All Things GPS

[boomerbubba]

It seems we're getting good and quick GPS locks from multiple Sats, but we're all reporting the same accuracy number, which is 98 feet. I got 98 feet myself. Not much deviation from the 98 number (meaning no one is getting higher nor lower than 98).

You seem to be onto something here. Looks like a bug. A real cucaracha.

If they were going to hard-code a number for imputed accuracy, they should have just picked 5 ft.

 

[Thefoodman52]

Hmm.... that's disappointing... my Evo will pick up 12 satellites and use 10-12, accuracy to anywhere from 4ft to 8ft. Then again, the Evo puts anything like GPS or WiFi in higher priority than saving battery, so it dies faster when we use it (say if you're using the phone as a GPS unit in the car, and streaming music, if it's plugged in you get a 0% charge gain, nothing is lost, nothing is gained). 98ft isn't horrific, but it's not great. I'd say compared to the other Galaxy S phones, this is pretty good in comparison. Hopefully though, it's fixed within a few weeks / months.

 

[SamsungVibrant]

It seems we're getting good and quick GPS locks from multiple Sats, but we're all reporting the same accuracy number, which is 98 feet. I got 98 feet myself. Not much deviation from the 98 number (meaning no one is getting higher nor lower than 98).

Yes I've noticed the poor accuracy numbers also. This is worrying me. Could it be possible that the truth is that the fundamental problem with GPS is hardware, what many have feared.

What if samsung just disguised the problem using software/firmware by making it appear the phone is actually locking onto satellites, yet the accuracy is still off. I hope thats not the truth, it would be horrible if samsung tried to trick us, only to leave us with poor accuracy.

 

[Adrift]

Yes I've noticed the poor accuracy numbers also. This is worrying me. Could it be possible that the truth is that the fundamental problem with GPS is hardware, what many have feared.

What if samsung just disguised the problem using software/firmware by making it appear the phone is actually locking onto satellites, yet the accuracy is still off. I hope thats not the truth, it would be horrible if samsung tried to trick us, only to leave us with poor accuracy.

My posts.... they must be invisble.

If your scenario about samsung disguising the problem were true, then my results would be impossible. There would be no way for my phone to have tracked my movements with such accuracy if it didn't have GPS satellites locked in.

Btw, I had 11 in view, 11 in use when I did My Tracks. Accuracy still reported 98 feet.

 

[PhantmShado]

Inside my apartment: 0 satellites seen, let alone locked onto

on roof of apartment building: 10-11 seen, locks first six within seconds, picks up up to 10 over the next min or two

Accuracy: of course 98 ft.

 

[Adrift]

Personally I feel there is something strange going on with how accuracy is being reported. When GPS is tracking me it is never off by any where near a 98 foot margin of error.

Is there a way to post up the My Tracks results so you all can see what I am? I can then overlay my true path over it and we will be able to see how off it was.

 

[SamsungVibrant]

My posts.... they must be invisble.

If your scenario about samsung disguising the problem were true, then my results would be impossible. There would be no way for my phone to have tracked my movements with such accuracy if it didn't have GPS satellites locked in.

Btw, I had 11 in view, 11 in use when I did My Tracks. Accuracy still reported 98 feet.

So you think it is reporting accuracy wrong? As long as google maps is accurate in the real world, thats all that matters. I'm crossing my fingers for my vibrant in Septembers firmware update.

 

[aburgthing]

Played with my wife's Epic all day and never was able to pick up a satellite. With "Use Wireless" calculated to within 70 ft. in Google maps. Thought this was gonna be fixed.

 

[Aero1]

What I am getting is Epic has worse signal to noise, less accuracy and less satellites in every type of test I am running holding three other handsets in the same place and conditions (EVO, Touch Pro 2 and Treo Pro.) right next to my Epic.

Out of the box the GPS on the Epic is well below other phone in its class (and older ones too).

 

[Android XTC]

I have tested mine several times now and its spot on. Not sure what all the bally hoo is about.

 

[TRSN]

My posts.... they must be invisble.

If your scenario about samsung disguising the problem were true, then my results would be impossible. There would be no way for my phone to have tracked my movements with such accuracy if it didn't have GPS satellites locked in.

