GPS Signal Strength. - Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General

Is anyone experiencing this same problem or is this normal?
I’ve now had my TyTN II for a few weeks and have had to use the GPS over a dozen times.
My TyTN II comes pre-installed with CoPilot 7 which I very much dislike due to its lagging response time when you accidently go off course. The other thing I’ve noticed with CoPilot 7 is it likes to take a completely different route to what I’m used to on the Tom Tom 6 software.
So due to not being satisfied with CoPilot 7 I decided to install Tom Tom 6 which I use to use on my O2 Atom Exec with a Blue Tooth GPS receiver (GlobalSat BT-338), and let me just say Tom Tom 6 with this receiver works 120% at all times, full strength and in places where my TomTom GO500 buckled, this thing just soldered on.
Anyway my main problem is that with Tom Tom 6 and the internal GPS receiver, I don’t seem to get more than 2-3 bars showing on my GPS signal. I thought it could be Tom Tom but checked the signal strength in CoPilot 7 and the same thing is happening.
I then paired my GlobalSat BT-338 with my TyTN II and same deal, no more than 2-3 bars!!!!
Could there be something wrong with my phone or are you all getting the same results? So before I call HTC and complain, I’d like to get some feedback.

Anyone.......!!!!

blimpmedia said:
Is anyone experiencing this same problem or is this normal?
I’ve now had my TyTN II for a few weeks and have had to use the GPS over a dozen times.
My TyTN II comes pre-installed with CoPilot 7 which I very much dislike due to its lagging response time when you accidently go off course. The other thing I’ve noticed with CoPilot 7 is it likes to take a completely different route to what I’m used to on the Tom Tom 6 software.
So due to not being satisfied with CoPilot 7 I decided to install Tom Tom 6 which I use to use on my O2 Atom Exec with a Blue Tooth GPS receiver (GlobalSat BT-338), and let me just say Tom Tom 6 with this receiver works 120% at all times, full strength and in places where my TomTom GO500 buckled, this thing just soldered on.
Anyway my main problem is that with Tom Tom 6 and the internal GPS receiver, I don’t seem to get more than 2-3 bars showing on my GPS signal. I thought it could be Tom Tom but checked the signal strength in CoPilot 7 and the same thing is happening.
I then paired my GlobalSat BT-338 with my TyTN II and same deal, no more than 2-3 bars!!!!
Could there be something wrong with my phone or are you all getting the same results? So before I call HTC and complain, I’d like to get some feedback.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi blimpmedia...I too have noticed a significant decrease in GPS sensitivity in my TyTNII and my previous phone (an Eten X500). An external antenna helps a bit, but who wants to wander around with one of those, or be bothered having to plug it in in the car? The X500 has a ceramic GPS antenna and a Star SiRFIII receiver -- my suspicion is that the TyTNII has no antenna and the Qualcom chip set is not quite as sensitive as the Star.
In the case of the GlobalSat BT unit -- that SHOULD have worked as well as it did on your other unit, I would think. I you sure you had the nav system configured to connect to the BT, rather than the internal GPS?/? (check COM ports???)
/drt

For what it's worth, I'm in my study upstairs with a roof between me and the great blue yonder. I'm looking at 5 bars as I type this...

Sorry, that's with TomTom Navigator 6!

Drtolson your right,
I had the wrong com port setting, my GlobalSat BT-338 shows full strength now.
I’m a little disappointed because one of my reasons I bought this phone was to eliminate all these extra little devices I was carrying with my O2.

First couple of days since I bought my device, I was using TomTom6 navigator. It worked very well, although I switched to Garmin Mobile XT and AdriaRoute 2.0, because it has much better coverage for Slovenia. Most of the time when I'm in a car or wandering around on foot, it's signal is showing 5 bars. Works like charm, not one complain. Well, one, but that's not Garmin's fault - 3D mode, no video driver, which leads to slow movement

FWIW the internal GPS works very well. I use Tomtom regularly in a variety of situations, open space and built up areas. I ensure quick GPS is updated weekly and have no problems.
Howefer I do notice that if I look at the Tomtom satellites screen or GPStest screen that sometimes (quite often) the satellite lock jumps around like crazy from one sat to another. Each satellite locking for maybe a second or two then jumping to a lock with another. At any one time I might only be locked on a couple of sats but in fact a range of 5 to 7 satellites are getting locks on a sort of rotational basis.
Now all of that would concern me if the tomtom was laggy or showed my position incorrectly. In fact it does not lag and the position is accurate. Generally I get a position fixed between 10 and 40 feet of my actual position - that is within the tolerances of the map and the dat received. So no problem.
For you the question I think should not be so much, how many sats, but how accurately is it showing my position.
Mike

