One of the most elusive and desired apps for iPhone is turn-by-turn GPS navigation. We heard that TomTom was developing a GPS navigator. To date, it hasn't shipped. Recently, the focus has been on xGPS, an app that requires a jailbroken iPhone to work.
At Mobile World Congress 2009 (MWC09) in Barcelona, Spain, Sygic is demoing a version of their namesake GPS navigation software running on an iPhone 3G. The Sygic software uses maps from TeleAtlas, the same company that supplies map data for Google Maps. Sygic produces similar software for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.
Applicatin has turn-by-turn GPS directions with voice prompts, points of interest, support for multiple countries, and locally-stored maps.
Google announced a new location tracking feature of Google Maps that will allow you to share your current location with your friends and family. The new service is called Latitude.
While launching initially on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian S60, Google hopes to release an iPhone version soon.
Apple has seeded iPhone 2.2 Firmware Beta 2 and has fully enabled Google Street View. Beta 1 of iPhone 2.2 had hidden APIs related to the Street View for Google Maps, but was not enabled.
The seed notes also indicated that Line-in audio accessories are now supported in the SDK.
First of all Apple has addressed one common request within the iPhone's Keyboard settings, allowing users to disable the iPhone's auto-correction.
The other feature is for Japanese market - Japanese emoji icons. The lack of emoji support has been blamed as part of the reason for slow iPhone adoption in Japan.
The third new feature is Street View. It allows users to view panoramic street level photographs in select cities within the Google Maps application.
Hopefully we will see more new features in this and next beta's of 2.2 firmware.