GPS Standard

[amerifax]

There seems to be a loose standard when it comes to GPS and Mobile Phones. My problem is with Sprint and the Palm Pre. I purchased the new Palm Pre and was told that it had GPS. It does not and can not. It accumulates data off Sprint's Tower. The position it provides is very loose. It has a tolerance of around 350 ft. I have a Palm LifeDrive that is 7-8 years old and it can tell me where I am at in the house...the Pre can't even tell what side of the Hwy I am on.

As a phone, the Pre is superb. I truly couldn't ask for much more in a phone. Unfortunately it is not a Global Positioning Satellite device as I was orginally lead to believe.

I really don't think it's right for any Mobile Phone Company to advertise that a phone HAS GPS as opposed to saying that it has Navigation Capabilities.

Sincerely,

Robert Snow

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: amerifax
There seems to be a loose standard when it comes to GPS and Mobile Phones. My problem is with Sprint and the Palm Pre. I purchased the new Palm Pre and was told that it had GPS. It does not and can not. It accumulates data off Sprint's Tower. The position it provides is very loose. It has a tolerance of around 350 ft. I have a Palm LifeDrive that is 7-8 years old and it can tell me where I am at in the house...the Pre can't even tell what side of the Hwy I am on.

As a phone, the Pre is superb. I truly couldn't ask for much more in a phone. Unfortunately it is not a Global Positioning Satellite device as I was orginally lead to believe.

I really don't think it's right for any Mobile Phone Company to advertise that a phone HAS GPS as opposed to saying that it has Navigation Capabilities.

Sincerely,

Robert Snow

Sorry I'm a GSM guy but from what I read the Palm Pre DOES have a GPS chip in there. It's actually an a-GPS chip which means it's assisted GPS. It uses both cell tower triangulation and GPS satellite fix to get your true lucation.

I believe what you ran into was an inability to get a solid GPS satellite fix and so it used cell triangulation. Let me give you an example I run into:

With my N-series, if I pop open Google Maps and hit 0 or whatever it is to get my location it will zoom in on my location and have a huge radius. It's clearly using cell triangulation. Give it 30 secs or so and I get a tiny circle meaning it's gotten a GPS fix. And it will say on the upper right saying GPS Satellites (4) or whatever indicating I've locked onto 4 satellites. You need a minimum of 3 I believe to get a coordinate lock, but at least 4 is preferred.

The Pre is really retarded though and I believe as a standalone GPS I've read that it doesn't really work (i.e. if it can't get a cell tower fix it won't even try turning on the GPS, which I find absurd). I'm actually shocked by this and I think any phone that does this is pathetic. I've used my N-series as a GPS going to foreign places, and with Garmin Mobile XT it's like carrying a Garmin Nuvi in my pocket esssentially.

From what I know, the Pre DOES have GPS capabilities. Why your GPS wasn't working properly, I do not know.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

This happens in iPhones also. You just have to wait awhile for the GPS to actually find the fix. A-GPS is what everyone uses because it doesn't need to turn the GPS chip on right away.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

BTW I'll say that my N-series is terrible in cities. I don't live near huge cities and even downtown San Francisco isn't as obstructed as some places, but when I was in Taiwan my GPS had a TERRIBLE time getting a lock in a car. It was just atrocious. Granted it's also cloudy there all the time. Even on a rooftop performance wasn't what I call stellar.

Now coupled with assisted capabilities back at home this thing is amazing. Idon't know how the Pre's GPS performs, but it might be one of the weaker ones. I recently saw an article comparing the Samsung Omnia HD and the Nokia N97's GPS which clearly shows some phones are better than others in terms of GPS performance.

With or without the A-GPS service, the Omnia HD obtains fix considerably quicker than 5800 XM or the N97, also in places without clear view of the sky like indoors, far from the window, with roller blinds down. In these conditions, in the first test the N97 didn't manage to get fix AT ALL (only "seeing" 1-2 satellites and eventually losing them) where the Omnia HD got it in 5 seconds (with 8-9 satellites) and just kept a stable link.

In the second test, after rebooting the phones and moving them slightly closer to an open window, the Omnia HD once again got the fix instantly, whereas the N97 this time succeeded but only after 2 minutes 30 seconds. The Omnia instantly locked on 5-7 satellites while the N97 locked on three.

 

[amerifax]

The Pre is the best phone I ever had. I have always had the best. As a smart phone is does every think except drive me to work.

But...

As a GPS it's the worst thing. If you fill a bag with dog do and light it you will get a better spot than the Palm Pre GPS.

Does anyone know an exact method to get a perfect reading on a location so I could use it to compare different GPS devises.

Bob

 

[thecoolnessrune]

My Touch Pro's GPS varies wildly. Sometimes I start up google maps and it will get 9 satellites in under a minute. Other times I have to leave the phone sitting there for almost 10 minutes just for it to get 3 satellites.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Do you really not understand how A-GPS works?

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Do you really not understand how A-GPS works?

