[Captivate Android Development] Drew489:
Really? That's great, might try it out. I was that GPS developer guy's thread about the captivate and he said it was basically a firmware issue on the hardware itself.

Here at the bottom of this post- http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=789383&highlight=gps

"Blah blah blah! Re-education part

I think a lot of you are playing with options, not knowing what you're doing. I've written some GPS applications for WinMo (check my post history) and have taken a look at this issue. I'm currently working on a project that uses the GPS and Android phones. I negotiated a deal with AT&T to get 50 Samsung Captivates (@ $150 each) with 2GB/mo ($25/mo) for a client and I think I'm going to cancel that.

I don't think many of you understand what's going on with the phone or what AGPS does. AGPS is basically GPS support with cell towers. There are different levels of cell tower support.

MS-Based usually just uses the cell tower's location (not yours) to figure out where you are. This will allow you to go online, and get the cell tower number and find out it's GPS location. From there, the GPS using satellite charting data to find and keep a fix. GPS almanac data (says where the satellites are in the sky) can be supplied by the cell tower (the point of MS-Based), downloaded over the internet or downloaded from GPS signals (the last of the 3 being the slowest). Getting a fix without having any satellite data or positioning is known as a cold fix.

MS-Assisted does what you guys would already figure is happening. It uses the cell tower positioning and cell tower signal central to triangulate your position. In WinMo this would disable your data connection but it seems that's not the case in Android. Regardless it might slow down your internet. Obviously the accuracy here is poor.

SUPL just tells you the lat/long position of the cell towers so changing servers does nearly nothing. Google may have faster SUPL servers than spirent but the data should be the same. Once you have that data, it should be cached locally (but who knows, this is Samsung we're talking about.)

The problem is, technically speaking, the GPS should work even without AGPS. I have a couple of GPS devices with SIRFIII and it works beautifully, no AGPS needed. It should be able to download the almanac, ephemeris and time from the GPS satellites without any cell towers. That's how you know the issue isn't your settings.

Disable AGPS and you'll realize you have no options to play with. You're all playing with AGPS settings which aren't really hardware based GPS (and thus inaccurate). AGPS is not accurate. It was never meant to replace hardware GPS (which is why they put hardware GPS in phones). Hardware GPS has much more accuracy but the fact is, hardware GPS is NOT working on the Samsung Captivate. That's the baseline problem. Forget your AGPS settings. AGPS should only help you with almanac data and getting faster fixes but after that it should be running on standalone hardware and only fall back to the inaccurate AGPS when you lose a clear view of the sky (like when you're in a tunnel).

I notice little issue when I'm standing still. It's when I'm moving that the accuracy dies. With further investigation, it seems the GPS literally stops updating the location after a couple of seconds. You don't notice if you're standing still since you're in the same spot, but when you're driving you'll see it. The GPS freezes for about 20 to 30 seconds.

The question is: Why is it not working?

Here are my hypotheses.

1) There's a function running that borks the GPS and makes the GPS driver crash or lag. The GPS driver quietly reboots and then it gets a fix. This could be the reason why, after disabling and enabling GPS, it grabs a hot-started fix of a location it was struggling to get before. You manually reset the GPS driver. I've tested it with Google Maps/Navigation. The GPS doesn't move for 30 seconds. It freezes, but when I close (disable GPS) and open the app (enable GPS) it gets a hot started fix in 5 seconds. Had I not disabled and enabled the GPS, it would have lagged there. This could be a software issue.

2) The GPS isn't using the almanac data. The almanac data says where the GPS satellites are now and where they will be. The GPS uses this to track. If this isn't used, it needs to get a fix again every so often.

3) Cell towers are actually messing you up because their times are desynchronized or almanac data is outdated. (and we all would love to blame AT&T)"

By: CLShortFuse