Pocket GPS Articles

Click here to read the review	Well 2002 has been a great year both for the Pocket PC market, and for GPS. In 2000 and 2001 we only had a handful of Pocket PC manufacturers, last year (is it really last year ?) 2002 shows double, nearly treble the amount of Pocket PC manufacturers come onto the scene, including very large PC manufacturers like Dell and Toshiba, which only means one thing. The Pocket PC and future incarnations are here to stay, and in a very big way! I've always been interested in GPS, but for those who really know me I have only recently dived into Pocket PC GPS (exactly a year ago), in December 2001.

Click here to read the review	Looking back at 2003, it really has been an exciting year in not only GPS but in the Pocket PC. Great strides have been made in all corners of the globe, and in technology. It only seems like yesterday when I was writing the 2003 and beyond article, and now we are staring 2004 straight in the eyes. Can a year really have gone that quickly ? So what did happen in 2003 ? And more importantly, what will we see in 2004 ?

Click here to read the review	This is the first annual awards of GPS products for PocketGPSWorld.com. We decided it was about time that GPS manufacturers were rewarded and receive recognition for the products they create, so we decided for the year end of 2003 we would create a new award ceremony, and this would be called the PocketGPSWorld.com Awards 2003. The Team and Reviewers at PocketGPSWorld.com would look at products that have been released but more importantly reviewed by PocketGPSWorld.com within 2003 and these products would then be voted on bearing in mind both the product, the review and the experience gained by each team member.

Click here to read the review	This paper investigates a methodology that can be applied to the development of an Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) System. In essence, any AVL system can be considered as two main centres: the vehicle or mobile system and the central site or control system. This paper will consider components that can be used in both of these systems, the latency of location and the costs of the communication systems involved. Recent events in the UK have generated a lot of interest in tracking systems which are designed to be worn or can locate children. This is a very interesting area, as considering these applications causes one to look very closely at power, antenna and implementation issues, this is discussed later in this paper.

Click here to read the review	Firstly for those of you who are not clued up yet, WAAS stands for Wide Area Augmentation System. It's a system of geostationary satellites and ground stations that provide GPS signal corrections, giving you even better position accuracy than currently available with the standard Global Positioning Systems. How much better? Try an average of up to five times better. A WAAS-capable receiver can give you a position accuracy of better than three meters, 95 percent of the time, and even better you don't have to purchase additional receiving equipment or pay service fees to utilize WAAS if your receiver already supports it.

Click here to read the review	The Americans created the original and most used GPS system which is what we see today thanks to the US Department of Defense, the Russians also created their own GPS system dubbed GLONASS, so it's only fit for the Europeans now to create another GPS system. Nothing like healthy competition eh ? ESA (European Space Agency) earlier on this year said that they have created a new project called EGNOS. EGNOS will be Europe's first venture into satellite navigation which will augment the two working satellite navigation systems US GPS (DoD) and the Russian GLONASS system and make GPS a safety critical application for use in flying aircraft, and navigating ships through narrow channels.

Click here to read the review	If you're stuck with a question, before charging to our forum, why not check out our Frequently Asked Questions database ? This holds all of our frequently asked questions that we receive in the forum, or via email and should help get your questions answered. If not, then visit our forum!

Click here to read the review	As each GPS software comes with a plethora of options, we thought we would help make the purchase of GPS software easier by listing the main useable features of each software product and compare these features to provide you with the feature set that you require most. We've currently matched the top 6 GPS products, namely Navman SmartPath City, Trips, TomTom CityMaps, TomTom RoutePlanner, TomTom Navigator and PowerLOC Destinator.

Click here to read the review	Our GPS Terminology page should help get you started in GPS. It delves into What a Waypoint is What the difference is between bearing and heading What a Route is What a TTFF (Time to First Fix) is Should you go for a 8 or 12 satellite receiver What WAAS is

Click here to read the review	I have been receiving quite a few emails recently about damage people are receiving from their Haicom 203E GPS Mouse. This doesn't appear to be isolated incidents, and although most of this is thought to be because the GPS has been getting hot and left on the dashboard in the hot summer, they all seem to be experiencing the problem in the same areas of the case. The damage you can see by clicking on the photos below. Around each of the four screws that hold the Haicom 203E together, the outer plastic moulded case has started to fracture as if the screws have been over tightened, and with heat the case has expanded slightly and caused the case to fracture around the screw holes.

