There's Low Power GPS in the Air

Anyone who has owned a mobile phone with built in GPS (e.g. Blackberry Curve, Nokia N95) will welcome the work of Air Semiconductors who have created a GPS solution which drains as little as 1% of the power of previous solutions. The prodigious battery munching capabilities of the GPS on N95 led this particular user to be something of an electricity junky.

Air Semiconductor, who are backed by Pond Venture Partners (they know a thing or two about semiconductors- the team include some of the brains behind ARM), also explain how their Airwave-1 chip eliminates time-to-first-fix and hence provides an instantaneous location. The combination of these two innovations means that not only mobile phones, but digital cameras, will be able to geotag images seamlessly... and enable a whole raft of other applications.

As the owner of 3 Nokia N95 chargers (kept in multiple locations in my life "just in case"), I'm really looking forward to this technology arriving in the consumer marketplace.

Unanswered Nokia N96 Questions

So, after Nokia's announcement about their new N96 being available soon, and the release of some spec information, the questions are starting to be asked that really matter. Most of these are from users of the Nokia N95, for which the N96 is the logical successor.

The official specs don't show whether the fantastic features which the N95 has will have a more punchy processor to chew through them on the N96; whether this processor and battery combo will extend the life of the phone between charges; or whether the slow initial connection to GPS will be resolved.

There's some speculation about the processor. Survivor82 seems to think (from a 'reliable source') that the TI processor of the N95 will be replaced by another ARM designed processor from STmicroelectronics. Aside from the clock speed between the ARM1136 at 330MHz (TI) and the ARM926EJ at 393MHz (ST), we need to wait and see on whether this is an improvement in real terms.