GPS receiver upgrade or to buy Tytn II

[ritmia]

Dear All,
before to buy a Tytn II, I'd like to understand if the GPS comes upgraded by the future's ROMs (I think yes) or is necessary a future hardware change ???

P.S.:
I have a Tytn with the GPS Fortuna ClipOn BT, and I don't know is better to change the GPS receiver or buy the new one with GPS included.

Thanks a lot
Ciao ...

[weasel]

Dear All,
before to buy a Tytn II, I'd like to understand if the GPS comes upgraded by the future's ROMs (I think yes) or is necessary a future hardware change ???

P.S.:
I have a Tytn with the GPS Fortuna ClipOn BT, and I don't know is better to change the GPS receiver or buy the new one with GPS included.

Thanks a lot
Ciao ...

Buy the new phone - its worth it. The GPS works fine & the phone has a lot more oomph (CPU memory etc)

[wizzzard]

Seconded, get the Kaiser and off load your BT gps. My Wizard is now relegated to my wifes car with my old BT gps and that is her SatNav solution. I am well happy just having the Kaiser as the gps works as well if not better, and I only have to carry one device around.

[h0mersimps0n]

Had a bluetooth GPS unit connected to my AXIM as my GPS system before I bought this phone.

My AXIM crashed, battery died flat dead, so I had to use my phone as backup. Used the built-in GPS with TOMTOM on my Kaiser and it was AWESOME- worked perfectly!

Get this phone you won't need anything to supplement it what-so-ever...

[Nghiem]

No. The Kaiser built-in GPS chipset can't compare to BT-359 SIRF III. It sees less Satellite; also, many of them are invalid signal, that means these satellites were grey. With the ones are blue, the signal keeps going up and down. Sometimes, for somewhat reasons, Kaiser loose the GPS fix (you see the map turn around) even in the clear view sky, then you loose your current position.

If you're driving in the crowed sky area (e.g NYC), stick with bluetooth GPS SIRF III chipset receiver.

Read more here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=339257 I had used the BT-338 then upgraded to BT -359 which is slimmer, sleeker but lack of external antenna connector and less of batt. time life.

[lynxy]

i have tomtom - works faster.
tilt gps - far worse. but it works at 95%.

[louiscar]

Dear All,
before to buy a Tytn II, I'd like to understand if the GPS comes upgraded by the future's ROMs (I think yes) or is necessary a future hardware change ???

P.S.:
I have a Tytn with the GPS Fortuna ClipOn BT, and I don't know is better to change the GPS receiver or buy the new one with GPS included.

Thanks a lot
Ciao ...


Frankly I doubt the inbuilt GPS is going to be as good as an external one. (I reserve my judgement till my Tytn II arrives. However, your decision should be based on expense too. Do you mind spending out the extra for inbuilt GPS by buying a whole new Smartphone?

If yes then no problem because you can still use an external gps. If you want to keep the cost down get an external one. I bought an i-blue 737. The device cost me 30UKP and it's never ceased to amaze me how good it is. This will pick up 7 satelites anywhere in my home regardless of where I am. No need to go near a window, the acuracy is astounding with WAAS + EGNOs enabled and 115000 baud coms.

As I say I doubt the inbuilt one is going to match this but it probably will be fairly decent.

Disclaimer: this is just my opinion.

[vacsed]

No. The Kaiser built-in GPS chipset can't compare to BT-359 SIRF III. It sees less Satellite; also, many of them are invalid signal, that means these satellites were grey.

True for the reception quality, but not for the TTFF which is much shorter with the QualCOMM chipset than with a Sirf III (less than 5 seconds in most cases).

The degradation of the signal due to obstruction (when inside a car for example) is virtually identical to a Sirf III chipset.

The only real weakness with the QualCOMM chipset for the time being is that it has major problems getting a fix when moving quickly. I tried several times to get a fix while moving with ~450mph with a clear view to almost all satellites and the QualCOMM has a very hard time to find more than 2-3 useable satellites. Even after 5-10 minutes no useable position can be determined. Moving quickly to get a fix should not be a problem at all for any GPS chipset.

But I have high hopes that those "quirks" will get fixed with a future firmware update.

[jmacdonald801]

The Kaiser has an antenna port specifically for the GPS undeneath the battery cover. I don't know if a battery cover can be found that exposed it more gracefully but I imagine with a small antenna would augment the signal nicely.

That being said, without using an external antenna, I'm actually quite impressed with the accuracy. I wouldn't have anything to compare against it but it's always been dead on for me.

I use TomTom 6 but I've played with google maps and Windows Live Search.

I have noticed it can take a long time to get the first lock on occasion, and especially so when driving at speed. Not really a problem for me, as you usually plan where I'm going while the car is stopped.

-James

[scottwilkins]

Since GPS works with as little as 3 sats, and 4 for 3D positioning, why does everyone worry about getting 7 tuned in? Seems a bit anal to me.

The Kaiser GPS IMHO is a tad slow to init, but other than that, it's worth every penny to not have 2 devices to handle at times. I've never had a problem loosing connectivity, so I'm 100% satisfied with the Kaiser. YMMV of course.

Now if HTC would use a decent CMOS sensor in the camera, then I'd call the phone perfect. But that's another thread...

[ritmia]

Dear All,

thanks to everybody about the answers ... I think I'll upgrade my GPS receiver (is more cheap). In this moment, I wait other tests about the GPS of Tytn II.
Ciao, ...

[vacsed]

Since GPS works with as little as 3 sats, and 4 for 3D positioning, why does everyone worry about getting 7 tuned in?

Because the more satellites you are evaluating, the more precise the position gets and in case you lose track of one of the satellites, you will still be shown a valid position.

Adding to that, the RAIM functionality of GPS receivers for an even more precise position while getting rid of most common GPS erros only works with 5 satellites or more.

So, while it's true that you only need 3 satellites for an 2D position, this fix will not be very precise (due to lack of crosschecking with other satellites and typical GPS calculation errors which happen all the time) and you will lose your position as soon as one satellite disappears from your view.

However GPS receivers which can track more than 12 satellites at any given times are useless because there will never more than 12 satellites visible at any specific point of the earth, most of time you can only track and use a maximum of 8 satellites simultaneously.

[unwired4]

I tried several times to get a fix while moving with ~450mph with a clear view to almost all satellites and the QualCOMM has a very hard time to find more than 2-3 useable satellites.


Doesn't your F15 eagle have built in sat nav?

:eek: