Tech: How to GPS Enable your Cingular Wireless HTC 8125 Running Windows Mobile 5

Despite doomsayers claiming that a solar storm will spell the end of GPS as we know it, the technology has nonetheless infiltrated our transportation infrastructure, kicked off new trends like geocaching, and even given men an excuse to never again be guilted in to stopping to ask for directions. Products from Garmin, and now the over-simplified Tom Tom have become quite popular because they are inexpensive alternatives to in-dash options, and they are portable to boot. So, in keeping with the tradition of portability, what better to do than use your cell phone as a GPS navigation device? The Cingular 8125 has more ways to connect to another device than you can shake a stick at, and a company called Socket (www.socketcom.com) makes a handy little bluetooth enabled GPS receiver that can run off battey power for up to 8 hours. Besides the portability aspect of the Socket GPS solution, you can also swap out the entire command set with something more to your liking. Whether you want your nav to sound like a rock star or a porn star, you now have some control over who tells you where you need to go, ahem, and what tone it is he/she/it should use. The 8125, while being a great platform overall falls a bit short in terms of the compute power the Socket MyNavigation software would like to use. To reduce the lag, I did the following:

1. Go to Start -> Settings -> System -> Running Programs and select Stop All


2. Turn on flight mode, and disable the automatic device turn-off if not used in 3 minutes

There were also some peculiarities at runtime including pairing the GPS receiver before running the software, and disabling my firewall in order to load the maps on to the mini-SD card so that it didn't think activesync was a trojan attack. The software itself must be installed to phone memory, but I highly recommend using a dedicated mini-SD card for the maps. Once the device is paired, running it is a breeze. You can specify destinations directly from your address book, or enter new favorites with their own nicknames. In map mode, different 3D perspecives can be used and night/day view changes depending on UTC time sucked down from the GPS satellites. One of my favorite is that of the Satellites themselves within range of the receiver which includes the data being fed from each used to calculate latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, and heading.

Satellite View:


Map View:


The SocketCom Bluetooth GPS receiver has rubber feet and is about 3/4 the size of the Cingular 8125. The GPS receiver stayed put on the dash until I got in to the twisties in the Sierra mountain range, but it was nothing a bit of velcro couldn't fix.

Device View:


Everything that I've read indicates that Socket has all but given up on this handy device so getting map updates could be tricky. But just like streaming music over a GPRS edge data network to the Mobile Windows Media Player, this mobile platform has opened a whole new world of possibilities and opportunities. I have found the voice guidance of MyNavigator to be extraordinarily helpful in metropolitan areas, and the only drawback would be it's inability to multitask with incoming calls. So, you can have either a phone or a GPS device at any given time but not both. The sacrifices one has to make for reasonable battery life, and form factor! But now when you find your geocache treasure, you can phone up your friends and tell them what loot you just scored. If you have used other GPS products with your Cingular 8125, please post your opinions in the comments section of this post.