Google Maps ‘my location’ does not need GPS
Published on November 29th, 2007 in gps navigation, softwareGoogle Maps for Mobile’s new feature called ‘my location’ just got announced today. It is a new feature that puts a blue dot on Google Maps showing where you are. The best part is that it does not require your mobile device to have GPS hardware. If you do, that’s OK, Google Maps will use that information for your blue dot. But if you don’t it will approximate where you are using the cell tower you are connected to at the time - in which case you’ll get a light blue circle around your dot.
If you do have a GPS-enabled device, My Location can actually complement it. My Location kicks in faster than GPS in most cases, so you can access your location even faster on the map. It also works reliably indoors (unlike GPS) and doesn’t drain your phone battery at the rate that GPS does.
Here are the currently supported phones:
- Most Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones.
- Palm devices with Palm OS 5 and above.
- All color BlackBerry devices.
- Windows Mobile devices with Windows Mobile 2003, 5.0 and above.
- Symbian Series 60 3rd edition devices.
The new service is still in beta and may not be available everywhere. Check out the video:
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November 29th, 2007 at 5:14 am
So contrary to current belief, Google is not performing cell tower trilateration but positionning you at the address of the cell tower. How do they obtain those addresses ?
Users with GPS equipped handset using Google Maps for Mobile in it’s early release were sending cell tower id along with location information to Google without knowing about it.
Google built it’s own database and having reach a critical mass of cell tower information can know provide that functionality to its users.
Very clever - Happy location reporting - Martin