NaviGadget

We had announced the Wheriphone G560 back in August 2006. It is been out in market already but Wherify still came to CES 2007 to show this little GPS tracking device / GSM phone. The phone feels really solid, even so that it looked like it could take some abuse from a 6 year old.

The G560 can be purchased through Amazon or Toys ‘R Us for $100 or less and service plan starts at $20. $20 will get you 60 units - where each unit can be used as either a “location request” or “one minute of voice call”. There are also other levels of plans:

• $20 - 60 units
• $27 - 100 units
• $37 - 150 units
• $47 - 200 units

Technology used by Wherify is called A-GPS (assisted GPS) which uses both GPS and cellular networks to fix the location of a device even when indoors.

When a Wherify-enabled device receives a valid locate command it checks to see if it knows its last position, and if the GPS satellite ephemeris data in its memory is still fresh. GPS satellite ephemeris data is a set of information about the state of the GPS satellite constellation that the device will use to locate itself, including information on all 24 of the GPS satellites in space, such as their orbital position, speed, etc.

The device, which operates over a GSM network, will typically know its approximate location based upon the location of the GSM cell tower handling its call. This lets the device know what city or area it’s operating in and lets it get a GPS fix more quickly than a standard GPS device by restricting its GPS satellite signal search to those satellites that are overhead, rather than
searching for all 24 satellites in space.

The G560 has an integrated SiRF Star III GPS receiver chip.

• GPS Snitch; nice but still expensive
• myPol GPS child tracker (Korea only)
• wherify announces GPS locator service
• Portable GPS Tracker For Kids: GP2018
• GPS enabled Disney Mobile will use Sprint Network

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 4:35 am and is filed under CES 2007, gps navigation, tracking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.