The audocity of Droid

BANGALORE, INDIA: After years of stumbling in the smartphone arena, Motorola may have finally gotten its act together with the Droid, and Google's giving it a leg up with a new, preinstalled turn-by-turn nav app. Google Maps Navigation will work on other Android 2.0 phones as well. Meanwhile, Facebook users get angry, PlayStation 3 gets Netflix and Los Angeles gets cloudy.

The Android mobile operating system is graduating soon to 2.0 status, and Google gave it a pretty nice present to celebrate: a free turn-by-turn navigation app called "Google Maps Navigation." It'll run on Android 2.0 phones with GPS, and it'll use the phone's cellular Internet connection to get live map information.

There's a wide range of quality out there when it comes to smartphone nav apps, but the features Google mentions make its program sound like one of the better ones. There's speech-activated location search, live traffic data with alternate routing, and integration with Street View so you can get an actual photo of what your destination looks like from the ground level.

It'll take some testing and comparison work, but Google Maps Navigation could be on par with the kind of nav apps that sell for as much as US$100 on the iPhone. In fact, the day Google made its announcement, TomTom's and Garmin's stocks tanked, perhaps on fears that smartphone navigation apps are going to overtake dedicated dash-mounted devices and that Google is going to suck competitors dry by making its app free, perhaps with some advertising thrown in.

But that stance presumes that Google Maps Navigation is going to be made available to a wide range of smartphones, not just Android 2.0 phones. Of course, Google makes a ton of mobile apps for all sorts of devices. But in announcing Maps Nav, Android 2.0 is the only OS Google called out by name. Chances are it's working on versions for other platforms, but there's no guarantee they'll come through. For example, Google makes apps that are baked right into the iPhone's OS -- namely a YouTube portal and a different map application called "Maps for mobile." So Google and Apple have a previous working relationship. But Apple still refuses to approve Google's Voice app for the iPhone, so the relationship hasn't always been 100 percent cooperative. So I guess we'll just have to wait'n'see.

(SOURCE: TECHNEWSWORLD)