I just bought a GPS and I’m here because I’m disappointed at the extravagant cost of updating the maps. The last thing I want is to try to find the place of interview for my dream job and find that I’m on the wrong side of town! But I’m not all take. I’d like to map new places if I can. I can’t tell if this device does that. Looking at the wiki, it seems as though it needs to be able to “track”. I can record certain things, but I can’t tell if that’s enough. Would anyone else know?
The Nuvi series generally has limited or no “track” capabilities. I didn’t see anything listed in the specs for that device that makes it seem possible. Sorry - I was also very frustrated that my Nuvi didn’t track either when the device could obviously be capable of taking tracks if they had designed the software that way.
Yes, well, I was going for an el cheapo, 150$ solution. I’m not terribly surprised. I guess I’ll have to do any mapping the low-tech way.
Unless… my cell phone claims to have GPS capabilities, but when I go to find an app for it, I can’t. Like, there doesn’t appear to be any. It’s not a smart phone (perhaps a “proto-smart phone”) and I’m not very familiar w/apps for phones. Would you know anything about this? My carrier is Telus Moblility in Canada.
What make / model is your phone?
If the phone supports Java (J2ME), you should be able to use something like GpsMid or TrekBuddy. Most fairly modern phones can use Java, even if they’re not smartphones. Then you can use GpsMid or Trekbuddy to record a a track and mark waypoints etc.
See http://gpsmid.sourceforge.net/ or http://www.trekbuddy.net/
It’s a Samsung SCH-U540T. It can run a Java VM. I went to their “TELUS Shop” and looked for GpsMid and TrekBuddy and it turned up empty. Or am I supposed to put these on my phone some other way? It has a microSD port. Maybe I’m supposed to use that?
Have a look at the omniscient OSM wiki about http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Symbian
EDIT: indeed should have been J2ME.
That Samsung doesn’t run Symbian does it? This wiki page might be more useful: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software/J2ME
As for installing GpsMid, you can download it to your PC, then transfer it to the phone. I’m not familiar with that Samsung, but if you have a USB cable for it, then you should be able to plug it in and copy the GpsMid jar file across. You might need some PC software/drivers. Or send it using Bluetooth. Or copy it onto a microSD card, then put the card in the phone and install it from there.
I’ve not used Trekbuddy, but I assume you can install it in a similar way.
Ah, well, the thing about that is: when I said it had a JVM, it looks like it can’t just run any old applet. It seems that it’s just for running what it wants to run. It further means that the only apps I can run are the ones that my carrier’s shop has for sale–it doesn’t seem to have any facility for xfering apps from the microSD. So unless someone knows something about this embedded system or carrier that I don’t, I guess I can’t run any of these things until I get a smart phone.