Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/10/12

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Subject: [Leica] OT: Tracfone and GPS
From: pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein)
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:14:22 -0700

I'm turning to the LUG's vast pool of expertise here.  I'm not a 
cell-phone expert.  I use the prepaid Tracfone service on a simple, 
several year-old Nokia.  It's just a phone.  Costs me about $120 per 
year.  That's "year," not "month."  Which is why I've kept it simple.

So last week I was in New England, and used a friend's GPS to get in and 
out of Boston alive.  And I got to thinking, "Hmm. This could actually 
be useful."

Another friend mentioned that rather than buy a dedicated GPS, you can 
buy last year's phone inexpensively, and put a GPS app on it. Add maybe 
a nice HP calculator emulator and internal phone book/scheduler if the 
latter isn't already included.  Useful.  He seemed to say that you 
didn't need a data plan for GPS apps.  Can anyone tell me if this is 
indeed the case? I assume you download the app and maps on your computer 
and transfer them to the phone via cable or Bluetooth, or to an SD card, 
but I don't know.

The phones Tracfone supports in my area include the LG 500G and LG 800G, 
which are app-capable.  Can somebody tell me if they support a GPS app?  
Will I be able to use it with the Tracfone service, or am I going to 
have to buy some other service as well?

Sorry for the "grasshopper" novice question.

--Peter, opening up a can of worms...




Replies: Reply from richard at richardmanphoto.com (Richard Man) ([Leica] OT: Tracfone and GPS)
Reply from spencer at aotera.org (Spencer Cheng) ([Leica] OT: Tracfone and GPS)