Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Test-Driving a Cellular GPS Service

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 02:24:14 -0400

May 19, 2004
Test-Driving a Cellular GPS Service
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

Navigation systems based on the government's Global Positioning System
satellites have become increasingly popular. But they require
specialized gear -- either expensive modules permanently installed in a
car, or dedicated devices you must remember to carry. But what if you
could get GPS navigation in a gadget that's with you all day anyway --
your cellphone?  Now, you can.
Nextel is now offering cellphones that include a GPS navigation service
from a Sunnyvale, Calif., outfit called Televigation Inc. Phones with
this service, called TeleNav, display detailed information about your
current location, including street names and the direction in which
you're headed, as well as large arrows telling you where to turn next
and how far you'll have to drive before making that turn. You can even
have the directions announced out loud, just like the fancy built-in car
GPS systems.
My assistant Katie Boehret tested TeleNav this week around Washington,
with decidedly mixed results. She found that the system presented
directions in an easy-to-follow format, but it was frustratingly
inaccurate at times and slow compared with in-car or hand-held systems.

TeleNav works only with six of Motorola's consumer-oriented phones that
use Nextel cellular service. Not only that, but the phones must be
GPS-enabled, and only two of the consumer phones come with GPS
capability already built in. These two are also the most-expensive of
the bunch -- the i730 costs $149 and the i736 goes for $250. If you have
one of the other consumer phones, you have to buy a $69.99 TeleNav
add-on GPS Kit, a hardware attachment for use in the car. You can get
the kit free if you sign up for a two-year plan.

Once you have the proper
phone, you also have to pay a
monthly fee for the TeleNav
service. You can buy one of
two packages: a $9.99 package
that offers 10 routes or a
$19.98 package that offers 80
routes. With the 80-route plan,
if you surpass your allotted 80
routes, each trip costs an
additional 15 cents. The
10-route plan is limited to only
10 routes.

Katie used TeleNav while making trips to her neighborhood Home Depot.
She had been there before, but wasn't sure which route navigated her
through the city streets the fastest. First, she had to enter her
destination address, which she found in the phonebook. Then, she had to
enter that address in TeleNav. There are three ways to do this.  You can
use the www.telenav.net Web site, a voice activated dial-in computerized
system, or you can manually punch the information into the phone's
keypad.

Katie first tried the voice call system by dialing a toll-free number
that comes preprogrammed into TeleNav. She walked through speaking her
destination city, state (in this case, D.C.), street and street number
without a problem.  But then a computerized voice notified her that the
call didn't work because TeleNav was having technical difficulties.
After two call attempts failed, Katie resorted to manually entering the
information into her phone, which worked.

She attached the Motorola i736 phone to an included mounting device that
suctions to your car's windshield and gives you a good view of the
phone's screen at all times. She selected the previously entered address
for Home Depot, and pressed "OK."
GPS satellites should find wherever you're starting from and give you
directions from there. But the phone initially showed Katie going south
when she was really going east. TeleNav automatically corrected the
error, and proceeded with directions, but anyone who was unfamiliar with
the neighborhood would already be following the wrong directions.

As Katie approached turns, a computerized voice told her to prepare for
the turn, and then told her to actually turn when she reached the
correct street.  But the system was often too sluggish to work well.
Sometimes, she would pass the correct street because the GPS hadn't
caught up to her location, and other times the voice directions told her
to go in opposite directions of where she was heading before correcting
the mistake and rerouting. More than once, Katie found herself heading
the wrong way because the system had pointed her there, only to be given
new directions when the system corrected itself.

TeleNav can be slower than car-based or hand-held GPS systems because it
must download maps from the Nextel Web site over the cellphone network.
That process typically takes longer than summoning the maps from a disk
or from memory chips, as in-car and hand-held GPS systems do. The
company claims this delay can be as little as a few seconds, and in some
cases isn't apparent at all. But, in our tests, it made a huge
difference, often making the directions so late as to be useless.

Overall, TeleNav's setup is simple and its directions are easy to read
and understand. But it's too slow, and it doesn't always work, which is
a big problem considering that this product is designed to keep people
from getting lost. Putting navigation into a cellphone is a good idea,
but this service needs improvement. For now, I cannot recommend TeleNav.

--With reporting by Katherine Boehret

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at [email-masked]
http://ptech.wsj.com/solution.html

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