Btw, I had 11 in view, 11 in use when I did My Tracks. Accuracy still reported 98 feet.

I am running GPS Test and Google Maps simultaneously and while the GPS test has 98' accuracy, clicking on my location on Google Maps shows 30' accuracy. Someone is not quite telling the truth!

I did walk my backyard and watched my location on Google Maps move with me. Very accurate for me.

 

[Adrift]

So you think it is reporting accuracy wrong? As long as google maps is accurate in the real world, thats all that matters. I'm crossing my fingers for my vibrant in Septembers firmware update.

I wish I could say that with 100% certainty, I can't, but I think we can say something has been improved since captivate/vibrant. When I was reading through the problems they were having with GPS, it seemed those having problems couldn't even get a location fix let alone tracking, and if aGPS was off then the number of folks reporting the problem jumped even higher.

Yet here we are seeing people with aGPS off (it was never on in most cases, like mine) and they are getting near instant locks with a good number of satellites in view/in use ( yes it is less than what EVO gets, but 30+ is a redundency). I really hope that the fix coming in September is all that it should be. However, if it makes performance of GPS similar to that of Epic, and reports 98 feet of accuracy yet performs better in real life scenarios, I'm betting most folks will be pretty happy with that. Some will still complain, but they will be better off than where they began.

 

[mrvirginia]

It seems we're getting good and quick GPS locks from multiple Sats, but we're all reporting the same accuracy number, which is 98 feet. I got 98 feet myself. Not much deviation from the 98 number (meaning no one is getting higher nor lower than 98).

So you think it is reporting accuracy wrong? As long as google maps is accurate in the real world, thats all that matters. I'm crossing my fingers for my vibrant in Septembers firmware update.

Personally I feel there is something strange going on with how accuracy is being reported. When GPS is tracking me it is never off by any where near a 98 foot margin of error.

Is there a way to post up the My Tracks results so you all can see what I am? I can then overlay my true path over it and we will be able to see how off it was.

so from what i'm reading in here, sounds like the GPS is mostly working fine, but reporting a false accuracy of 98'. c'mon Samsung, was expecting more. hope they get that patch out soon (are they even still working on one?).

 

[lescooper]

Seems like everone is reporting an accuracy of 98 feet with the Epic. When the GPS on my Captivate is working - I always get 16-32 feet accuracy.

I remember that one of the many GPS Fixes posted called for going into the GPS settings and changing the acceptable aaccuracy for a satellite lock to 100 feet. I assume this would allow locking onto more satellites quicker while sacrificing accuracy

It would be interesting to see if the stock setting on the Epic is set on 100 feet. If it is, Engadget needs to be notified that they have been deceived by Samsung.

 

[ranova]

Do none of you have cars? :O

Go take a test drive around (especially in cities with tall buildings) using Google Navigation and GPS Test + and see how it fares.

Checking for # of sats and accuracy inside your house is really pointless. You can tell when a turn-by-turn is off when driving...

 

[njnygiants]

GPS doesn't work. I;m not sure what phones you guys have. But I bought mines from the sprint store at 8am and GPS doesn't work at all. I keep getting " your current location is unavailable, then it says "data signal lost". I tired with with "Use wireless network" enabled and disabled.

I called sprint and they claim "IS" a known issue. and will patch it soon. I'm getting ready to return my phone. cause is seems to be bad engineering...I heard samsung worked with apple on designing their phones too...lol

If you read my post... you can trust my post... I worked in IT for 14 years... I have a true IT background...

 

[boomerbubba]

Do none of you have cars? :O

Go take a test drive around (especially in cities with tall buildings) using Google Navigation and GPS Test + and see how it fares.

Checking for # of sats and accuracy inside your house is really pointless. You can tell when a turn-by-turn is off when driving...

Actually, dedicatied street navigation apps are the least useful tests. Their snap-to-closest-street functionality obscures the unerlying GPS performance of the device and its low-level firmware.

For accuracy tests, use My Tracks instead, which will capture a track you can upload so we can all see it. Even then, driving tests can mask GPS behavior because the low-level GPS logic (on other Galaxy S platforms, at least) has always seemed to smooth and interpolate points, so the motion of a vehicle on a fairly straight line just causes the next points to be predicted by some internal algorithm. (This is not satellite navigation, but a form of dead reckoning.) So also capture tracks with quick turns and curves. And long stops. Even better, use My Tracks to capture tracks walking.

