Samsung Releases GPS Phone

Fletch writes: "I received an email from Samsung today announcing the release of 'America's First GPS Phone.' The phone does appear to have some neat GPS-based services, such as restaurant and traffic info. Those of you with privacy concerns need not worry. According to the manual (p122, large pdf file) the user does have the ability to turn the 'Position Location' off. (it will be automatically turned back on when/if an emergency call is made)." The manual doesn't say whether the phone initially defaults to "Tracking On" or "Off".

To save everyone from downloading that PDF file, here's the relevant section (innovative capitalization and punctuation in the original):

"America's First GPS Enabled Wireless Phone Designed to Support Location Based Services of the Future Imagine having a phone that can use GPS technology to provide you with....

• Driving directions
• Traffic service
• Entertainment/services location
• 911 emergency location services
• Location of family/friends

Location services for 911 calls are not currently available. While these services are not available today (or) (are still under development), this leading edge phone has the technology required to support such network based services upon their launch.

Settings

The settings allow you to turn the Position Location ON or OFF. If the option is turned OFF, the Sprint PCS Network cannot locate your position using the Position Location feature. This option is automatically turned ON when an emergency call is placed, then turned back OFF when the call is completed.

To turn Position Location ON or OFF:
1. Press for Main Menu.
2. Press for Locator.
3. Press for Settings.
4. Read the Position Location disclaimer by using the Up & Down arrows.
5. Press to display the Setting screen.
6. Press the Up or Down arrows to cycle between the available choices.
7. Press to Save and exit.

Opened the flood gate

We all knew this was going to happen. It begins, wearable, trackable equipment... It can turn itself on? That can't be good.

Jim

A news?

It bugs me that slashdot is so US centric. These babies have been available for ages in other parts of the world, so what is the news?

--
nyri

GPS output?

Ah.. But can you use the phone as an external GPS device? i.e, can it out put NMEA data for use with a palm or other handheld as an external GPS reciever? Now that would be useful.

A New Era of Phreaking

I'll bet you could hack the phones to relay a different GPS coordinate than they're located at. Imagine prank calling someone and they do a trace, only to see that you're somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean...

One useful application

They could combine a GPS-enabled phone with a scent-detecting device. At some point in time, it'll detect the presence of burning bud and have a pizza delivered to wherever you happen to be.
Ooohyeah.

ahaa ... that's completely wasted

GSM can locate you within a cell, why waste time, money, intellectual powers, technology on something it's not intended for. As for the one useful feature - the map - if you need it get a normal gps for your car (or hand.) Just as usefull.

At least there's this...

The evil hacker from Charlie's Angels [imdb.com] won't have to spend so much effort to track down Charlie.

GPS tracking used for orienteering championships

At this year's world orienteering championships in Finland a GPS based tracking system [woc2001.fi] has been used to track the competitors (and provide this information to the spectators).

Technically it is a mobile phone from Benefon integrated into a vest and a seperate GPS antenna (also in the vest) to improve reception. Every 20 seconds a SMS is sent to a server with the position information.

In this week's simpsons episode.

Moe finally tracks Bart prank calls cuz he used Homer's Samsung phone with GPS enabled on by default. :)

Super-duper tracker

Of course we're all waiting for the day when even more is integrated - and it'll come fairly soon. It takes very very little more to add a voice recorder, an MP3 player, and user programmability (via something like Java). You could program it to track your kids and phone in their location every 15 minutes. Haha, the heck with privacy from the phone companies, how about the parents???

It will take a bit more for a fully functional computation device - that'll take some seious improvement in user interface technology for small devices. We're still a ways away from big displays on an ever shrinking device - I think it's time for the paradigm shift to kick in away from LCD displays - and cell phone technology is just the incentive. As long as those patenteers stay away from monopolizing good ideas!

Can't Laden use one?!

How about offering one of those to Osama bin Laden and his followers? Don't they need one to keep in touch with each other?

Super-tightly targetted advertising...

Okay, you have a Samsung phone that can pinpoint your location (should you choose to let it)...

