Smartphones as GPS units?

I remember the first time I used a Trimble GPS unit at my first job in forestry. It had a backpack full of camcorder batteries, a tall antenna that stuck up above my head, and a hand held brick looking device that had a cord running to the backpack. Man was it heavy and it was no fun to carry in the woods. From what I remember, it cost over $10,000!

My next unit was a Trimble GeoXT. It was rather expensive too. It was over $5,000 plus another grand for the post processing software. It was a lot lighter and had an internal antenna so there was no need for cords unless I wanted to use an external antenna under dense canopy. Things really have changed since then.

Today, I have a Garmin 10 Bluetooth unit. It's about the size of a credit card and can carry it around in my pocket. Since it's bluetooth, I can link it up with a pocket pc or my smartphone to run software that will capture my GPS data. I've used ArcPad and Solo mostly for capturing my data.

Things continue to change at a rapid pace. Today the two newest players in the game are the iPhone and Android Smartphones. I don't currently have either but I do have a iPod Touch which functions similar to the iPhone. So is there an "App for that" in the GPS world? You betcha! I've been playing around with a few lately on my iPod Touch (GISRoam, Terrapad, GPS Tuner Lite, and ESRI's ArcGIS app). I have to wonder how these apps are starting to affect the big players like Garmin, Trimble, and ESRI. I haven't found that one App that will revolutionize forestry but there are some really neat tools that are very inexpensive.

Accuracy is probably the biggest issue with these newer devices. My GeoXT had an accuracy of less than a meter. I haven't done my research yet to see how accurate these devices are, but I feel there is a niche they can fill and in time we'll see more and more of them in the woods. I hope to get my hands on an iPhone 4 and a Droid X to do some testing soon. Stay tuned.