[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] fallenguru:
This topic is a mess and it's only going to get worse ...

Some people just don't care about GPS. That's fine, but please do refrain from posting.

Then there's the folks who "want to believe" (I believe that's a quote) that the GPS is perfect. Understandable, but it only clouds the issue - if there even is one - further. You don't need to "defend" your phone, it doesn't have any feelings to hurt, I can assure you.

The rest have vastly differing levels of experience with GPS, on phones and other devices. If you only had a SGS1 or NS with essentially non-working GPS before, of course the SGS2 will seem great by comparison. If you had a non-unibody HTC or even LG, your impression might be very different. If you have a nice in-car GPS you know what is possible with civilian GPS (but not what is possible on a small mobile device). ...

There are a lot of different use cases of GPS, thus also a lot of different ways to gauge real life quality:

Navigation in a car - Needs a stable lock and decent sensitivity; doesn't care about time-to-first fix that much, accuracy isn't that critical either, as long as it's good enough that the software snaps you to the right road.

Navigation on foot (in urban areas) - needs a very accurate and stable lock, TtFF is important as well, if you don't want to stand around in public looking like an idiot while waiting for a lock. Sensitivity shouldn't matter that much, as long as you don't put the phone in your pocket.

Tracking - As long as you just want to show your hiking route on Maps, pretty much anything should do, if all else fails, you can still photoshop it. ;-) But let's say you do some running or jogging and want an accurate log of distance travelled, average speed on certain stretches etc. ... suddenly a very stable and accurate lock is required again. This is probably the hardest test.

Geocaching - don't know much about that, if anyone wants to enlighten me, I'll update the post.

Augmented reality - requires not only spot-on GPS at all times but a working compass and accelerometer as well. Pretty much science fiction on current hw.

Geotagging - needs a very accurate lock very quickly or otherwise it's pointless. Long-term stability is not required at all.

Various other one-shot apps, AKA what's near me - can make do with wifi and/or cell location if need be.

So basically everyone has different requirements of their phone's GPS as well and the absolute best phone for one application may suck for another. That's why we should standardise on a set of somewhat objectively measurable metrics, like:

TtFF: cold/hot, stationary/moving, indoors/in car/in pocket/urban area/open field

Accuracy: after 10/30/60 seconds (in all the above situations), as given by the phone and as measured vs a known landmark

Number of sats and SNR: after 30 seconds take 3 snapshots in 5 second intervals

...

Ideally all those tests would be done using multiple phones (models) and a reference GPS receiver at the same time and repeated by a lot of people all over the world. Such data one could base conclusions on - anything else is just subjective impressions clouded by emotion.