In Portland, OR (I used to live there), they have some of these electronic billboards that can cycle through a set of animated advertisements. Imagine having a number of these everywhere, that could automatically change their ads based upon who happens to be standing around or driving by...

Scary or kinda cool (from a tech standpoint anyway)?

Stolen phones

And with a bit of work could lead the cops to your stolen phone/goods. Would be nice to have a GPS modem as well for tracking stolen hardware.

You cant disable all the GPS services

According to this commweb article [commweb.com] you can only disable the commercial services, not the E911 services. So for privacy measures, you'd still be able to be tracked.

Stupid licenses.

You'll probably get problems like:

You can only use this coolcompany-steeringwheel when you've got the gps on.....

the world is evil...

Network vs Client based data

GPS is cool, and future emergency GPS location will be cool too.

What concerns me is that the phone relies on the network to get restaurant and driving directions. My Visor with appropriate GPS springboard and something like Vindigo allows me to find nearby stuff using a local database (i.e., on the client). My SprintPCS phone has a feature that lets me set an alarm at a specific time. However, this feature only works when my phone is in the phone network. That is, even though my phone should be perfectly capable of keeping time, it needs a digital PCS signal to actually do so.

If I use this phone to do anything with the GPS aside from finding my own location, I'm forced to send the PCS network my location. While I really don't care that much about the privacy of my whereabouts, I certainly don't need anyone sending me ads targeted to my present location.

but _that_ is not my privacy concern...

Those of you with
privacy concerns need not worry. According to the manual (p122, large pdf file)
the user does have the ability to turn the 'Position Location' off.

I'm one of those with privacy concerns, but this phone does nothing to allay my concerns.

I want to use the nifty features but still have my privacy. Why does the deal have to be "use the feature and be abused by having the information used without your knowledge?" Why can't seemingly smart people figure stuff like this out?

The Nobel Prize (that's like a +1 Informative) in economics was awarded today in part for the research that showed how one side of a transaction having information that the other side doesn't have can tilt the balance so far that the market fails. I'd like to be able to walk into a shop and negotiate a price that is not based on full knowledge of my movements (perhaps at a competitor) being revealed.

yes, I could turn off the service, but that is a Luddite response which has nothing whatever to do with protecting privacy. Please God, make people smarter: privacy entails a lot more than checking "Jedi Knight" on the census form, or being able to unplug a solid state disk drive when the black helicopter people come through the front door. It's about being able to enjoy the fruits of the modern economy without being abused.

Re:but _that_ is not my privacy concern...

Why does the deal have to be "use the feature and be abused by having the information used without your knowledge?" Why can't seemingly smart people figure stuff like this out?

Because the people making the deal are the phone companies, and they know it's a "take it or leave it" deal. They *are* smart people - they just aren't on your side. :( Their smartness is working to figure out how to make more money off of you, not how to give you the best phone experience (those are not equivalent!). And there is no one at any level of government - because the FCC is also crewed by people who think exactly like the phone companies - who is on your side.

You know this, of course. You seem like a bright person. But the average schmoe has no idea how or why his phone works, and most importantly, has no idea that it could work differently.

Re:but _that_ is not my privacy concern...

You want it to get for you information that depends on your location without disclosing your location? That's going to be somewhat difficult, because the service can't help but know what information they're providing to you. What logs they keep and what they do with them is a privacy policy question. There's no way they're going to send all of the data there is to your little phone, and have the phone figure out what you want from a GPS reading that it doesn't send out.

Well, gee whiz..thank god for GPS Cell Phones!

Sorry, gang, but this "innovation" seems utterly useless. Here's why.

1) Why do you need a GPS phone? If you don't know where you are, you ask, or buy a map for a buck or two. The only people who would ever buy a GPS phone are the same kinds of people who get confused looking at rotary telephones.

2) Paper maps don't run out of batteries, or break.

3) Paper maps wont cost you $30 a month.

4) There are plenty of Road Atlases available in bookstores, many of which provide comprehensive data on where you are and where you want to go. They cover every major metropolitan city in the world, streets and landmarks included, and cost a fraction of the amount of money you'de blow on a useless (not to mention difficult to read) GPS phone that will not only eat your batteries, but will eat your money.

