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Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, once the domain of a select few, is quickly finding its way to consumer's fingertips.

The cellular industry is excited to roll out location-based applications to increase revenue by offering yet another value-added service to subscribers, while several PDAs already ship with GPS-enabled.

Garmin started the trend back in 2003 with a Palm handheld, the iQue 3600 (since updated), while Navman and Mio followed suit the following year on the Pocket PC side—Garmin released its own Pocket PC this January.

The latest device, the Mio 168RS ($599), arrives courtesy of, well, Mio. It is an update of an earlier model. In addition to the standard array of Pocket PC applications, the handheld offers a new version of the company's MioMap mapping system software that is fully interoperable with its built-in GPS antenna.

Mio says the software offers millions of points-of-interests, comprehensive route planning, and voice navigation to help keep eyes on the road: Point-to-point driving directions are given in both verbally and visually in real time as users are in route to their destination with turn-by-turn directions.

The Mio 168RS automatically suggests alternative routes should a driver miss a turn, take the wrong road, or experience unexpected detours. In the city, suburbs or in the country, Mio asserts the handheld is continually updated for the Continental United States, Hawaii and Canada.

Inside the unit is an Intel Intel XScale 300 MHz processor, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition (for portrait and landscape viewing), 64 MB of memory, and a Secure Digital slot for memory and peripheral expansion.

The PDA's 3.5-inch display supports 65,536 colors and a 240 x 320 pixel (QVGA) resolution. There's no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi like many other high-end Pocket PCs. A swappable 1350 mAH battery powers the unit for 12 hours with the GPS feature turned off.

GPS Short Course
If you're a boat owner, pilot, or orienteerer, you've known about the GPS for years. Matter of fact, some owners of upscale automobiles have had some face time with the satellite-based navigation technology. To most of the rest of us, though, it's been just another meaningless three-letter acronym.

Due to a confluence of factors, however, including continuing miniaturization and falling cost, GPS technology has started to turn up in a host of electronic devices aimed at the general consumer market.

In addition to the handhelds mentioned above, Hewlett-Packard is integrating GPS into its next smartphone and there's even a gaming PDA, the Gizmondo, that will use the technology to offer location based features in games, for example.

How it works:

A GPS receiver gathers pulsed signals from as many of the two dozen or so GPS satellites orbiting the earth as it can lock in. Using triangulation -- by measuring and comparing the travel time of individual signals - the receiver calculates its position, and it's accurate to within twenty yards or so.