[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Come again? Doing what? Not fixing it properly? They might not be fixing it properly due to low development cost?

Sorry, but whichever way you want to address it, you buy a GPS, you expect a GPS that works, not something that may work if you feel like as long as you don't go into the city where turns keep cutting you off.

Why do you assume that? Nokia last year released the N97 to much triumphant support. Until people started using the GPS. Turns out Nokia had a fault on the hardware which was caused by bad shielding, amongst others, along with rumours of the wrong glue. Some people lifted the tape up that held the GPS antennae, and added a small piece of copper wire to improve reception.

Nokia took six months to rectify that fault. They were stubborn as hell.

12 months on, Im seeing another GPS issue with another new to market phone.

Why do you not think it hardware? I'll be honest with you, I don't know what it is, and I probably have a lot more knowledge and experience of working with (not working on) GPS. What information do you know?

You seem to also suggest that this must be a software issue because hardware issues would be picked up during QA.

Why wouldn't software that is critical to the correct functioning of the GPS not be picked up?

Even if you allow through the speculation that some software is causing flaky reception, no one, through the entire four months, picked up on the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S firmware at any stage, failed to lock onto Satellites with an SnR < 20 and failed to lock onto more than 8 satellites?

According to Google, that is a Qualcomm chipset so I don't think would be anywhere near Samsung as they're using their own processor for one, additionally I think it is virtually common knowledge from tear downs, that they're either using the Broadcom BCM4571 or the BCM20751 depending upon location. In fact strong sources suggest the Galaxy does indeed have BCM20751.

It was announced in March. If it is a software problem, they've been developing the firmware since at least March when it first made its rounds at various Mobile Events.

In firmware that's not released to the public. Meanwhile, IMHO as a developer, lag I can live with. Non functioning facilities means a broken phone. I know which one I'd go with first.

Though the FroYo updates recently seen don't address any of the issues seen, only improves the TTF. Another hack.

Why do you assume it wouldn't have been released? Nokia did the same thing with the N97 last year.

And again, it has been one month in release, but another 3 months in pre-release, and however long before that in pre-production. At least four months to test and fix the drivers prior to release.

You do not just release software, you test, test, test and test some more. Release an alpha. Test. Beta. Test. Final release to the public. We've had the final release. What happened to the testing?

Unfortunately the direction they're going, seems to suggest they're not fixing the two critical things IMHO, they're not fixing stabilisation of the GPS signal, they're not fixing the phone locking onto more than 8 satellites, they're not fixing the phone locking onto satellites with an SnR < 20. No. They're merely smoothing out the path in the event of a GPS signal loss.

Doesn't inspire me with confidence.

What I would love to do is to give a great bit yell at Samsung and say they're going in the wrong direction.

The phone should never have been released without adequate testing. Besides, it's a broadcom chipset, not a samsung one. I belive being broadcom, it's not available as source code, which is why I think we don't see the source code in the Open Source kernel/eclair released by Samsung.

Cheers

Simon