How is this post helping the OP?

 

[waggy]

yeap it has it. A-gps is slower but it works well.


Verizon did something a little more worse. I purchased a Samsung omnia. wich has a GPS chip in it. Even verizon uses that as a point for sale. Anyway what they don't tell you is that you can only use the GPS with Verizons GPS software at $10 a month.

to get around it you had to hack the OS. though finally enough people complained (think there was even a attempt at a lawsuit) and Verizon allowed update to the os to use the GPS with other software.

Google maps is pretty good. but i like the software on my tomtom better.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: waggy
yeap it has it. A-gps is slower but it works well.


Verizon did something a little more worse. I purchased a Samsung omnia. wich has a GPS chip in it. Even verizon uses that as a point for sale. Anyway what they don't tell you is that you can only use the GPS with Verizons GPS software at $10 a month.

to get around it you had to hack the OS. though finally enough people complained (think there was even a attempt at a lawsuit) and Verizon allowed update to the os to use the GPS with other software.

Google maps is pretty good. but i like the software on my tomtom better.

A-GPS is not necessarily slower.

A-GPS gives phone manufacturers an excuse to use a less powerful GPS chip. They're not going to stick the best GPS chip that you can get on your Garmin, so the antenna itself is probably not as good. As a result, when you use the A-GPS function, using cell tower triangulation coupled with GPS itself makes up for the poor standalone GPS performance.

Now there are some phones out there that are spectacular anyway with their GPS chips. One of them is the Samsung Omnia HD. The GPS performance is pretty amazing. You can get a lock even in the house pretty quickly. Definitely a Garmin is still better, but some phones aren't bad at all. My N82 is decent but it struggles sometimes indoors. With A-GPS though it's a different story.

It's sad that companies like Verizon and AT&T cripple phones and make you pay for their retarded navigation services. Luckily the rest of the world knows better.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: waggy
yeap it has it. A-gps is slower but it works well.


Verizon did something a little more worse. I purchased a Samsung omnia. wich has a GPS chip in it. Even verizon uses that as a point for sale. Anyway what they don't tell you is that you can only use the GPS with Verizons GPS software at $10 a month.

to get around it you had to hack the OS. though finally enough people complained (think there was even a attempt at a lawsuit) and Verizon allowed update to the os to use the GPS with other software.

Google maps is pretty good. but i like the software on my tomtom better.

The reason was due to a design issue with the underlying Qualcomm CDMA chipset that these handsets were using. Recent OS updates for these devices have fixed the issue and that is why you can now use any GPS enabled app on these previously 'GPS gimped' handsets.

 

[abaez]

Originally posted by: DLeRium

Originally posted by: waggy
yeap it has it. A-gps is slower but it works well.


Verizon did something a little more worse. I purchased a Samsung omnia. wich has a GPS chip in it. Even verizon uses that as a point for sale. Anyway what they don't tell you is that you can only use the GPS with Verizons GPS software at $10 a month.

to get around it you had to hack the OS. though finally enough people complained (think there was even a attempt at a lawsuit) and Verizon allowed update to the os to use the GPS with other software.

Google maps is pretty good. but i like the software on my tomtom better.

A-GPS is not necessarily slower.

A-GPS gives phone manufacturers an excuse to use a less powerful GPS chip. They're not going to stick the best GPS chip that you can get on your Garmin, so the antenna itself is probably not as good. As a result, when you use the A-GPS function, using cell tower triangulation coupled with GPS itself makes up for the poor standalone GPS performance.

Now there are some phones out there that are spectacular anyway with their GPS chips. One of them is the Samsung Omnia HD. The GPS performance is pretty amazing. You can get a lock even in the house pretty quickly. Definitely a Garmin is still better, but some phones aren't bad at all. My N82 is decent but it struggles sometimes indoors. With A-GPS though it's a different story.

It's sad that companies like Verizon and AT&T cripple phones and make you pay for their retarded navigation services. Luckily the rest of the world knows better.

Good post.

My Nokia e-71 gives me the option of using A-GPS, Bluetooth GPS (I'm guessing external GPS unit that feeds coords into the phone?), and standalone GPS. I almost exclusively use the standalone GPS because I am on prepaid. Sometimes it takes about 5-10 minutes to lock onto a satellite whatever the weather/area, but after it's locked it doesn't go away until I close the Garmin Mobile XT program. It was a frickin lifesaver when I visited Japan.

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: amerifax

Does anyone know an exact method to get a perfect reading on a location so I could use it to compare different GPS devises.

Bob

The National Geodetic Survey maintains a whole gaggle of geodetic control points throughout the U.S. If you go to this website:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/datasheet.prl
you can find one near you. Look up the location and get the datasheet for the control point. Then take your GPS or GPS-phone to the location and see how closely the coordinates match. I tried it and my Garmin is accurate to within the number of significant digits it can display.

Here's an example record for a station near my house. As you can see the accuracy is better than 0.5 cm at a 95% confidence interval.