Google announced API for LBS on Mobile
Google launched the Gears Geolocation API for mobile on last week on their official Goolge code blog, and Mobile Blog, with a screenshot of a sample mobile site, Rummble and video demo of lastminute.com of UK.
On mobile devices with Gears installed, Javascript functions grab the cell-ID of nearby cell towers or GPS (if either is available) to improve the postion fix.
The two methods:
getCurrentPosition()
makes a single, one-off attempt to get a position fix.
watchPosition()
watches the user’s position over time, and updates the position changes.
Also,
` lastPosition` get an approximate position fix
The bad news is that API is available on Internet Explorer, Firefox and IE Mobile (selected devices only – incl. Samsung Blackjack II, HTC Touch Dual, TyTN, Palm Treo750 etc.) and will be available on Android. I was going to try it with S60, until I read the line on the announcement.
The good news is that they are currently implementing the editor’s draft of the W3C Geolocation specification with Microsoft and Mozilla guys.