Views from Phanfare CEO and Co-founder Andrew Erlichson
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Link The iPhone as a GPS logger

Engadget ran a rumor today that Apple may be interested in turning the iPhone 3G into a GPS logger. These devices are not new. You can buy a GPS logger from Amazon today for under $100..

The way they these devices work is by logging where you are at any given point in time. Then, by matching up the time stamp on a photo taken with a separate camera that is presumed to be in the same location as the logger, you can figure out the location of a photo taken on the camera.

The problem with these devices is workflow of course. But by putting the GPS logger into your phone, which you already carry, and creating a conduit (hopefully wireless) to iPhoto, which you might already use, the data would come “for free” in terms of your workflow. Clever little idea.

Still, it seems to me that if Apple just put a better camera into the phone, separate point and shoot cameras would be needed far less often.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 12:11 am and is filed under Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

  • Every time someone builds a product that "does it all" it usually fails to do any of the individual things better than the specifically designed products. Cameras in phones are a good thing for capturing those impromptu moments and images but they will never compete with a half decent camera.
  • I agree with you that purpose-built devices usually dominate. but in some rare circumstances, we see true convergence. Wi-fi got integrated with laptops; music players and cell phones converged pretty well in the iphone; wifi access points and natd routers converged in linksys boxes.
  • I think a GPS logger feature would be useful for Wi-Fi as well. I would like an app that scans for wireless access points and logs the geolocation of those access points.
  • I think you can put a decent camera in the device if you care enough. there will certainly be some limitations in terms of depth of field control, which is hard to achieve with any camera with such a short focal length. building an autofocus lens will also be hard. today, the iphone takes decent, but not stunning outdoor photos. indoor photos are more problematic. there has also been some work in academia about doing focus in software. finally, you can fix the non-linearity of the lens in software. the panasonic lumix does this today.
  • How good of a camera can you put it a device that size? Apple doesn't want to add the moving parts that would be required to get a half-way decent lens for obvious reasons. I've probably taken 6 pictures with my iphone and that was mostly to test the Facebook app. I'd much rather carry a decent P&S camera and know that I can piggy-back on the GPS log.
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