Battery Life
Blimey, the battery goes on my HTC Magic quick enough as it is without that!
Augmented reality offers many exciting possibilities and applications, but encouraging drivers to gaze at a mobile-phone screen when behind the wheel surely isn't one of them. Wikitude Drive overlays directional arrows, lane guides and text onto reality, as captured on an Android handset's camera. This enables a driver to see …
More importantly, your hand is off the wheel.
So you're driving down the road, using one hand to hold the camera phone, looking at the road through the phone, trying to pay attention to the driving instructions, and you're trying to turn, using the other. What happens if you have a manual transmission and you have to downshift?
Lets not forget that if you are paying attention to the sat nav, you should be looking at driving directions that are ahead of you. Imagine being told to get in the center turn lane, and you're looking at the road via your camera phone. What happens when you need to change lanes and you end up cutting someone off to make your exit?
Sorry but this feature rates a fail. Right up there with the Apple iPhone app that overlays a city map with the locations of known prostitute hang outs and their rates.
Well lets be honest someone is going to try this on the road. I have seen people texting holding a phone in the same way.
I see enough people on the roads using mobiles and reading books, even saw someone using a laptop a couple of weeks ago balanced on their lap while driving in lane 3.
This morning I saw a van swerving across the road as the driver tried to roll a cigarette on the go.
Just more technology and toys to move driving even lower down their list of priorities on the road.
(Biker, fed up with idiots on road)
On my trip up the M11 last week, i was passed in the outside lane by dildo in a golf reading his map (i wasnt hanging about either) and almost hit by woman with satnav realising at the last second that she was in the stanstead airport lane and crossed the hatches in front of me so I implore sat nav and smartphone makers.....design an add-on heads up display (say for between driver and passenger parts of the windscreen) and it'll sell, many responsible companies supply hands free in their cars, they'd buy them too.
Anyone notice that the plod seem to ignore golfs, bmw's and such drivers on the phone unless they do something wrong at the time?
the mobile law's dont work mate!!!!
Wikitude actually worked full stop, but in the UK it's a bit on the pants side.
It's nice to have an alternative for a sat nav system, but I still go back to the paper map to get anywhere and I never use my phone to listen to music. Why? You may ask. Because I want my bloody phone to be able to call someone when I have piled my little car off the M25 into the hard shoulder because I was too busy drinking my coffee and watching a dvd in the folded down passenger seat's head rest.
...if this can / will be supplied with an on-screen suction cup for the iPhone / Android, like every satnav has now. It's not like you'll frequently change your route after you've set off and the video says you can voice command it, although I know how reliable that can be from Windows Mobile :(
Mind you, a suction cup is quite difficult to download so you'll still get the odd cheapskate moron ploughing through the pedestrians using this in the handheld style regardless, I suppose... and if it's as pants in the UK as the Avangelist says it'll probably have those arrows pointing the wrong way up one way streets and all sorts.
I believe Paris has been well mapped though...
I can already see what is in front of my vehicle through the handily provided windows, what I want to know is what is coming up out of my sight, like roundabouts, junctions and the third turning on the left I'm supposed to take in a mile or so.
A 2D map display shows me all this with little visual clutter, and with voice prompts I don't even need to look at it, although a quick glance to see the distance to the exit I need off the motorway allows me to make sure I'm in the right lane nice and early.
My girlfriend with a map could do the same job probably just as well, but she can't sit in the passenger seat for more than five minutes without falling asleep. :)