Best all in one phone/pda/satnav

pillhead · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 08, 2005 Posts: 22

Looking at the MIO A701 and it looks an awesome lilttle number, a good size that does absolutely everything for ya with some good reviews when searching through these forums.

Is anyone else making an all in one device that has mobile phone and GPS reciver built in? If so which ones the best one?

philpugh · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 11:01 am Post subject:

Don't know how many others there are - they seem to be the next wave of ways to get us to spend money. BUT it all depends what you want to use them for. If it's for something like TomTom in-car then they will be fine. If you intend to use them when out on a walk and you are relying on it for position information - then you may be a little disappointed with the battery life of these combined unit. Don't expect to get the manufacturers quoted battery life as these are done under very precisely controlled conditions. I usually reckon on 75% of the claimed battery life to be safe.
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Phil

pillhead · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 08, 2005 Posts: 22

To be honest it will only ever be a GPS unit in my car, I would only require the battery life for being a phone.

Been looking at the HTC 3600, this has alot more battery life :-

http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_p3600.htm

It doesnt have a GPS unit built in but PDA Mods are doing cradles that have buil in sirf III gps recievers for most HTC range and I assume its only tim ebefore they make one for the HTC 3600 range, perhaps this owul dbe the better option as it gives me more phone battery life?

philpugh · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:26 pm Post subject:

OK - if it's for in-car I would recommend going with a phone/PDA and a separate BT GPS unit. This allows you to place the GPS unit wherever you like. If your car has an athermic windscreen then you can put the GPS unit on the rear window shelf and not have to worry about an external aerial.

Before making your final choice - search through these forums to see if there are any issues.

I used to have an XDAIIi (WM2003SE) with TomTom V5.21 on it. No problems except that occasionally (not every time) the unit would loose connectivity with the GPS unit when receiving (never when making) a call on my BT headset. Never did fix it - sold the unit on and bought separate PDA! The XDAIIi - in common with a lot of these devices - was manufactured by HTC.
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Phil

pillhead · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 08, 2005 Posts: 22

Well I currently have a dell X50v with tomtom 6, wired GPS and in car cradle and all the wires are a nightmare, having a bluetooth gps unit seems to be much hassle in having to recharge it all the time which is one of the reason im looking for an all in one or almost all in one solution.

If the PDA is also a phone it means I will be inclined to take it out of the car with me which means I dont leave myself to being broken into just for the unit!

I will probalby wait for the makers of the custom mount units to make one for the HTC P3600 with integrated GPS as this seems to be a good all round solution, this or maybe consider an all in one satnav system that can act as a hands free for my mobile phone via bluetooth.

I dont have a heat reflective window on my car, thanks for your help so far!

mikealder · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 5:34 pm Post subject:

Also consider the HTC Artemis, built in GPS Bluetooth WiFi Phone Camera etc, only slight down side is the lack of 3G for high speed internet (GPRS only, it has Edge built in but as yet this is not supported where I am located). Have a look in the Windows Mobile Pocket PC section for a post I made a while ago covering this device - it is near the top as I updated it last Monday, they are great in use - Mike

pillhead · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 08, 2005 Posts: 22

Darren · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:52 pm Post subject:

As Mike has said, the Artemis is a very good solution. A few of us have them and all think they're excellent.
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Darren Griffin

mikealder · Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 7:09 pm Post subject:

The 3600 cannot GPS tag a location to a photograph, which is something the 3300 will do with a minor "tweak" not for every user but great in practice. Battery life is fine for me - 48 hours between charges is normal these days - although this will depend on usage, and 3G is known to hammer the battery, hence the larger capacity cell fitted to the 3600 - Mike

Pete2 · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 19, 2004 Posts: 82

There are various forums for different pda phones - mio (A701 - my own phone for the past 9 months untill i smashed the screen)

http://www.miousers.co.uk/

Eten (G500+, Glofish M500 and M700)

http://eten-users.eu

Xda developers (lots of stuff about htc products)

http://forum.xda-developers.com/

Have a read thru the forums and see what you think, personally I'm looking at the HTC 3600 Trinity also sold as the Orange SPV M700 or the Eten G500+ as a replacement for my Mio, not that I'm unhappy with my A701 but I like to try any new "gadgets" that come on the market.

pillhead · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 08, 2005 Posts: 22

sdc77 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 14, 2007 Posts: 2

I got the Orange SPV m700 .. which is the Trinity and I'm very happy with it. Its a WM5 Pocket PC with 3G, WiFi, push email facility and two cameras
It has a 2 gig card and is running Tomtom 6 with the April 07 maps.
Its only for use in the car so battery life isn't an issue. (you get a car charger and windscreen mount with it)

The screen is very bright and can be seen in sunlight. The sound is loud and clear. Its easy to connect to Tomtom plus services and I think it looks quite good too!

In fact I much prefer it over a regular tomtom unit.

GarySN · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 20, 2006 Posts: 47

philpugh · Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 5:37 pm Post subject:

mikealder · Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 5:56 pm Post subject:

You would need an electronic compass in the device for it to offer heading information, GPS will only offer heading data when moving which is not good for taking pictures. AFAIK it only stores lat long, but you can see the photo on Google Earth and work out a heading from that if you can pick out the landmark you were photographing on the aerial photograph/ map.
Have a look at the set-up guide I wrote up on doing this with the Artemis in the WM2005 PDA based phones forum section, as it shows Google working with Geo tagged images - Mike

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