[Galaxy S I9000 General] betoNL:
Wow...have been away for a while, but I read everything you guys posted, but what you said above about "trying to give lessons in that way" hit a nerve..in wich way exactly? Arrogant maybe? I have to agree I still have to learn how to deal with some childish "fanboy behaviour" that doesnt add anything in "knowledge exchange and mutual help" thing, you mentioned, and indeed should be the spirit in all forums

Anyway some hostility showed here in some posts is totally uncalled for.

Everything I learned, specially about GPS, I learned in different forums,like GpsPassion that miki4242 talked about.

To everybody, allow me to try another approach:

My gps car navigation |(with voice) experience started long before I bought my first Smartphone. It started when i got the acerE310 running Destinator6.

Soon enough I learned that the Acer was just another pda running WindowsCE, locked with the Destinator navigation software. I learned how to unlock it in a spanish forum (http://foro.todopocketpc.com).

With the AcerE310 unlocked, I could install all kind of GPS navigation software, but only had time to deal with the ones related to car navigation; I installed Miomap, Tomtom6, Route66 among others; not because I need that much but I like to test and compare all kind of softwares.

Then I moved on to Mio p550 running Windows Mobile6.1 and then on to the Clarion Map680 wich I unlocked using the miopocket solution that I found on GpsPassion forum.

Around that time I first heard the term A-gps but never looked into it .

I decided to buy my first smartphone, the Nokia 5800XM because it had a good sound (for music) reasonable wifi and....it was cheap...it was no high-end smartphone, but a value smartphone, performing all basic functions flawlessly, except......the Gps! And then I understood what that a-gps thing was all about.

The build-in gps receiver after a loooong cold start will get a fix but would not hold it,

navigation was unstable and would need a-gps constantly on.The Symbian OS unlike

Android, got proper connectivity control, you can easily disable/enable a-gps, easily define

location method etc.

Anyway I had the Clarion Map to navigate, so just didnt use the 5800 for that purpose.

The Clarion Map running iGo 8.3 is a very good device, big screen, lots of Ram, and got

even a buil-in TMC antenna and yes, you do get free traffic information. There are tons of

FM Radio stations here in Holland that will send TMC data.You just need the right hardware

and software to pick them up....and you dont need wikipedia just check the Clarion Map680

site and scroll down to communications:

http://translate.google.nl/translat...on/MAP680/nl-nl-product-pf_1172389056075.html

That was until I decided to install Garmin MobileXT. Great program , great accuracy, UI

etc. It even had the option to set bluetooth Gps so I decided to buy a compact external bluetooth receiver with sirfstarIII chipset. From that moment on Garmin worked like a charm on my 5800 with no need for "assisting" that means A-gps, and I even retire the Clarion for a while.

So let's go back to the issue, and that is A-gps

Why do I mention SirfstarIII all the time? Well, because I had it in all my devices and the ones

in my Clarion Map and in my Bluetooth receiver (LD‑3W ) got 20 channels.

A Gps receiver is often described by its number of channels: this signifies how many satellites it can monitor simultaneously. Originally limited to four or five, this has progressively increased over the years so that, as until 2007, receivers typically had between 12 and 20 channels.

Of course there are better chipsets out there, with much more than 20 channels .

After reading some reactions in this topic, I decided to perform some tests yesterday

specifically to see how long the device would take to get a fix using only the build-in gps

receiver with NO ASSIST whatsoever; that means no a-gps, and no external bluetooth

receiver etc.

I open iGo motonav, having any kind of external connection disabled (as always), by the

way I don't have any APN configured, field is blank; and this time also bluetooth of.

I went outside, the sky was clear, took a coffee, and for my surprise, after 12 minutes

It got a fix and it kept it! I close iGo motonav, after 1 minute open sygic and got a fix in less

than 5 seconds and kept it.

That means:

Cold start: 12 min for a stable fix

hot start : 5 to 10 seconds

My conclusion was that the build in gps receiver of the galaxy is at least much better then the

ones on the Nokia 5800 and the nokia n97 ( so I thought)

Decide to leave the test drive for the weekend to test stability.

Today started Motonav again to check that cold start fix and.....after waiting 20 minutes it didnt get any! ? !

Then I took my external BT gps, opened in my GS the app bluetooth gps mouse, connected it

to the external BT and fix came in less than 1 minute even in a Cold start.

5 minutes later it was viewing 16 satellites and using 12!!

So today I was planning to try to see, in a moving car, how many satellites the build-in receiver is able to watch simultaneously (even before locking) and then get an idea of how many channels it got, but today (unlike yesterday) it wasnt able to view any.

It is for me a mistery. It's quite confusing

But..ysterday the sky was clear and today Cloudy with some showers now and then

I could go on and on but the bottom line is:

A-gps should be used just as it supposed to be used: as an assist, an aid for getting

a satellite fix or mantain a fix in less proper conditions. An not all the time forcing you to be constantly "connected", as it happend with my Nokia 5800.

In the Galaxy s this issue could be even worse because of the lack of proper connectivy control in Android plus all that confusion about how to configure mode settings for a-gps in LbsModetesting

Once again we dont need gpsone chipsets or any other A-gps dependable receivers

The good and old sirfstarIII chipset will do just fine as it did in so many pda-phones till 2007

And I can prove it!

Continues.......after de weekend