Smartphones About To Get Even Better For Geocaching

It’s Not About The Numbers noted yesterday the theory that Garmin was enforcing a new pricing regime that would make PNDs a low-volume, high-value item and lamented the failure of Garmin (and others, I should point out) to forge ahead with the development of a GPSr/phone hybrid.

Well, maybe we needn’t have worried about that …

It seems smartphones are going to continue getting more robust whilst providing better accuracy as the technology that goes into them progresses.

To start with, Daikin Industries is “developing a coating, mainly for use on the circuit boards of mobile phones, that’s resistant to water and moisture, environmentally friendly, and dries as a thin film”.

The video below is well worth a watch as it gives very clear example of how effective this product will be.

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Download YouTube Video | YouTube MP3 Converter

So part of the robustness problem is taken care of there. Throw your phone in a decent, robust, water-resistant case and it’s likely you’ll have something every bit as good as that dedicated GPSr.

But what about accuracy?

Some mobile phones still have dodgy GPS capability and the accuracy of their marked waypoints cannot be trusted. However, a new chip by Broadcom Corp will communicate with four different satellite constellations, giving access to the 59 satellites up there.

But why stop there? It’ll also be able to track your location indoors and your vertical position as well.

“It establishes indoor positioning by pulling from a bunch of different wireless sources, like Wi-Fi, near field communication (NFC), and inertial sensors plus its built to capitalise on emergent technologies, like Bluetooth beacons and 5G Wi-Fi access points (using the new 802.11ac standard, even though everyone is still catching up with 802.11n). The more precise vertical and horizontal positioning is accomplished by communicating with a host of various sensors, like accelerometers, step counters, gyroscopes, altimeters and magnetometers.”

So the result of all this is that, inevitably, smartphones will likely catch up, if not surpass, our traditional GPSr technology. And it might even happen soon!

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