Indoor satnav: Your phone becomes the ultimate map next year
Your phone already does double duty as an A-Z and even a satnav, but from next year it’s set to get even smarter. The biggest guns in mobile have announced today that they’re teaming up to bring GPS location skills indoors, so you need never get lost ever again.
GPS (global positioning system) is a mighty useful technology in your phone, but if you’ve struggled to get Google Maps to work in a built-up area before, you might realise it still has some limitations. It needs open sky to get signal from GPS satellites, which means accurate indoor location’s next to impossible.
Check out our GPS group test video here
The In-Location Alliance, a group of 22 mobile giants including Nokia, Samsung and Sony, hopes to change that. Announced today, it aims to solve the challenges of showing you where you are inside a building, and introduce standard tech you’ll find inside phones from next year.
There’s all sorts of potential here, from apps to guide you around supermarkets or shopping centres, to notifications alerting you whenever there’s a bargain nearby.
Best of all, this could all happen with the phone you own right now. The alliance hopes to use Bluetooth 4.0 technology for indoor location, and many smartphones, including the iPhone 4S and HTC One X, already include this.
Where would you find indoor location helpful? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.
User comments (2)
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Patrick23 August 2012
The obvious one is for supermarkets then to somehow connect their store planograms to it so you spend less time aimlessly wandering round pretending you know where anything is!
Report as inappropriatePaul23 August 2012
To keep a track of my partner when we're shopping... she can disappear in a department store faster than you can say sale rail....
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