But it’s not just the large clear picture of your flight path the iPhone or iPod Touch can provide. Instead of struggling with a complicated remote control unit, you fly the AR Drone merely by tilting your handheld device in the direction you want to go. There are a few basic touchscreen controls like rise, down and rotate, but the accelerometers inside do the rest.

During a recent industry confab in Japan, Google bigwig Eric Schmidt said the future is not only in mobile (smartphone sales are set to outstrip PCs in 2012) but in the Asia Pacific region, which will see three billion mobile users within five years.

Has the GPS had its day? And even if good upkeep can maintain it, will a competing system soon take over? Drew Turney finds out. “It’s an exquisite technology but it was designed in the time of record players and vacuum tubes and the design brief to the engineers was to track intercontinental ballistic missiles. […]