• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.
It does seem big. I might never use it, tbh, but I figured better to have it than not. It will live in the car, on the assumption that if I need GPS I won't be at home...

Seems to me that they could have had the dongle plug into the tablet, and then a socket in the dongle for the dock to plug into. But what do I know, I'm not a techie! :thinking:
 
Upvote 0
True dat. The Prime could have went from weak to mega wifi with the dongle.

Shame the two types of signals have different characteristics, but perhaps could have been done in parallel in the attachment. Perhaps would have cost more than they wanted.

My guess is that due to the lower volume of sales, the returns, dongle and customer service costs, the Prime already was in the red. A mega dongle would have made it deeper red.
 
Upvote 0
I ordered one, because it's free, but I expect to continue using my bluetooth GPS for navigation. That's the way to go, IMO, and you can get one for ~US$15 off ebay. Connecting via bluetooth uses less battery power than the internal GPS, and almost certainly less than the dongle, plus it has the benefit of leaving the connector free for charging.
 
Upvote 0
I ordered one, because it's free, but I expect to continue using my bluetooth GPS for navigation. That's the way to go, IMO, and you can get one for ~US$15 off ebay. Connecting via bluetooth uses less battery power than the internal GPS, and almost certainly less than the dongle, plus it has the benefit of leaving the connector free for charging.

Which one do you have? I saw a couple on ebay.
 
Upvote 0
It's not an antenna, it's a gps receiver, with antenna. A GPS receiver doesn't need to be very large, but if you want good performance, you need a larger antenna than most cellphones have. Again, I'll probably put it in a drawer, and continue to use my bluetooth GPS receiver. It works, reliably, and has its own battery. Mine is a unit I bought several years ago, an F-Tech Solar receiver. I'm not sure it's even sold any longer. I found this review of it, FWIW. It also uses a standard Nokia cellphone battery, in case a replacement is needed.
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones