GPS in 3G iPhone coming through Broadcom?

View this article at: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/05/30/broadcom.gps.in.3g.iphone/

Friday, May 30, 2008 1:40pm

GPS in 3G iPhone coming through Broadcom?

A GPS receiver will indeed be in the 3G iPhone, and the technology will be supplied by Broadcom, according to anonymous sources. Contacts cited by GigaOM say that Broadcom has secured a contract with Apple, beating out older, more established competitors such as SiRF, whose SiRFstar III receivers are used in a vast number of navigation devices. Broadcom normally provides chips for cellular communication, and only acquired GPS resources with the buy-out of Global Locate in June of last year.

Evidence has been mounting that the 3G iPhone, expected to be announced at WWDC on June 9th, will have some form of dedicated GPS functionality. Changes in the iPhone 2.0 firmware contain references to GPS, and point to the possibility of geotagging, which would have little use on a current iPhone. It is capable of rudimentary location-finding through Google Maps, but this is imprecise and based on router information or celltower triangulation.