iPhone found me in Aruba

Last week, I made a daring and sacrificing expedition to the desolate island of Aruba, where I battled horrifying beaches, a strong sun, overly-stuffing food, and fresh fruit smoothies.

Yeah, it was hell.

One night, we decided to brave the barren roads and take a rental car tour of the isle. We wound up lost, trapped in some dark remote desert area surrounded by cacti, abandoned buildings, and incredibly lazy wild dogs who did little more than stare at us in bewilderment. After 45 minutes of going in circles, we were losing hope, and on the verge of making camp and eating my brother for nourishment.

Worried for his life, The Bro whipped out his iPhone and discovered something amazing: he was able to use the Google Maps app to actually locate our position on the island, streets and all. He turned on Data Roaming, connected to the island’s Setar cell network, and used the Find Me button to accurately triangulate where we were relative to our hotel. Within ten minutes we were back on the main road headed to our comfortable freshly-tidied rooms.

We were shocked — it worked better than it does in Chicago. And we didn’t know the Find Me feature functioned so well — or at all — anywhere outside the US, especially on an island in the south Caribbean.

Have any of you used Find Me anywhere outside the US, particularly in locations where the iPhone isn’t sold? How’d it work?

Category: Musings

Posted by Dan Pourhadi on Mar 31 2008, 3:30 PM ET

Comments (9)

I've been using it in Brazil since 1.1.3 came out and it works about half the time. At home it show the precise location of my living room, but at works it's off by about ten blocks, so I wouldn't rely on it too much, at least down here.

Posted by Gui Leite | March 31, 2008 4:18 PM

The system based on Wi-Fi (like the iPod touch uses), would not work because those areas don't have their wi-fi spots catalogued in the database.

The iPhone has the Wi-Fi location system but also a system using information from the cell towers in order to do the triangulation. There is no special database, just interpretation of the positional info coming from two or more cell towers and that should work everywhere.

Posted by Denis Rouleau | March 31, 2008 4:59 PM

I used the "locate me" function when at Trois Rivieres (CYRQ), Quebec last January. It worked very well down to 2 blocks. All while using Roger's Wireless. Currently iPhone is not available for sale in Canada.

Posted by paul sanchez | March 31, 2008 6:04 PM

I used my iPhone´s "locate me" function in Spain too (currently iPhone is not available for sale here). It worked very well down to 4 blocks.

Posted by jm22381 | March 31, 2008 7:26 PM

Well it works to within about 1/2 mile in rural England, and about 10 to 20 metres in London when it finds wifi bases that are registered, so not too bad really. I dare not try when roaming due to the silly cost of data roaming though!

Posted by Pyers | April 1, 2008 10:57 AM

I used the iPhone in Spain too and it worked very well, in my house and in the office too. I've used the wifi connection.

Posted by Raul | April 1, 2008 5:43 PM

I´ve been using it in Colombia since the first moment I got my 8GB phone with jailbreake. I use LocateMe which after finds the nearest cell it gives me Google maps and voila! It's great, I love it.

Posted by Luis Gomez | April 2, 2008 5:21 PM

Whistler, BC Canada Worked great.

Posted by Mark Whitted | April 3, 2008 1:25 PM

Works great in Malaga, Spain. the Route planning feature in Maps is also a godsend for a visitor here..

Posted by Gehan Perez | April 17, 2008 6:39 PM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)

ABOUT iPHONE CENTRAL

Get the latest news, reviews, and opinion about Apple's groundbreaking iPhone from the Apple experts at Macworld.

Want more information? Be sure to check out our complete iPhone coverage.

iPHONE VERSION

Our site's pretty iPhone friendly. But if you'd like to test an iPhone-app-like version of our site, click here and give it a go.

MACWORLD'S iPHONE REVIEW

How does the iPhone stack up? Read our in-depth review.

iPHONE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?

Send your iPhone thoughts:
via e-mail
via voicemail
and we may use them on the site.