8800 -- A free GPS solution?
 

A friend of mine has a smartphone. His phone connects to a gps via bluetooth and has mapping software that runing on his phone that provides turn by turn directions just like a dedicated GPS unit.

Can the Blackberry 8800 work the same way? I see products like Tele-nav where you have to pay a monthly fee for the maps, and they give you software to run on the 8800 that will give turn by turn directions, but I really don't want to pay $10/month for this feature. Because the 8800 has a GPS built in, and it can store information on a SD card, this should definitely be possible. Is this the way Blackberry maps works, or is that a monthly fee as well?

BlackBerry Maps can be enabled to work with the GPS just fine, to my knowledge.

Welcome to the forums,
As Jibi the Great stated Blackberry Maps can be installed and gives turn by turn directions but no voice prompts like TeleNav. Also, maps can't be stored on the card yet, either. BBMaps is the best solution (for now) for free mapping. See the sticky threads in the 8800 forum. Lots of good stuff there.

Also, see Stinsonddog's Tip site for more good info on GPS and mapping.

BlackBerry Maps downloads the Maps live via data connection. It uses vector based graphics to minimize data traffic.

Blackberry 8800 - Blackberry Maps
 

I have the new 8800. When I go to Rim's site /MAPS and try to load the Blackberry maps onto my device, I get a message that my device is unsupported.

I contacted RIM, and their response was...

"Cingular has chosen to not release BlackBerry Maps with their current software release for the BlackBerry 8800 handheld. Please contact Cingular for further information."

The solution:
http://www.blackberryforums.com/gps-...-released.html

"InfoSpace Find It" is a free app that does what you want:

bb.infospace.com/fid/Default.asp?r=rim

In the link form RoadRider above mgerbasio stated that it is not true navigation. Maybe he had an older version than the one I am trying but it looks like true navigation nowadays. My Nextel 7520 doesn't support voice right now but it should work fine on your 8800. Everything but voice directions seems to work on the 7520. However, this app currently does not have an option to store on your memory card either.