Click here to read the review	The Global Positioning System satellites transmit signals to equipment on the ground. GPS receivers passively receive satellite signals; they do not transmit. GPS receivers require an unobstructed view of the sky, so they are used only outdoors and they often do not perform well within forested areas or near tall buildings. GPS operations depend on a very accurate time reference, which is provided by atomic clocks on board. Each GPS satellite transmits data that indicates its location and the current time. All GPS satellites synchronize operations so that these repeating signals are transmitted at the same instant.

Click here to read the review	As some of you may have gathered by now Lutz since a few weeks is a proud and insanely grinning owner of an iPAQ 6315. There are many variations on the market (6310, 6340 etc) but the main difference is the presence or absence of the VGA camera – which is a joke anyhow and not relevant for navigation. Previously Lutz was using a combination of iPAQ 3630 (later 3970) and the Compaq GSM/GPRS jacket as his one and only mobile phone.

Click here to read the review	Our Inside articles have been showing quite popular, and people have been wanting to see what really is inside those small GPS receivers. This inside article shows the Emtac / Transplant / CoPilot GPSJAQ sleeve for the Compaq/HP iPAQ. Please do not try to open up your GPS Receivers, as this will invalidate your warranty, and in most cases it is plainly obvious that a Receiver has been opened or tampered with.

Click here to read the review	Although our internal reviews of GPS Receivers prove very popular, most manufacturers do not like the insides of their GPS Receivers shown to all and sundry. However, we would like to thank Holux UK on this occasion, as they has kindly sent us some inside photos of the new Holux GM-270 Ultra Compact Flash GPS Receiver.

Click here to read the review	Our Inside articles have been showing quite popular, and people have been wanting to see what really is inside those small GPS receivers. Since I installed my TomTom Navigator, I've been wanting to de-install the wiring from the car so I could take some great inside photos of the Receiver, but with the flow of things, I just haven't found the 2-3 hours spare it would take me to do this. Thanks to Phil (Gadjet), he's just pulled apart his Leadtek 9531 which is the same receiver that TomTom use, and we have some great exclusive inside photos of the GPS Receiver. A note to all those skeptic's out there who said the TomTom Navigator and Leadtek 9531 doesn't have a battery ? Think again! Phil's highlighted the fact with a nice big arrow! :)

Click here to read the review	Our Inside articles have been showing quite popular, and people have been wanting to see what really is inside those small GPS receivers. Thanks to Stefan Wedlin who had a few issues when he was trying to use an extension cable to power his Leadtek where the wires were crossed over and it blew his TomTom GPS Receiver. Stefan thought it was an ideal opportunity to take a look inside the receiver whilst purchasing a new one, and posted some photos to us. This is the TomTom GPS Receiver (Leadtek 9533).

Click here to read the review	The Navman GPS 3000 has been around for over a year now and we thought it about time to show you some internal photos of the Navman. We would like to give all our readers the following warning. Please do not try to open up your GPS Receivers, be it Navman or another manufacturer, as this will invalidate your warranty, and in most cases it is plainly obvious that a Receiver has been opened or tampered with. With that in mind, we have readers that decided to go and do it anyway! ;). These photos are courtesy of Phil Wheeler at Optional Extras.

Click here to read the review	The Navman GPS 3000 has been around for over a year now and we thought it about time to show you some internal photos of the Navman. We would like to give all our readers the following warning. Please do not try to open up your GPS Receivers, be it Navman or another manufacturer, as this will invalidate your warranty, and in most cases it is plainly obvious that a Receiver has been opened or tampered with. With that in mind, we have readers that decided to go and do it anyway! ;). These photos are courtesy of Phil Wheeler at Optional Extras.

Click here to read the review	For ages I've been rambling on to the effect "Why can't we get a single map, why do we have to be forced to loading a new map for each area of the country we visit ?". Since then TomTom have now brought out what I'd call the ultimate map. It's 84mb in size, and covers the whole of the UK, and it's a dream to use! No changing map whenever I drive to a neighbouring city, or when I get out on to the motorway, and I don't reach a location to find that I've forgotten to load the map before commencing my journey! I also don't have to switch applications between a street atlas, and a city map, but is it better ?

