[Galaxy S I9000 General] milsjg:
The statistics

Hi, I see that same people complaining about the GPS, as for one month ago. The statistics tells us that over 5 million SGS has been sold so if some lets say 1000 think it is bad it is only a tiny part of the SGS's owners (0.020% of the phone owners that claims a messed up GPS). I think it is more probability that you have a lousy GPS because you have fiddling with LBSmode (which is a test mode) or just have some roted features that mess up the GPS or trying to run lots of GPS programs at the same time, tried to use the GPS under metalized windscreen etc.

Most of the posts in these GPS treads seems to be from people that haven't a clue of how the GPS works or what error to expect from an GPS.

To start. GPS error is a statistical error that is measuring the probability that the position is within an certain limit. Some positions can fluctuate rather much and still have an "accuracy" of 5 meters. It will just tell you that the position has a 95% chance to be within 5 meters and 5% that it can be anywhere else.

The second is how good accuracy you can have. Without any enhancement you will have problems to get a position under 5 meters accuracy. Some guys tell us that they have got 2.5 meters or so. These guys are lucky or more likely fooled by the hardware (if no enhancement is used of course).

The third is how the gps programs works.

My tracks, CardioTrainer etc are using the position from the GPS rather straight forward. They have though a tendency to guess where you going from an estimate made from the previous positions. Different techniques are used to serve different purposes. However if the program is not fast enough and the method is to aggressively it may go to far when you turn.

The navigation programs Navigon etc. cheats because you can not go off the road. They will always put you on the road, even if the position is way off or if you are unlucky on a side road.

The raw GPS data programs is the best if you want to compare with other GPSes. Unfortunate these type of programs is a little bit over the normal level of the GPS awareness and tends to be a bit complicate. I do not talk about GPStest and other positioning programs, but programs that catch the raw data stream from the GPS. Before anybody have caught the data stream and compared it to lets say HTC Desire at same time and spot it is very hard to know if it is the chip or the program thats failing, if any.

The fourth is how the GPS acquire the position. In order to do so it must know where the satellites are and the time. It can be downloaded over the net or from the satellite direct. Thats why you have so different time to the first fix. If you have moved to another town or haven't used your GPS for a day (few hour) or so you need to get the database renewed. From the satellite, it can take, in worst case several minutes. But if you have a wireless or 3G connection it can be updated in seconds. Thats why you get so different time to first fix. People that travel abroad maybe not use there 3G net because of the cost. Well the GPS is struggling to get updated via satellite it takes minute and they give up. They instead blame someone else (eg. US defense) to switch of the satellites over certain areas of the world. This is a rather interesting idea but so hard to believe because even foreigners have working GPSes.

As you see there are lots of things that can go wrong with your GPS and GPS-program. However if you understand these basics principles (these are not all) you may start to analyse whats causing your problem. By the way weather within normal weather limits do not effect the signal so much as you want to believe.

If you still have a problem give the SGS back and buy a HTC desire and start complain in there forum instead. No phone is perfect and with 5 million sold there must be at least some that are defect