A Different Kind of Mobile Development
Broadly speaking most mobile development either involves an application on the phone, accessing a web site or doing something creative with SMS text messages. The other day, when I received a new TomTom GPS navigation system, I came across a different way of using the phone.
The TomTom uses the bluetooth and Internet access point to use the phone as a modem. This is nothing new in itself - people have been accessing the Internet this way from laptops for a long time now. The ’different’ bit is that it’s not a PC but custom hardware.
The Internet connection allows traffic (and speed camera) data to be download to the TomTom. At first I was sceptical. How could the TomTom know about every possible (Internet) access point name on every phone? My suspicions were confirmed when I tried to connect using a M600i. My phone wasn’t listed. I tried using the closest similar phone (P910i) but it wouldn’t connect. I finally tracked the problem down to the access point name not being what the TomTom expected. Once again, we have a scenario where many people would just give up before getting this working…. which is a shame because I have found the TomTom traffic system to be amazing. It integrates well into the routing and really does allow you to avoid traffic jams.
