Navigation On Your Phones to Get Better with Help from ISRO
NavIC is a satellite-based navigation system from ISRO and Qualcomm is bringing the tech to mobile devices in 2020.
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Everyday, we Indians have verbal bouts with their cab driver and even food deliver executives on being at different locations than what’s being shown on their smartphones.
But it’s not them who needs to be blamed. Navigation is a tricky space which depends on the availability of satellites and how accurate your phone’s gyroscope is calibrated.
Qualcomm, is partnering with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to use its indigenously-developed a navigation system called Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) which is specifically tailor-made to cater to the dense topography of India.
ISRO has provided Qualcomm with access to 7 of its indigenous satellites of which 6 were seen operational on the sidelines of the India Mobile Congress 2019.
This way Indian manufacturers don’t have to be depend on global satellites for navigation data, and having local satellites also helps in improving the overall accuracy.
NavIC is an integrated satellite system which will be coming to select smartphones that support Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets.
The technology has been developed to make sure that mobiles, automotive and IoT platforms offers superior location-based services to the country’s technology ecosystem.
With this, applications like Google Maps and Map My India will be able to use NavIC to offer more accurate navigation via GPS which will help your Uber driver reach your exact location rather than reaching some other address.
The company has said that the technology will be embedded in the upcoming mid-range smartphones, which will be only available to the end user starting Q1 of 2020.
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