5) The GPS doesn't provide you with any unique information. Your speed, distance and travel times can all be figured out in your head or on paper, probably in less time it takes you to fire up the damn thing and take a reading from satellites.

6) Only titanic idiots ever get themselves truly lost anyway. Trust me, I live near a forest preserve. Morons go in there all the time, totally unprepared, no maps, no money, no clue. If you suddenly find yourself so far away from civilization that you need to use a GPS to locate your position (nice fantasy world there, by the way) , you sure as hell aren't going to be able to place a cellphone call. There wont be any nearby towers to handle the call. Gee, didn't think about THAT one, didja? :)

7) A five-minute reading of any basic book on Astronomy will teach you how to find your location anywhere on earth, day or night.

You don't even need a magnetic compass.

So, who wants to step up to the plate and give me ONE irrefutable reason why ANYONE would NEED a GPS-Enabled Cell Phone?

Cheers, (and yes, PROPAGANDA [system26.com] is still running,

If it's an evil plot

If it's an evil plot, rest assured it isn't a corporate one. The FCC's requirements for E911 service are putting a whole lot of pressure [skyaid.org] on the cell providers, who face stiff fines and executive action if they can't use their phones to track you by 2005. If you think that the FCC is overstepping it's bounds with this one (I personally thing a regulated spectrum is an overstepped boundary, but that's just me) you know what to do. [eff.org]

Privacy Concerns

Those of you with privacy concerns need not worry. According to the manual the user does have the ability to turn the 'Position Location' off. (it will be automatically turned back on when/if an emergency call is made).

Now this worries me.

Exactly how is it determined that an emergency call is being made?

privacy 'insured'

"This feature can also be turned Off (except during an emergency call) to insure your privacy."

well, i'll rest easier knowing my privacy is insured, and in case someone does find me, what, i pay my premium, and they pay out a giant claim?

wishing corporate america had a spell-checker, bob.

World's First ... So We'll Give it Two Pages

I find it strange that this phone boasts that it's the world's first GPS-enabled phone, yet the GPS features only take up two pages of text in the manual, and one of those is the title page.

Also, the manual mentions that if you've got GPS features turned off ... it turns them back on for the duration of any emergency calls. Aside from 911, how would the phone know what constitutes an emergency phone call?

Bill collecting

"Hi we're just calling to let you know, Vinny and 'Low Blow' McGurk are on they're way to break your legs at the corner of 99th St. and 101st Ave, please stand by"

Leave it on.

I think that tracking should always be on! It would help prevent terrorism!

Prehaps congress should institute legislation which requires all cell phones to have GPS technology built in. And digital music protection, just to be safe.

Location is good!

I think that tying GPS into phones is a really good idea. When visiting San Francisco a friend and I were looking for a ToGo's for lunch. We could use his phone for the web, but we didn't know the zip code, nor where we were or how to get anywhere. We ended up wandering around till we found one :)

The most important thing is this: The ability to turn it off. There is no valid reason for anyone to have the potential to track where my phone is if I choose to not want that feature.

Good for Samsung! Just think if the phone ran Micro$oft Windows CE?

My guess

is that tracking is turned on by default. Why do I think this?

I'm sure I'm NOT the only one (by far) who thinks this way, but here goes anyhow: They have a huge opportunity to collect detailed market data if they leave it on by default. For now, this probably isn't a huge deal, but you can bet they'll get very good very quickly at mining the data.

Next thing you know, you wake up one morning to a mailbox full of pizza coupons (sent by various partners to your cell provider), due to the fact that you skipped into a Pizza Hut the night before to say hi to a few friends.

Just FYI, I'm not trying to be truly extreme here. I personally love the possibilities opened up by this technology (gotta get me one of those). I'm just typically a bit wary of the marketing implications of anything like this. Thoughts? Flames? Please send on, I'm looking for other perspectives here.

e911

Folks might like to look at http://www.fcc.gov/e911/ to see why this is being done.

Basically, this US mandate requires among other things, that mobile phone handsets that are capable of reporting location must be on sale by 1 October 2001, and that 100% of mobile phones sold after 31 December 2002 must include such capabilities.

