A couple more things: 1. Not all internal receivers are poor. On newer phones like nokia n79 and the apple iphone, the internal receivers are just as good and sometimes even better than external receivers. Internal receivers are able to use a technology called a-gps (which uses data from mobile towers in addition to satellites to triangulate). A-gps is available on only specific external receivers.
2. When Pranav says below that only wayfinder and loadstone have maps for India, he probably means the only 2 accessible products. Nokia maps is free and they also have detailed maps for Delhi (and I am assuming for other Indian cities as well) but are not usable with talks. I have used nokia maps with sighted assistance and they give turn by turn direction announcements that are just as good as wayfinder. Not to mention Google maps (I am looking for a product that will give turn by turn announcements with Google maps). -Manish -----Original Message----- From: accessindia-boun...@accessindia.org.in [mailto:accessindia-boun...@accessindia.org.in] On Behalf Of Pranav Lal Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 7:44 AM To: accessindia@accessindia.org.in Subject: Re: [AI] accessible gps comparison Hi, 1. The only two GPS programs that work reliably in India are Wayfinder Access and loadstone. 2. Accuracy is dependent on the GPS receiver you use. I use GPS heavily and get accuracy up to 5 meters. I have an external GPS receiver. Most internal GPS receivers are of poor quality so are less accurate and take a long time to acquire a signal as compared to external GPS receivers. 3. I have contacted a lot of companies to ask if they have maps for India. GPS per se will work anywhere in the world but having maps for that area is the key issue here. They do not consider India a big enough market. 4. Wayfinder Access is an offshoot of a product called Wayfinder. This product is meant for the main stream and does have good maps for India. This is what I use everyday. Unfortunately, Vodaphone, who owns the product has discontinued further development so we are in a bind. Please sign the petition at http://www.talknav.com/protest 5. Loadstone is an open source product and the users have to make the maps themselves. The problem with loadstone is that it does not provide routing capabilities so you will not get turn-by-turn directions unless you define them while planning your route. The bigger problem is that with loadstone, you do not know immediately that you are off track. It will not plot an alternative route for you. This is again a limitation of the kind of map data that is freely available. You do not have information about streets etc., in freely available map data. I hope that clarifies the GPS issue. Pranav To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
