so now though, as there are way more phones that have e.g. Java ME and Bluetooth than the Location APIs. Almost all vs almost none. The requirement to support a reasonably precise location in USA and Japan will drive integration of GPS into phones.
When it finally was able to retrieve location information from the internal GPS I got one message asking for permission to use location information. After that I didn't get more questions. Still, this was not until I had changed my software to use a location listener instead of synchronous access, so that's a pointer to others out there working on location applications in Java ME.
My verdict is that it could have been more sensitive on the GPS reception, and as everybody else has said, had a much better battery life, possibly simply solved by better power management (of GPS etc).
Comparing N95 and LD-3W:
As previously mentioned, a separate GPS module works with pretty much all new phones, as the only requirement is Bluetooth and Java ME. Also, prices are going down fast. Hence this is a good alternative to anyone that's already got a good phone, but only wants to add GPS. Keep in mind though that no applications are included with the module, so that's an extra cost that's not negligable. Mobile navigation software is still rather expensive.
Regarding battery life: If I don't connect to the LD-3W via Bluetooth it shuts down the GPS receiver, and in that mode the battery lasts for several days (empirically verified, at least 4). There might be a lot of other things that make the N95 a battery under-achiever, but maybe they made the (wrong) decision to always keep GPS active. Other GPS modules switch off entirely when there's no Bluetooth connection, but the LD-3W is always accessible while turned on (that didn't come out right...).
The LD-3W also seems to have a quick start mode where it hasn't yet shut down GPS, and where hooking up via Bluetooth and getting correct coordinates take mere seconds.
An interesting feature of the LD-3W is that it has a rubber lining, so that it stays better on top of the dashboard etc. Not 100% reliable though. It's fallen on the floor several times while I've been driving.
Overall I think the LD-3W is very well designed, and certainly one of the better GPS modules available.