Click here to read the review	Navman hosted a Press launch day on September 7th 2004 and invited PocketGPSWorld.com and 13 other journalists from The Sun, Dennis Publishing, and Haynet Publishing to name a few companies. The main aim was for Navman to show off it's latest 2004/2005 line-up of products which is soon to be released and to re-affirm it's position in the GPS market. The launch took place in The Seattle Hotel, Brighton Marina, UK. These included:- Navman iCN510, Navman iCN635, Navman iCN650 which gives Navman a great new line-up with new software pre-loaded!

Click here to read the review	The opportunity arose at the turn of the year to undertake a journey through Western Europe starting in the middle of England and going on via the channel tunnel down through France and Spain to the southern coast. I also wanted to use the Navman 3400 to show me the way. The Navman 3400 upgrade arrived just in time for me to load it prior to the journey and I simultaneously upgraded my compact flash memory to 256Mb to cater for the increased mapping required.

Click here to read the review	NAVTEQ recently invited the PocketGPSWorld.com Team to visit one of their data field offices based in Borehamwood. Darren, Mike and myself attended the field office and the main objectives were to see NAVTEQ at work, receive a presentation, understand how the various data is collected and mapped into layers, and to take part in a road survey where a NAVTEQ data collection team drive and map some roads.

Click here to read the review	This Points Of Interest page contains a list of POI's from all over the world. Currently these are available in TomTom Navigator (OV2) format, but will be made available in other formats in months to come to include AutoRoute and CoPilot Live. Points of interest are usually regarded as items like Petrol Stations, Hotels, Restaurants, but imagine what you can do by adding Speed Camera's, Clients, Castles, and many more items. This doesn't have to be used just for work, or for tourism, it can be used for a whole host of new things.

Click here to read the review	The Pocket GPS Summit took place on the 5th and 6th of July 2003 and was hosted by the Pocket GPS Team. In attendance was Dave, Mike, Duncan, Peter. For those that didn't attend, we have documented the event below. We all originally met up in the car park of the Waterhead Hotel in Ambleside, Cumbria. The team then gave an introductory talk about GPS, we then went through individual introductions and found out the products that everyone currently use. This took until around midday when we decided to make a move to a larger location.

Click here to read the review	At the end of September a small group of GPS fans assembled in North-West Houston, pretending to attend a yard sale that Lutz decided to hold. Along they came, with an agenda at heart. Not to see what was for sale, but they heard of a new GPS Guru in the neighbourhood! So their main goal instead was to get a quick consultation about the available GPS gear and the best ways to fit it into their cars.....I guess you already know how this will turn out!

Click here to read the review	Are you having problems with the bad instructions provided with the Pretec range of Compact Flash GPS Receivers ? If you are experiencing problems, check out this article for a little more help. Make sure you also check the relevant Pretec Compact and LP reviews for additional information.

Click here to read the review	I must admit, like many others I've always been a gadget kind of person, I've always been interested in the latest gadgets that hit the market, and I've always liked the look of GPS, but I somehow never really found a use, or a good one at that for just seeing the co-ordinates longitude and latitude that are displayed on some of the earlier handheld GPS units. It's not to say they weren't useful, as they were for many, but I never personally found a use for them.

Click here to read the review	Following our two reviews of the Seidio GPS ready mount (G2500) Lutz had the opportunity to pay a visit to the Seidio offices in Houston. In true Pocket GPS World fashion Lutz used only his Pocket PC's (one of them in the G2500, connected to a TomTom Serial GPS) as well as the TomTom GO that he is currently reviewing, entered the Seidio office address into all of them, and then enjoyed the cacophony of voice commands. Luckily there was no human co-pilot on board who would have made snide remarks.

Click here to read the review	San Jose Navigation Incorporated is a GPS company and turnkey solution manufacturer specializing in mobile and marine GPS recievers and antennas. SA Nav are located in Taiwan. SA Nav among many products, manufacture a low profile GPS/GSM antenna which can be used in AVL applications. The antenna sports high performance with a high-gain low noise filter, a low profile, waterproof and suction cup mounting. The AU-3S-GSM is ideal for AVL or fleet management use. Ideal for applications that requires both durability and compactness in size, allowing for covert installation and a ruggedized construction.

Click here to read the review	We've been getting lots of requests on a daily basis on which products are available in which countries. Most people are aware of one or two products, but not the complete range. Hopefully this document will hope to show which products are available and have maps in which countries, but will also answer most of the questions we've been receiving over the past couple of months in the lead up to Christmas.

