RIM has come up with a new device for mobile developers with which they can get location information from the apps on the phone without having to depend on GPS. This takes up less power and is much faster than GPS units as they just have to pull some information from the mobile phone tower. Since such tower information is constantly available, the phone does not have to rely on any satellite mechanism. Other than this, they also work indoors and hence can work seamlessly everywhere. Cell phone tower positioning is not a novel technology however and has been earlier employed on several other phones like the new Unlocked Blackberry handsets most notably. All said and done, the location placing on this phone is not pin point accurate and only gives the location which is nearest to the phone tower.

This new method will allow users to get better mapping applications on their phones where if GPS would be used, they would often find that they are lost. The cell phone tower location method is not really new and Google Maps have used this very same principle for the last two years. This technology has been later given a revamp with the Wi-Fi mechanism. The tower positioning technology has been used by major mobile map providers like Google where they have a large database of the locations of the mobile phone towers which allow the users to get an approximation of the location that they are in.

However, what we would like to bring attention to is the fact that this provides a new tool for the developers and they can find this very useful. Blackberry location services will be getting some new check in applications like Foursquare, Yelp and Gowalla. There are a lot of third party navigation softwares that would be interested in this, but they will not be anywhere when Google comes to the fore with the Navigation from its Android capable phones.

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