PDA with phone and GPS

[dobbo]

My mobile is on it's last legs thanks to an incident with a horse and a bucket of water (don't ask). I have made a decision to upgrade to a pda phone, it will be used primarilly as a phone and offroad for GPS scrolling of Topo maps. What ones are easy to use and which ones should be avoided like the plague. I have looked in a few shops over the last few days but no obe seems to stock any. I have had a look at OZI explorer CI and it's the program I would like to run. (is it compatible with all PDA's)

[Mick-Kelly]

Ive got a nokia N95 which is a useful bit of kit. Can be customised with different GPS programs such as destinator etc. but unsure whether the standard GPS receiver works with these.

[scrambler]

I'll watch this with interest, dobbo.

I've got an imate jam, now about 2 years old, and it works fine for phone and PDA functions (the soft keypad is a but hard to use for the phone but otherwise ok). I have a bluetooth GPS which was an ebay cheapie but works fine - just need to spend time and/or money getting maps to work.

My only comments would be that something with a keypad is much easier to dial with, but if you use a contact list, then the PDA phones are fantastic. Get something with voice dialing and you'll be laughing- can be added via software from Microsoft if not included.

With a BT GPS you'll just need to watch the power consumption - a power cable in the car for the PDA is essential.

I don't know that I'd go the extra to get the GPS built in - seems to end up with a tradoff on the PDA functions. Specifically, I'll be going for a retracting thumbpad if/when I replace mine, and they seem hard to get with GPS integrated models.

[FenianEel]

Dobbo,

I've got a hp6515.
It seems pretty good to me, and there are a HEAP of cheap new ones on enay too.
It's got a lot of bells n whistles, and inbuilt GPS receiver.
It also has SD card and mini SD card, which is great.
I have Route66 for nav on this, mainly for 'town' directions.
Apparently you can load other programs on these, for topo type stuff and mapping too, but i'm yet to check this out.

I'd be more inclined to use a seperate GPS if I was going bush, or 'extended trip'. For street stuff and GPS plotting it seems fine though.

I concur about a power source in the vehicle though, my old phone used to go for days, but these things obviously use a heap of power and wouldn't last 2 days on their own, me thinks.

Slainte

Matt

[scrambler]

My phone, as a phone, lasts about a week between charges when on standby - even after 2 years. I can't knock the battery. But the screen uses a fair bit of power so regular use as a PDA eats into the battery time - but still about 2-3 days. However the BT radio/screen on combination when being used as a GPS chews through the battery in about 6-8 hours.

[Utemad]

I've never had anything to do with PDA phones but to run Oziexplorer CE it would have to have a Windows operating system. The Oziexplorer site lists the operating systems it will run on.

I use an old PDA with a CF GPS and 1gig SD card with Oziexplorer and Destinator.

I'm just giving myself a crash course in Blackberrys at the moment as my boss wants one but knows nothing about them either.

[solmanic]

Dopod D810

I researched long and hard and this is THE all-in-one solution.

3.5G phone
GPS built-in
Wi-fi 802.11b/g
Bluetooth 2

Ultra-compact form factor. Stylus input only (no keyboard) but that just helps keep it small. Side scroll wheel for one-handed operation. 2Mp camera on the back and a smaller one on the front for video calls.

http://www.asia.htc.com/asia/au/prod..._d810_fea.html

They have just released a free Windows Mobile 6 ROM upgrade for it which enables the previously disabled GPS.

[waynep]

A mate just bought a dopod. I don't know those but seems they re the bees knees. You'd need something that works on NextG if you want to surf the net etc for the bandwidth.

I just got a HP iPAQ rx5965Travel Assistant.Haven't played with it much but it comes with tom tom street navigator and you can run OziExplorer as well. The supplied car cradle for these is nice and solid and easy to remove the unit from. Has gps, wifi, bluetooth, mp3 etc etc. No phone though. 2Gb internal memory and up to 2GB external on SD card.

OziExplorer's website says it won't work with "smartphones" but I'm not sure about Smartphones running Windows Mobile 5. -ask Grumpy Bastard he seems to know a bit about these things.

Others to look at are ASUS, MIO etc. ( mostly these don't have phones either )

[jik22]

Dopod D810

I researched long and hard and this is THE all-in-one solution.

Interesting - this looks identical to the JasJam work are supposedly sending me this week, and I didn't know that had GPS. Will be v.happy if it does - though I bet the corporate software load will stop me running WM6 anyway!

[kaa45]

Try this site for some info:
http://www.gpsaustralia.net/