reinbeau-
"By standalone, do you mean unassisted by cell towers and wireless?" Exactly. With or without assisted modes...dl GPSTest, see for yourself what the satellite signals are reported as when your phone is/isn't working. If the signal strength is marginal all the time (30-35db) then it is just "Well punk, do you feel lucky today?" as Dirty Harry put it.<G> If the signal strength is 30db on the bad days, and 50db on the good days--there's an intermittent problem in the phone. Heck, maybe Samsung is finding out what Sony found out years ago, that cheap assembly lines have a lot of physical problems.
fldude-
"My 2c: I think we need to get to a basis for what people accept as a functioning GPS on a cell device."
Why should be hold a cell phone to any different standard than any other GPS device?
"1: How long does it take to get a fix,"
Not device-dependent to any large degree. All GPSes of the same "generation", operating in the same conditions, generate the cold fix and hot fix in about the same amount of time. That could be as long as 45 minutes for a 1st-generation GPS getting a cold fix, out of the box, after being off and moved three thousand miles, or more typically a 3rd or 4th generation GPS gets a hot fix in under a minute when it was last used in the same local area. Doesn't matter who makes it--the hardware and the algorithms they run are all similar thanks to market competition. Nuvi, TomTom, Garmin, Magellan, even Timex, all remarkably similar today.
"and 2: Once it has obtained a fix, what is the accuracy."
Again, that is about the same for all units because the accuracy is determined by the GPS satellite system and the algorithms used, and all the players are at the same level. Granted, if you want to compute height (elevation) the formulas are more complex and take a little longer to run, or use more computing power. But same-for-same they all run about the same. The accuracy of "plain" GPS versus WAAS-enabled GPS (which I don't think any cell phone offers, although every dedicated GPS pretty much does offer it now) is all to published standards.
The only accuracy question with a cell phone GPS is "which assisted mode are you using?" because Skyhook-assissted GPS will gnerate one accuracy, cell tower assisted GPS another (sloppy) one, and standalone GPS comes back to the system itself.
"Mine passes on both accounts and I suspect most Captivates do the same."
Congrats on having a working phone! It would be nice if Samsung and AT&T could talk to us like adults discussing a technical piece of equipment, and confirm whether particular phones are or aren't working. And with a GPS, you do this by asking "How many satellites does it see? And what is the s/n ratio, the signal strength, it is seeing from them?"
So please! open your GPS menu, make sure you are in STANDALONE mode. Then run GPSTest or anything similar to see what the signal strength of the satellites is being reported as. If you are seeing 30-35db signals, your phone is not up to par. If you are seeing 40-55db signals, congratulations, you've proven at least one phone works well enough to be relied on as a GPS, and that the problem is one of quality control rather than design flaws.
Your experience and objective answers can help resolve this question for all of us!
We as users shouldn't have to do this. But like so many modern corporations, AT&T and Samsung only know how to have "tech" support reading from scripts and shipping replacements. "Throw it at the wall and see what sticks" is a lousy way to test spaghetti, even worse way to do product support.
Good post, thanks!
