Some telling information has been pulled from the device emulator included in the iPhone SDK. There is some evidence there that the new iPhone could have true GPS functionality, which is currently a talking point of iPhone critics. It is important to keep in mind, this could mean something, but could just as easily, mean nothing.

Reference to NMEA found in the locationd service on the iPhone, suggest that GPS could be coming. NMEA is the standard way to present GPS data to applications that can use it. The locationd service also revealed some strings related to satellite positioning, latitude, longitude, speed, and satellite link quality. There are more strings than just those relating to GPS, including current position and estimated accuracy.

True GPS support is a huge leap over the current solution on the iPhone, which uses triangulation of towers to determine the iPhone position relative to themselves. This is also known as A-GPS, or assisted GSPS. GPS is much more efficient. All this though, does not mean GPS will be there for sure. All it means, is there is software support for it, only the new iPhone will tell us for sure.

[Via iPhone Atlas]