Required accuracy of location reporting will initially be to within 50 meters for 67% of calls and within 150 meters for 95% of calls.

Of course, there are many other benefits too - but also many worries I guess.

"opt in"

> The manual doesn't say whether the phone
> initially defaults to "Tracking On" or "Off".

But the press release does. It says the service is 'opt in'. I took that to mean GPS is off by default.

Great

Now when I'm stuck in traffic I can look at my phone to find out that traffic is bad.

Caveat: is it *usable*?

I already have a Samsung/Sprint cell with a lot of advanced features. I regret wasting my money. The features all work, but poor design and integration makes most of them basically useless. For example:

There's an AIM chat client. But if the person you're chatting with sends to you while you're composing a message, you lose the message.

The voice dial feature uses a completely separate phone book from the regular dialer. So you have to put in some numbers twice.

Despite all the connectivity features, you simply have to enter phone book info by hand, period.

There's a handy little button to turn the bell into a vibrator, so you won't get lynched if your phone rings in the movie theater. Except that button only controls voice calls...

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I think it's safe to assume that the GPS part will never do anything really useful. Maybe someday, Sprint will get it together enough to have the phone say, "Hey, you want Szechuan? The Blue Lotus is 2.3 kilometer's NNE!" But I'll lay money they'll never get this tied into your Mapblast account!

Mapping Reception Areas.

Here is a thought. Have people voluntarily turn on the GPS tracking feature (not me). When the user makes a call, have Sprint monitor the strength of the signal and the location of the reciever. If you do this enough, with enough people, you can make an accurate map of signal strength across the country.

Then, when RadioShack tells me that SprintPCS will work in XX area (which I know is not the case most of the time), I can show them a map and say, "In fact, no. Look at the map!"

one thing the user's guide misses...

This has been touched in a couple of other posts (in a more humorous light), but the User's Guide never specifies how the phone attempts to keep you from being tracked. I think that a little more information from somewhere might be in order before I go to use this phone. Perhaps even a mention of if they encrypted it, or even just a reassurence that they have made it difficult (as just about any type of hacking is possible) for hackers to find out my whereabouts would be enough for me.

Just my $0.02 worth

Maybe this is a good thing...

...like the guy from myboot [myboot.com] says, the first line of any conversation involving a cell-phone is "Where are you?"

This provide a handy way to stop that. :^)

--Robert

Those with privacy concerns need not worry...

Because you can choose not to buy the thing! One more difficult problem in security solved with one swell foop.

Besides which, if you're on a digital cellphone, they can triangulate your position from various cell sites anyway.

"The question isn't whether you're paranoid, Lenny, the question is whether you're paranoid enough."

cellphone cursor..

I read an article in Wired a while back that the folks over at MIT's "Oxygen" project are working on a way to use these phones as a type of realtime cursor. They say that with an electronic compass and GPS (military grade), you would be able to point your phone at a building and the phone could tell you information about the building. The example they cited was a restaurant where the phone gave you the menu for the restaurant from out in the street, and offered you the chance to make a reservation. I thought it was pretty cool.

Of course, if I think about it hard, maybe that isn't such a great idea. I can just picture what the cell phone would say about my house in five years:

Address: 1313 Mockingbird Lane
Phone: [phone]
Type: Residence
Owner: LDOPA1
Currently: Masturbating

I don't think I want that to happen...

Not the first GPS Phone

If I remember correctly, the first commercial GPS cellphone was the NaviTalk by Garmin . It was released a few years ago, and was recently updated.

-john

GPS not *really* needed

If I understand it correctly, a service provider already knows where you are accurate to a cell. Therefore, they already have the information to suggest nearby restaurants, cinemas, etc. - they do not *really* need GPS to tell you that! Or am I missing something here?

My car was stolen recently.

It would have been pretty sweet if I could have called my cell provider, asked them where my phone was, and sent the cops to pick up the perps and my vehicle.

That LoJack thingie is a good idea, but GPS location under *my* control for *my* property is something I'd definitely buy.