 

[njnygiants]

forget all the complicated test... does gps work in google maps? when you google say... pizza, then choose the local option...does gps kid in and show you what is local to you...

If your answer is no... then GPS doesn't work.

 

[Deleted User]

I am running GPS Test and Google Maps simultaneously and while the GPS test has 98' accuracy, clicking on my location on Google Maps shows 30' accuracy. Someone is not quite telling the truth!

I did walk my backyard and watched my location on Google Maps move with me. Very accurate for me.

Google maps reports in meters, GPS Test reports in feet.

I'm sitting in my office, one story building near the outer wall. My GPS has a fix on me and the icon is not moving, and I'm pretty much within 5 ft of where it says I am. I also just moved further into the building and it tracked me the whole way and stayed solidly on top of me with that same 5-ish ft range.

The +/-98.4ft thing was the same on the Moment and I think that the accuracy isn't right, not the GPS itself. I can live with it that way, not the other way around.

This is with 'Use Wireless Networks' turned off.

 

[Deleted User]

forget all the complicated test... does gps work in google maps? when you google say... pizza, then choose the local option...does gps kid in and show you what is local to you...

If your answer is no... then GPS doesn't work.

Yep, that works for me. I can voice search 'pizza' and it finds the local options.

 

[emuneee]

forget all the complicated test... does gps work in google maps? when you google say... pizza, then choose the local option...does gps kid in and show you what is local to you...

If your answer is no... then GPS doesn't work.

The accuracy needed for turn by turn navigation is far more stringent than accuracy needed for local Google searches. Satellite GPS can be completely broken or have a large margin of error and the local search still "appear" to work correctly (especially if it triangulates using cell towers). Not so much for turn-by-turn. This thread is to troubleshoot the GPS accuracy needed for turn by turn navigation, which explains the "complicated" test setup.

At the end of the day, if users have to go through great lengths, like this, to diagnose GPS issues, then its broken. Samsung needs to fix it. [/thread]

 

[airblade]

use wireless networks is defualt off but some programs ask you to turn it on. thought my gps was working until i saw that some program had turned prompted me to turn this on and i had forgotten. turned it off and gps works very poorly. got my phone early in the morning only tested it 2 days now but results are disappointing. the blue arrow in maps jumps around, puts me on wrong streets, tells me i've arived at my desitination when i have not. picked up my gf, in traffic yesterday her evo was spot on my epic was struggling. when the car was fully stoped the blue arrow was moving. deffinately accuracy is off, something is off. Can we ask samsung to include the epic in the update?

 

[Aero1]

Do none of you have cars? :O

Go take a test drive around (especially in cities with tall buildings) using Google Navigation and GPS Test + and see how it fares.

Checking for # of sats and accuracy inside your house is really pointless. You can tell when a turn-by-turn is off when driving...

Are you new to GPS on smartphones and how they are tested and have been tested for years? If so why comment?

Driving programs use "snap to" track making them the least useful for testing accuracy

Also what do you mean indoors? People are testing out of doors and finding highl inaccurate reporting.

There is some moderate level problem with the GPS on the Epic. It is less severe than the other Galaxies, but neither is it trivial: the Epic's GPS is nowhere near par with other smartphones, including cheaper older ones.

 

[SamsungVibrant]

forget all the complicated test... does gps work in google maps? when you google say... pizza, then choose the local option...does gps kid in and show you what is local to you...

If your answer is no... then GPS doesn't work.

lol

 

[SamsungVibrant]

The accuracy needed for turn by turn navigation is far more stringent than accuracy needed for local Google searches. Satellite GPS can be completely broken or have a large margin of error and the local search still "appear" to work correctly (especially if it triangulates using cell towers). Not so much for turn-by-turn. This thread is to troubleshoot the GPS accuracy needed for turn by turn navigation, which explains the "complicated" test setup.

At the end of the day, if users have to go through great lengths, like this, to diagnose GPS issues, then its broken. Samsung needs to fix it. [/thread]

You have valid points.