[Touch Pro, Fuze General] dougc314:
My FUZE GPS experiance so far

I Have had a cingular 8125 till getting the FUZE on Nov 14. I am also a GPS user on the 8125, both road nav (now defunct Mapopolis) and Google Maps (plus trying many others), and hiking/geocaching (Back Country Navigator). I have used several GPS bluetooth devices on my 8125 and was/am looking forward to the integrated GPS on the FUZE. Needless to say I am somewhat disappointed with the fussing around needed to get GPS working. However I have had some success, and while not done yet I thought I would share my knowledge and recent experience. (I too have had what seems to be intermittent GPS performance).

Point 1 - In WinMo5 ( assume 6 is similar) The "external GPS" settings was meant to set up a GPS device sharing scheme where multiple programs can simultaneously use a single GPS device. Without it if you tried to have multiple programs using the GPS port they might be unreliable. The "GPS hardware" port/baud setting was for the physical device (usually a BT GPS on some com port) The "GPS program" settings were for the software port that the programs were to be set for. I don't know exactly what "manage GPS automatically" was for but I think was supposed to help programs (at least that were written correctly) to find the "program" port instead of the hardware port.

Point 2 - Testing. I use a program "GPS test" that came with my Holux BT GPS mouse. It will scan all ports to find a GPS device. It then shows a simple signal strength/fix status and will show what port/speed it's working on. I also use a terminal emulator that can be set to connect to any port/baud. Its handy to see that the designated port is spewing NEMA strings or not, and you can actually interpret the strings yourself for advanced trouble shooting. Many GPS programs give cryptic messages that makes you think the GPS device is not running when it actually is, but there is no GPS fix yet. By using the terminal emulator you can tell if the device is alive or not. It works indoors, cause the terminal emulator doesn't interpret the data, just displays it. If the GPS device is running it spews codes, fix or no fix.

GPS experiance on day 1

Ran the quick GPS. Left AGPS on.

I didn't install my mapping programs just Google Maps. - No Joy

Switched to playing with my new BT Stereo headphones - Joy!

Day 2 installed GPS test

GPS test found GPS on com 4 at 9600 baud, locked up in a few seconds.

Set google maps to com 4,9600 - lock up had a good drive up route 29 in Md. Fast map loads, no lag, the blue dot was cruzin! Installed my other programs, but was at work so didn't play much, but they seeped to work. Went to lunch with a friend with a Iphone 2. We had a lock up race on the drive back-tied. Both our google maps locked up and had the local map at the same time. Later that day I tried my other programs and no joy, no settings worked. Also GPS test and Google earth quit working. (Wasn't using the terminal emulator yet)

Day 3 my wife came home from a two week trip, so I didn't get to play with my new phone

Day 4 Hard reset the phone, reinstalled gps apps and a terminal emulator. Ran GPS test, it found the GPS on com/9600. Locked up quickly, Google earth worked, apps worked. For how long I dont know.

Conclusions so far.

The default external GPS settings are hardware none, program com 4, manage automatically. The apps work with GPS on com4/9600. Based on my experience this seems odd. I would expect the internal GPS device to be on some COM port, different than the windows managed program port. Perhaps it is. However I would expect the manager to be set for a hardware port/baud as well.

Experiment conducted

Set the external GPS to hardware none/4800, program none, managed off. Soft booted the PDA. Internal GPS was gone! My terminal emulator connected to something on com 3 and com 7 but didn't display any NEMA strings corrupted or other wise. I tried 4800, 9600 and 38400 which are the most common baud rates for the hardware devices that I have seen.

Next I set the External GPS settings to hardware none/4800, program com 9, managed on. GPS back, on com 9. Also I tired several baud settings on the terminal emulator and always got strings. Ran GPS test on COM 9 at 38400 and got a lock. Ran backcountry navigator on com9 at 57600 and got a lock.

Conclusions. The External GPS settings must be set to Hardware None to use the internal GPS device I guess baud rate doesn't matter, but the default is 4800. The program port is your choice. Managed is probably a good idea. Your GPS program may find the managed port automatically or not. If not then you will have to set it manually if the program has such a way. Baud rate doesn't seem to be important, although I 'm guessing thats part of the "managed" feature. To date I haven't enough outdoor time (its cold today) to see if the entire system (IE the GPS device is getting a fix) works every time, but I suspect not. Right now this is all very reminiscent of the early days with my 8125 before a rom update from HTC (AUKS as I recall, had to be WinMo as the GPS devices were external).

Later I will be able to evaluate how well the internal device is compared to external BT dongles that I use.