We previewed this announcement on the site last December, and TomTom has now officially confirmed it: the TomTom ONE will very soon be fitted with a new GPS chipset by the chip manufacturer Global Locate.Besides the chipset news, TomTom also informed us that the ONE will from now on not be shipping with a separate SD card. The new version will still feature an SD card slot, but the map information will be pre-installed onto the internal memory of the unit, explaining the memory upgrade to 1 GB!
Global Locate
Founded in 1999, Global Locate specialises in GPS solutions for mobile, wireless devices such as phones and PDAs. The company is privately owned and Siemens and Motorola are it’s main investors. Chipsets produced by Global Locate use A-GPS (Assisted GPS) technology.Their ‘Hammerhead’ chipset is the first single-chip GPS solution on the market. The navigational software (in this case developed by TomTom) and the GPS chip use the same computing power of the processor. This integration should enable more accurate positioning. In addition, TomTom will use the patented Global Locate technology for determining the positions of GPS satellites. This so-called ‘Long Term Orbit’ will be available through TomTom’s ‘QuickFix’ service and should guarantee a very speedy and stable GPS fix.
Also nice to know: these changes will have no effect on the retail prices of the TomTom ONE New Edition.
