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Smartphones let us do some tasks we couldn't do at all in 1995, such as GPS turn-by-turn navigation. Sure, they also do other tasks we were already doing in 19

Smartphones let us do some tasks we couldn't do at all in 1995, such as GPS turn-by-turn navigation. Sure, they also do other tasks we were already doing in 1995: mobile telephony, mobile TV watching (we had portable handheld TVs back then--they were awful but they worked), mobile music listening (Sony Walkman), easy-to-use photography, but there's some things that we couldn't do at all before this technology became mainstream, like mobile banking.

vel0city 2y ago
GPS turn-by-turn wasn't commonly available in the consumer space in 1995, but the first successful consumer turn-by-turn GPS came out 1998 with the Garmin StreetPilot. So close to 1995 but not quite there. Still though, GPS navigation was definitely a common thing pre-iPhone. I remember being gifted a cheap one a few years before the iPhone came out. We didn't need smartphones to do GPS navigation. TomTom came out in 2004, three years before the iPhone launched and four years before Android had Google Maps with Turn by Turn navigation.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  You need smartphones to do GPS navigation in the modern sense, which is: 1) look for e.g. "Italian restaurant" in your area 2) look at choices nearby, screen out ones currently closed, too expensive, bad reviews, etc., and pick one 3) navigate there In the early days of GPS, you needed an actual address to navigate to. That's not very useful if you don't know where you want to go in the first place. Smartphones changed all that: now you don't need to know a specific place you want to go, you just need to know what you want to do generally, and the nav app will help you find where exactly you want to go and take you there. That's impossible without either an internet connection or a very large local database (that's out of date).
  - vel0city 2y ago
    The POI database was largely the big selling point of TomTom though. And the Magellan GPS I had pre-iPhone had quite a POI database as well. I think it had monthly updates available online. I could search "Blockbuster" or "gas station" or "public parking" or "hotel" and it would know locations. Obviously it wasn't making dinner recommendations but it did have a lot of restaurants in it. Also you specifically called out turn by turn. Knowing the one off holiday hours of a hole in the wall restaurant isn't necessary for turn by turn GPS.

vel0city 2y ago

GPS turn-by-turn wasn't commonly available in the consumer space in 1995, but the first successful consumer turn-by-turn GPS came out 1998 with the Garmin StreetPilot. So close to 1995 but not quite there. Still though, GPS navigation was definitely a common thing pre-iPhone. I remember being gifted a cheap one a few years before the iPhone came out. We didn't need smartphones to do GPS navigation. TomTom came out in 2004, three years before the iPhone launched and four years before Android had Google Maps with Turn by Turn navigation.

shiroiushi 2y ago
You need smartphones to do GPS navigation in the modern sense, which is: 1) look for e.g. "Italian restaurant" in your area 2) look at choices nearby, screen out ones currently closed, too expensive, bad reviews, etc., and pick one 3) navigate there In the early days of GPS, you needed an actual address to navigate to. That's not very useful if you don't know where you want to go in the first place. Smartphones changed all that: now you don't need to know a specific place you want to go, you just need to know what you want to do generally, and the nav app will help you find where exactly you want to go and take you there. That's impossible without either an internet connection or a very large local database (that's out of date).
- vel0city 2y ago
  The POI database was largely the big selling point of TomTom though. And the Magellan GPS I had pre-iPhone had quite a POI database as well. I think it had monthly updates available online. I could search "Blockbuster" or "gas station" or "public parking" or "hotel" and it would know locations. Obviously it wasn't making dinner recommendations but it did have a lot of restaurants in it. Also you specifically called out turn by turn. Knowing the one off holiday hours of a hole in the wall restaurant isn't necessary for turn by turn GPS.