iPhone Location Finding
At MacWorld this week Apple unveiled a new software update which lets the iPhone (and iPod touch to a lesser extent) ‘find’ itself. Since it has no GPS chip in it the only way that it can do this is by triangulating a postion based on signal strength from known WiFi hotspots and celluar radio towers.
To be honest, I think this is a really shoddy substitute for a GPS chip and is no more use than an as a gimick. Neither 802.11 nor GSM were specifically designed to be used in this way; it’s a classic example of using the wrong tool for the job.
The location finding, from what people have reported, is accurate only to within a few thousand square metres at best, at worst it could be a very generalised area indeed. This means that it’s no use at all as an in-car sat nav replacement and certainly no use for walking and hiking (where there’s unlikely to be WiFi and possibly no cellular radios either anyway).
So what use is it? None as far as I can tell unless you can find somebody who doesn’t know GPS exists and want to mesmorise them for a few seconds. Apple always seem to demo these things by finding the nearest Starbucks or Apple Store but how often do people really want to do that?
I suppose it’s good that they’ve at least acknowledged the fact that people need to know where they are, I just hope they do a proper job of the next hardware release and squeeze a GPS chip into it, then I might buy one!