Gps Phones

[RigPig]

Hi everyone,

am in the market for a new phone as I left mine with one of the kids back in Aus on a recent trip (con artists) . Anyhow as I always get lost and can't speak Thai very well and most Thai people you stop in the street don't seem to be able to read maps generally anyway , I was thinking about one of these new phones with GPS. But I can't seem to find much out about charges and how good they are around Phuket and other out lying areas. I am currrently with AIS and I found on one forum someone reckons they charge 500B a month for unlimited use of the service, $15 a month sounds reasonable but I can't confirm this or get any direct details. My SIM is a prepaid so how do you pay for it and does it work, anyone have any clues before I spend a heap of money on something that looks good but is only as good as a paperweight to find your way back from the bar .

But seriously I have an interactive map of Thailand and can use it to plot co ordinates to anywhere, so I figure it would be handy, but does it work.......

Do different phone manufacturers have different services or is it run by your service provider. Finding the phones is hard enough but getting a demo, well enough said. I am going to Bkk soon and could buy from there but any demo would only be good for Bkk and not here so.....

Any knowlege would be appreciated

Cheers and thanks in advance

RigPig

[fiddlehead]

I know i wouldn't buy a $400-500 phone for fear of losing it. Although it would be great to have all of those features with you all the time: excellent camera, that does video too, gps, internet connection 24/7, etc.

I like GPS's and although mine was stolen last year (in the states, not here) I bought another one on ebay for $71.00. I don't have the Thailand interactive map installed in it yet. I use it more to hike and find my way back to a known point, etc.

You could probably save some money by buying an etrex or similar and hopefully installing your interactive map on it. I know the maps are tiny on the etrex (i have a "Legend") and i need my glasses on to look at it. Perhaps a slightly newer model would be better.

Just my 2 cents on your problem.

[LivinLOS]

A GPS phone doesnt need to use the data.. It can use the GPS alone.. The newest version of GPS phones do have an added data based location thing which aids thier start time in finding a lock, brings it from up over 3 minutes to down to 30 secs or so. Even so you can just have a cheap pay per byte GPRS / EDGE on your contract and not pay 100's a month for a few times use.

The newest nokias seem currently to have the best GPS / phone setups.. The N95 started it (the new 96 will probably be great) and my mate just bought an 80 something with nice feature sets and GPS too. Of course any of the upper end windows mobile phones and many PDA's will also have all these features but I feel windows mobile is over complex and more designed for corporate IT side than normal phone users.

Out of the box most of these will be adequate only.. By adding the garmin XT application and the garmin maps to the phone you will have a much better experience.

You could of course just buy a GPS and stick it in the car.. If your not a techy and dont like doing these kind of things its probably a much easier route.