Bad Elf announce GPS Pro - a wireless GPS for iOS

[Darren]

Back in September of 2011 we reviewed Bad Elf's first product, a dongle for iOS devices that added GPS capabilities. Whilst iPhones now come with GPS, it's not available on iPad WiFi or iPod Touch.

And now Bad Elf have released their second product, the GPS Pro, a small wireless GPS receiver and datalogger that communicates with your iOS device over Bluetooth and can handle connections from up to 5 devices.

Now many of you who have been with us for a while will wonder why on earth we'd want to go back to a wireless Bluetooth GPS? Well there are very good reasons for users such as pilots, marine users etc and this is firmly targeted at that market.

It allows you to mount the receiver up on the glareshield in an aircraft, you can keep your device in a dry bag or other protective case if you're a marine user etc, etc.

The Bad Elf GPS Pro launches at the Oshkosh airshow in the US this week and we hope to have a review unit soon.

Source: Bad-Elf.com

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Darren Griffin

[PedroStephano]

I know that Apple have upgraded the GPS capability over the various morphs of iPhone and iPad, but would this device be more or less accurate GPS-wise than an iPhone or GPS iPad?
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@PedroStephano

[wonka]

This is long overdue in my opinion. The iPhone GPS is not that impressive in terms of accuracy, and is even worse when you're out of range of a mobile signal.

I have a Bluetooth GPS (SirfStarIII) that is just cluttering up a drawer, when I could be using it with the iPhone.

What's frustrating though is that the iPhone hardware is more than capable of using a Bluetooth GPS, if only Apple would add the relevant Bluetooth profile/driver. It seems here we need an additional piece of hardware to do something that the software should be doing.
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[Darren]

Not sure it's more accurate but it's certainly more convenient for many uses. My iPhone 4 and iPad 2 both have fairly accurate GPS and work fine without phone network coverage.

And for those with no GPS in their iOS device its a good solution.
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Darren Griffin

[586]

There is another use for a BT gps, if your navigation device has BT serial capability also. Some devices, especially PNAs, have track smoothing, which gives some very odd position results at times, when used in aviation. An external BT gps, without these algorithms, will give more accurate positions in these circumstances. I use a Holux GPSlim with an old iPAQ 314. Unfortunately, many devices do not have a serial port, and will only connect to a mobile phone.

[hampshire]

Have you done a review of this device yet? If so, how did it perform?

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