Article by Bonnie Cha | CNET Reviews
Video by pmgriphone | pmgriphone

xGPS software by Xwaves

If you have not jumped on to the iPhone hacking bandwagon then xGPS might just be the reason for jailbreaking your iPhone. Xwaves is planning to release the latest version of xGPS (v1.2) which will turn your iPhone into a True GPS device by bringing turn-by-turn voice navigation. Checkout the videos of the iPhone app in action (available after the break), its very impressive. Before Apple released iPhone 3G, there were rumors that it would have GPS which turned out to be accurate. Many people had hoped that it would replace their GPS device.

(Video by pmgriphone | xGPS software by Xwaves Review)

 

Before Apple released iPhone 3G, there were rumors that it would have GPS which turned out to be accurate. Many people had hoped that it would replace their GPS device. Unfortunately that did not happen as the iPhone app that made use of iPhone 3G's GPS was Google Maps which has a slick interface but limited functionality and did not include real-time turn-by-turn voice navigation. Apple had included new Core Location features in beta version of iPhone firmware 2.1 which indicated that turn-by-turn GPS on iPhone 3G could become a reality as it can reportedly track your direction and the speed at which you are traveling. But, the latest firmware version is 2.2.1 and true GPS is still not a reality.

But that might change as Thomas from Xwaves sent us an email to tell us that they are going to release a new version (v1.2) of their xGPS which will bring turn-by-turn voice navigation to the iPhone, converting your iPhone into a true GPS device.

xGPS (v1.1.0-1) is already available via Cydia which provides real-time GPS navigation, but it does not have voice instructions.

As per Thomas, you could expect the following new features in xGPS v1.2:

• A first beta version of voice navigation in English is now implemented and the speech engine does a pretty good job of pronouncing the directions (see the first video above). It will need some future tweaks to correctly pronounce abbreviations (like Rd, Blvd, Pkwy, N, E, S W, slashes, etc), but other than that it does a very good job.
• GPS coordinates are now accessible under the GPS settings menu.
• A Night Mode view is now available under the User Interface settings menu. Night Mode can either be manually enabled or automatically through a timer from 8pm through 7am. The timer is currently fixed, but will be fully customizable in a future release.
• You can also have your iPhone/iPod play music at the same time when using the xGPS application. The voice directions will be played through the music (see the second video above). It would be nice to have the music fade in/out when there is a voice direction.



As you can see from the video, 1st iPhone and iPod Touch users don't need to feel left out, they can use external GPS modules to use this iPhone app.

This will be a killer iPhone app but the drawbacks that I can see with this iPhone app are as follows:

• Unlike GPS devices which have the Maps available on the GPS device, xGPS depends on Google Maps so you will need a data connection to download it. However, as you can see from the video above it seems to work quite well. As per Gizmodo, you will be able to select a map area and download it ahead of time, just in case you expect a poor data connection during the drive so that might be a good workaround for the first drawback.
• Since you have to keep this iPhone app running constantly, you can expect  a significant drain on your iPhone's battery life, so if you are planning to use this app while driving, you should also keep an iPhone car charger handy to keep it charged.


xGPS v1.2 is expected to be released at the end of the month (and maybe as early as Feb 20) and you should be able to install it via Cydia on a jailbroken iPhone.

So what do you think? Will you be jailbreaking your iPhone to install xGPS?