Phones Use GPS to Show You the Way.

This article evaluates three services which offer innovative ways to bring navigational tools and location-based directory listings straight to cellular telephones. They are America Online's MapQuest Find Me, Smart2go Mobile Navigator from Gate5, and TeleNav for Research In Motion's BlackBerry 7520. MapQuest and TeleNav operate only on global positioning system (GPS)-enabled Nextel phones; Gate5's Smart2go is not tied to a carrier and functions on Bluetooth-enabled Symbian Series 60 phones, Micro-soft Windows Mobile phones and personal digital assistants, and the PalmOne Treo 650 and Tungsten T3. Both TeleNav and MapQuest Find Me use Nextel's Assisted GPS technology to pinpoint the cell phone's location, allowing to find businesses in close proximity and get maps and driving directions. TeleNav gives graphical and audible turn-by-turn directions, while MapQuest has only graphical and text-based information. MapQuest has a Web feature by which people that were authorized can track location. To get either GPS service, one downloads it to the phone as an additional application. On all three services some of the listings are out of date, supplying information about restaurants that no longer exist while omitting entries for newer establishments.