GPS tracker used in Watchdog sting; hold on to your butts when the N95 arrives

By on March 15, 2007 in Devices, News

Check this little story out (also forwarded by Steve – thanks!)

FollowUs (www.followus.co.uk), the UK’s leading mobile location solutions service company, has aided BBC’s Watchdog to uncover how one airport car parking company was mistreating a customers’ car.

Aired on the 27th February, the show followed the actions of an employee of a Meet & Greet service with the hidden FollowUs Win200 GPS logger device to track the movements of a bait car. It revealed the car was left on the side of a road and outside a supermarket for three nights when it was meant to be in a secure compound. The device also revealed the driver breaking the speed limit eight times as well as topping 100mph twice.

The company has since stopped trading.

Kevin Brown, Commercial Director of FollowUs, commented,
“The size of a box of matches, this device can be hidden and provides additional security for your property. As the programme showed, you just download the log onto your computer to see details of the movements based on time, speed or bearing. We are happy to see the device work in such exciting ways and help Watchdog for a good cause.”

Available from FollowUs’s online store, www.followgb.co.uk, the Win200 GPS logger unit costs just £99.99 (+VAT). The device can be used with Google Earth for mapping and can recharge using the car’s cigarette charger.

Now, satellite ‘things’ — GPS devices — are not that widely available still. Yes, you can buy one for a tenner to plug into your PocketPC or Nokia, but they’ve never really (in the UK at least) been integrated into consumer-level handsets. I know the iPaqs have got them — but the really interesting moment will come when we’ve got 500,000 handsets in day to day use each sporting an integrated GPS.

In three years will even Nokia’s cheapest cardboard mobile handset have GPS in it? Quite possibly. Heh.

I wonder, though — how good is the GPS in an N95? If you left it in the car’s glove box, would it still get a signal?

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  • http://www.mobizines.com James Whatley

    I fielded your question to a couple of Mobizines Techies upstairs…
    The responses are as follows:

    “Only if it had an external aerial socket…. which it doesn’t”

    “No way in the glove box..”

    “…if it doesn’t work by the window in the office, it’ll never work in a glove box is my logic anyway”

    So there you have it.

    ;o)

    (I still miss it though – maybe if I pine loud enough Nokia will send me another one)

  • njar

    I believe when carriers are tracking by ‘assisted-GPS’ that they use a mix of cell ID location (typical LBS) and GPS. This logic following through and depending on if was a carrier that supported it, perhaps you’d get a location based on the LBS recording rather than the exact GPS locale (of course this assumes the phone is in coverage).. Caveat – this could all be made up. I’m not sure anymore. LOL

  • John

    Hmm,
    like cameras on phones (for me) I can see the use of GPS on my phone but would frankly rather have £5 off the cost of the phone than a “gimmick” I don’t really want or need

  • Mike

    I concur with James: the GPS in the N95 is a dog. It will not lock if you are moving, even with heaps of sats in view.

    You need to be stationary for a good few minutes to get a lock – which really spoils being spontaneous with the likes of Geotagged images. Once it does lock it’s average in sensitivity, and works better with the slider up – which is a pain if it’s in your pocket.

    There are shedloads of SiRF III bluetooth GPS units on eBay for £20-30. Get one of those instead. Some have 7-day battery lifes, and start from cold in less than 60 seconds, then reacquire in a few seonds once warm. Also very few GPS apps will be ported to the N95 anytime soon, as it’s such a pricey handset the market will be tiny.

    N95: good idea, fruity, but the price maths and functionality doesn”t quite add up.

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