Click here to read the review	It is tough working for PocketGPSWorld.com. We spend all day and night testing, reviewing, supporting and often dreaming about gadgets. So once a year we are allowed to take some time off and what do we do? Go and visit the Stuff Exhibition. Stuff for those of you who are not in the UK is one of the foremost magazines for "Boys Toys". This was represented very clearly by the demographic of the visitors. I think there was about a 90/10 split Male/Female. Which is a shame really as most of the gear on show was for both sexes.

Click here to read the review	Many Pocket GPS users find that they have problems with the suction cup or sucker on their windscreen. Even though most of the suction mounts come with a lever arm to create suction between the cup and the windscreen, it is better to follow these simple steps before applying to windscreen1) Purchase some Monitor wipes (the ones where you have a wet and a dry wipe)2) Clean the area of the windscreen you will be applying the suction mount to 3) Once clean, moisten the suction cup. Don't just lick it, slobber all over it! Get as much moisture you can onto this cup. If you'd prefer, wet it with a cloth and some water.

Click here to read the review	There have been lots of messages on the forums and in personal emails to me regarding TomTom Navigator where people have found errors in the maps. TomTom have been providing fixes via TeleAtlas for the maps since TomTom was released, but there are still quite a number of outstanding map errors that people are noticing. TomTom have said theyare investigating all of these matters that are reported to their support department and are fixing these with map updates as soon as possible! We thought it might be better to collate the problems and show comparison screenshots so it also gives TomTom more information to go on, as it is always easier to see the problem if you can see it rather than having it described to you.

Click here to read the review	We get a lot of requests in the forums, via email and also people we talk to asking us What is the best GPS Receiver around ?. The best way to measure this is in the TTFF (Time To First Fix) and re-acquisition times. When the satellites try to acquire a lock they need to rely on both Almanac and Ephemeris data. Almanac data is course orbital parameters for all satellites in the GPS constellation which isn't very accurate information but is usually current for up to several months. Then there's Ephemeris data which is very precise orbital and clock correction for each satellite and is required for precise positioning, eg 3D fix. Each satellite broadcasts only it's Ephemeris data which has a life span of approx 5 hours per satellite.

Click here to read the review	One thing that everyone seems to be raving about when it comes down to GPS software now, but nobody seems really too bothered about what it sounds like is Voice Navigation. It started a while back with PowerLOC's Destinator, now TomTom Navigator uses Voice Navigation, and so does Navman's latest offering SmartST Pro. So what's it all about then for those who don't have it ?

Click here to read the review	Currently there are new services coming out as we speak that will triangulate your position via mobile phone, allow you to use a WAP GPRS phone to then order items like a hotdog when you're at a ball game, or purchase a ticket to a car park whilst your driving to it so you don't have to wait in line and queue. These could be very good value added services that will in a way replace the standard shopping experience like we used to do with buying a meal. Sure, we used to go into a fast food restaurant for a burger, but do we now ? No, in most cases we'll go to the drive through counter. What if there's a cue ? We still go there, it's less hassle! We're becoming lazy and would rather sit in our climate controlled cars, listening to the radio then go and park your car, walk in, wait at the counter then pay for your take away.

Click here to read the review	What happened a little over a year ago created a big wake up call not only for American citizens, but to citizens the world over. The attacks that were carried out were atrocious, the attackers were cowards, and the loss of life and privacy is just utterly sad. People are still mourning their loved ones a year on, and for many it has come at a great expense. GPS has played a big role in aiding to clear ground zero. The Department of Design and Construction in New York employed GPS technology in the latter part of the 12 months since the attack. There was just short of 2 million tons of debris to clear from Ground Zero in the last 12 months, which created a mammoth task for workers to achieve.

Click here to read the review	Autonomous high-sensitivity software designed to extend the range of GPS. Complimenting SiRF's existing product line of GPS solutions, SiRFXTrac is a high sensitivity GPS software solution. SiRFXTrac extends the operating range in which GPS can be used - dramatically increasing the versatility of GPS-enabled products such as personal digital assistants (PDA's), automotive navigation solutions, AVL applications, and other location aware consumer devices. If loaded with SiRFXTrac high sensitivity software, GPS-enabled mobile consumer devices will be able to continue operating in far more locations than ever before possible.