The Blackberry 8820, to be carried by AT&T, features support for EDGE and Wi-Fi. Available through AT&T later in the summer, the 8820 features a full QWERTY keyboard, a large 320 x 240 display and a trackball navigation system. Pricing was not announced but Amazon has it for as low as $129 (with contract).
RIM Blackberries are mostly used for “pushed” email messaging, but the new phone can also handle Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA). With UMA, voice calls over a Wi-Fi network can seamlessly handover to cellular networks (or visa-versa). Voice over WiFi can lower cellular minutes and provide connectivity inside. T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home launched their national service this June.
AT&T has not (yet) announced any official plans to support UMA.
The Blackberry 8820 features include Wi-Fi with WiFi Protected Access and WPA2, a keyboard, music and media creation tools from Roxio, micro SD/SDHC support, voice recognition and Bluetooth 2.0. The 8820 also features GPS satellite navigation — allowing it to pinpoint its location and give directions. The phone is quad-band for worldwide compatibility. Whether T-Mobile will support this phone (eventually), remains unknown.
As more phones come equipped with GPS, all sorts of location services are being offered by the carriers (and other companies) for additional fees. The NY Times overviews GPS Cellphone services:
- The Disney Family Locator service on a Disney-branded mobile phone uses G.P.S. to track a child’s whereabouts. Parents buy special child and parent phones. The child’s phone is programmed to beam locations to the parent’s phone, which has the ability to display and map the approximate street address where the child is at any given time.
- Sprint’s Family Locator service provides parents with the child’s location and alerts them when the child arrives at a specified place. The Sprint service can also be used to track adult family members, but the adult can control who tracks them.
- Verizon’s child locater, called Chaperone, adds a “geofencing” service that allows a parents to define an area — such as a school or baby sitter’s house — where the child is permitted. The parents receive an alert on their handset when the child’s cellphone enters or leaves the zone.
- Verizon’s VZ Navigator service has turn-by-turn voice and onscreen directions and a local search function to help you find nearby businesses.
- Wherify Wireless offers a line of G.P.S.-enabled phones to track elderly relatives or employees. People doing the tracking can locate the trackees through a Web or cellphone interface or by calling the company’s toll-free number and providing the operator with a password.
Helio offers Buddy Beacon. The virtual operator aimed at young adults, enables customers to beam their location to 25 other Helio users. Helio plots directions on Google Maps and searches for nearby businesses.
- Loopt, which runs only on Sprint’s network and Boost’s prepaid network, allows its users to continually report their location to friends who are also Loopt customers. The phone tracks the user and issues an alert when another Loopt user comes within a certain distance.
- PocketTweets is a Web-based Twitter client for the Apple iPhone, using EDGE or WiFi. Twitter sends mobile text to your group of friends and posts it to your Twitter page.
- Skyhook Wireless offers a service that uses Wi-Fi to locate laptops and other devices, including some Wi-Fi Internet phones, and with the user’s permission reports that position to others.
- TeleNav offers a service that turns phones from Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile and others into a full-fledged G.P.S. navigation device by using the phone’s speaker and color screen. It has a “points of interest” database, but because it is connected to the cellular network, it receives updates in real time. That enables services like a “gas by price” for the nearest cheap gas. If you beam your address to other TeleNav users, they can plot you on a map and get directions to your location.
- Some Sprint and Verizon phones can use Bones in Motion’s BiM Active application to track your speed, location, elevation and calories burned while walking, running or cycling. You can view your statistics and a map of your route on the phone or a Web page.
Cellphone screens are smaller than stand-alone G.P.S. units, but they can be handier. If your phone doesn’t have GPS built-in, external Bluetooth GPS receivers like GlobalSat or others might work.
DailyWireless has more on Location-based Services, GPS, Bluetooth and Mobile Applications.
.gif)
