There’s a company that’s built a tool that allows you to text a phone number for directions, which it then turns into a Google Maps search, and then returns the results in a text message. You can get directions for walking, driving, biking, and transit.
The tool can also be used to look up information about a specific business, and to find types of businesses in an area, like grocery stores. It would appear to work anywhere in the world where Google Maps works, also.
If you’re worried about needing GPS but still want a Mudita (or any other type of “wise” phone), this may just help you bridge that gap.
I’ve tested it out a little bit, and the results are fast and pretty good. It may not help you route a cross-country roadtrip with 8 different stops, but if you’d like to know the address of that restaurant you’re supposed to be at in 10 minutes and can’t seem to find, or the fastest way to get across town, it’s perfect.
Enabling people reading text messages while driving sounds like a terrible idea. I would hate living in the world where people read SMS messages while driving, trying to figure out where to go. Just get a standalone GPS unit.
Most of the services can be accessed via text messages by setting up a gateway that connects to the Internet, pulls necessary data and sends it back as a text message.
A similar effect can be achieved by a VoIP gateway - you can call a specific number, and for example ask for the weather status and your request is transcribed, sent to a specific API and then the result is read by Text-To-Speech service back to you.
So yes, it’s doable but I don’t think it makes much sense on a feature phone. If you depend on things like that on a daily basis - a feature phone might not be the best solution for you.
If you click the link and scroll down, it has instructions and provides the phone number. You’ll need to parse your queries in a machine-readable format (not hard to do if you’re already familiar with what to type into Google Maps), but you can also test it out and see what results you get!