-jcr

Location release questions

Firstly in the GSM world the [PDF] Benefon [benefon.com] has been out for a couple of years now, not a big seller and has some limitations. GPS only works with line of sight to the satellites so the GPS will not work indoors and where you have limited view of the sky, i.e. in cities with tall buildings.

More interesting are the issues around release of location information, how would /. Readers respond to these questions?

Would you be prepared to release your location when making calls, in much the same way that your phone number is currently released. Your location could only be read by those with appropriate equipment. We will probably be required by law to release this information on all emergency services calls (999, 112 911)?

1. No, I would not want my location released at all. (except emergency calls)
2. No, Normally not released, but I would be able to release it by selecting an option when making a call.
3. Yes, but only to services approved by (My network operator).
4. Yes, released on all calls, except when I specifically specify not to release the location.
5. Yes, released on all calls.

Would you want the location of callers calling you (who have released their location) displayed on your phone display?

1. Yes, display the grid reference of the caller.
2. Yes, display the direction and distance of the caller from my current location.
3. Yes, display the nearest town name to the location of the caller.
4. Yes, but only if the information was provided free of charge to me.
5. No, I would not be interested in this.

. Would you allow the release of you current location to a caller who is calling you?

1. No, I would not want my location released at all.
2. No, Normally not released, but I would be able to release it by selecting an option.
3. Yes, but only to services approved by (My network operator).
4. Yes, released on all calls, except when I specifically specify not to release when answering the call.
5. Yes, released on all calls. .

Would you allow the tracking of your phone to enable (My network operator) and other companies to extract statistical information on your movements for providing information on traffic congestion and other services. All identification information would me masked so it would not be possible to identify you from this data?

1. Yes. I would trust (My network operator) to manage this information securely.
2. Yes, Only if I then had access to the traffic information.
3. Yes, but I would want to select who received the information about me.
4. No, I would want to opt out of this sort of service.
5. No, I don't think (My network operator) should collect or release this information..

Would you want (My network operator) and other companies to send you information messages about events happening near to you?

1. Yes, only when I requested them.
2. Yes, as soon as they happen and I am in the area.
3. Yes, but I would want to select which companies information I receive.
4. No, I would want to opt out of this sort of service.
5. No, I don't think (My network operator) should collect or release this information..

Would you be interested in a find a friend service. The network would look thorough a list of your friends numbers to see if any of them were near you. Only friends on your list would be able to find you?

1. Yes, I would not mind my friends knowing I was nearby.
2. Yes, but I would want to be able to disable the service, so I could not be found.
3. Yes, but I would want to know who was looking for me before releasing anything to my friend.
4. Yes, but I would only expect to pay if the system found a friend for me.
5. No, I would not want this sort of service.
6. No, I don't think (My network operator) should offer this sort of service.

Is GPS really the way to go?

GPS has a number of limitations which would
curtail the usefulness of such a phone:

• the GPS signal does not penetrate solid objects (walls, windows, car ceilings)
  
• you need to have a clear line-of-sight to at least 3 satellites (which is difficult on a downtown street)
  
• it takes considerable time to get a location fix from a "cold" receiver (eg. after taking your phone out of the pocket).
  
• GPS receivers seem to be quite power-hungry
  

I guess this makes it useful if you have the phone in the car, hooked up to the car's power supply and antenna. Not very good though for city animals like myself!

Personally, I'd like to see base-state triangulation done by the phone combined with GPS. That would be cool.

Re:Some people don't get it

The accuracy of GPS is significantly (by many, many magnitudes) better than the general tracking that cell companies do. Note that in the WTC disaster they couldn't call the cell phone company and ask where the phones were buried in the rubble: They had to bring in specialized equipment that zeroed in on one single signal (the point being that general radio triangulation is nowhere near as precise as you imply). In other words having your phone relaying where you are all the times to a great degree of precision (are they archiving this? Later can someone say "Show me the route 555-5555 did on Tuesday....oh look he stopped at 555-5729's house and then they met up and walked over to 555-5511's place where they stayed for 7 minutes"? That's an awful lot foreboding than "555-5555 was somehwere in the vincinity of the WTC, +/- several hundred meters.".