Related

Please report your GPS experience

For the lucky people who got their Kaisers already, would you please report your experience regarding the built-in GPS please specially the initial cold fix as it was very slow with the Trinity P3600
TomTom 6.030 does not work, instead you have to install the TT version 6.0.32 from the accompanying CD. The first fix (after QuickGPS ran) was almost instaneaous and a lot faster than on the Athena.
Agreed; and, at least in Google Maps, the position is more accurate than the Ameo.
For batterie Life
Hello,
Can you post hte comment of batterie life when you use the GPS.
For example: the phone
the telephone is load completely (100% full batterie) and when you use 1 hour of gps
how much battery it remains?
Thanks.
Private69.
@++++
Pfff TyTN II has 5 to 7 satellites reception on the dinnertable in the living room where the x7500 does not receive anything. Not bad for a Qualcomm GPS that supposedly is less good as the Sirf III ...
Wiz said:
Pfff TyTN II has 5 to 7 satellites reception on the dinnertable in the living room where the x7500 does not receive anything. Not bad for a Qualcomm GPS that supposedly is less good as the Sirf III ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry for a stupid question, do u use tomtom 6 to check the number of satellites? i cant get my gps to start working at all.
Wiz said:
TomTom 6.030 does not work, instead you have to install the TT version 6.0.32 from the accompanying CD. The first fix (after QuickGPS ran) was almost instaneaous and a lot faster than on the Athena.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Am running 6.030 now!
Don't ask me how or why but it's working fine.
Joe
I now verified that on TT6.030 you have to use "Other NMEA GPS/4800Bd/Com 4: and on TT6.032 you can stay with "Internal GPS"
In any case, TT6.032 with "Internal GPS" the fix is aqcuired a lot faster than on TT6.030
TT6.032 is supplied with the TyTNN II on the accompanying CDRom
(TT6.032 incidentally does not allow itself to be installed on any other device, the installer prevents that, but after installation on the TyTN II, the directory can be copied to for instance the x7500 to replace the old installation there, and it will work fine. My first impression is that also on the x7500 with TT6.032 the fix is faster, but I still need to run the "dinner table test" )
its working fine now after i installed the version on the cd. thanks. my MapKing chinese version also working, GREAT!
When you use tt6.32 from the CD, can you use any tt6 map? or is it locked to 1 map only?
Can you have multiple maps with the tt6.32 from the CD?
Can you confirm that the version supplied with TyTn II i.e., TomTom 6.0.32, is a FULL version ? Licences? or is it a taster and you have to pay to register it as a full version? If it is full, does it come with Great Britain Maps (full) or you have to download them? In case of download, is it free?
Thanks
The CD version of TT 6.032 that comes with the Kaiser is as full as an update one would dowload from TomTom. There is no code. There are no maps either. One can download one area map (f.i. London) for free, but no country or continent maps are added. Those will have to be purchased separately.
If you install it on top of an already installed and registered TT6.0x0, it will not ask for a new code. Any old registration will remain valid.
On another note, sitting side by side in my car, I noticed that the x7500's GPS reception was a lot more consistent then the TyTNN II's. The TyTN II may acquire its fix a lot faster, but on the whole, the x7500's reception is better (even though my "dinner table test" would lead to believe otherwise) and more consistent.
While my x7500 had a permanent reception of 9-10 satellites (albeit with shorter bars) the TyTN II was jumping up and down between 3 and 7 satellites.
I currently use my Hermes in an 'in car' holder, with a bluetooth GPS reciever face up in the window. One thing that I would like to know, is that if I was to get a Kaiser and put it into my car holder, surely the orientation of the GPS reciever inside the Kaiser would be 'end on' to the sky, and the satelites.
This must affect performance?
I got mine this morning. Took me quite a while to get GPS working -- had to do a hard reset. It's now working with Route 66, which I used to use on my Wizard.
GPS data seems a bit bursty -- when I was viewing it with GPSViewer, I'd get a bunch of NMEA strings, then nothing for several seconds, then another burst.
Hum..seems to be same issue than Paul from Modaco :
"The GPS bug seems to occur with some applications whereby the GPS 'data stream' will pause for a few seconds at a time, which makes some apps think the GPS has gone away (e.g. Google Maps) and other apps just update in sudden jumps rather than smoothly." ?
Seems that HTC did not fix it in the final ROM.
Do you know if HTC is aware of this issue and plan to fix it ?
Thanks
don't know if i've encountered the bug but here's my situation: i cannot get the GPS Hardware Port (or COM) settings to "stick" after changing them. for example i can change GPS Program Port and it will stick but changing the Hardware Port and clicking OK has no impact. if i reopen the GPS settings, the Hardware Port shows "(NONE)". and this is after 4 hard resets. funny thing is that is worked when i initially set up my device, then all of a sudden, TT6 was reporting "No GPS Device"... it may be time to pack it up and return it for a replacement... any suggestions would be appreciated.
Update: Followed Paul's (on Modaco) suggestion to leave the default settings and now GPS is working.
Which Navigation programs work in landscape mode???
for those of you with a Tytn II, are you able to modify the GPS Hardware COM port from one setting to another? the fact that mine says "(NONE)" is leading me to believe i have a hardware defective unit. thanks.
Kaiser and mapking 2007
ive tried mapking 07 on kaiser and it doesnt work. It juz cannot pinpoint the location that I am at. I wonder if its the software problem??
I installed TOM-TOM from the HTC CD and it has worked with out problems, even installed US MAPS from another Tom-Tom CD I have from the original version. Only problem so far, once I was using it and received an SMS message and it locked up. Had to restart. Receiving email is fine but the SMS message freaked it out.

The Great Kaiser GPS Comparo

A lot of folks (myself included) have been wondering how good the GPS in the Kaiser is. Since I own something like 7 GPS units at last count, I decided to grab all the handheld ones and do a comparison
In the best highly subjective and unscientific manner, I let each GPS lock in my window where easily 12 satellites are visible, then after it had stabilized brought them in another 5-6 feet to where my oldest GPS had always been borderline. I used Mapopolis and TomTom on the PocketPCs to display how many satellites (birds) and what signal strength each of the connected GPS's was locking. The standalone units I put on their satellite display to get the same info.
I watched them all for close to an hour, fiddling with positioning, orientation, etc and derived a completely unscientific rating for each. Keeping and holding more satellites with higher signal strength yielded more points, and I arbitrarily set the best one at 10 points, then tried to rate the others relative to that. Note that this is only signal holding ability, not lock time or ease of lock, and it isn't tested MOVING where a GPS can really show (or show up) it's signal holding ability. With all that said, hopefully these are better than nothing and will give folks some idea of where the Kaiser falls in the spectrum of GPS performance.
In order from "worst" to "best", 'Unit - My Rating':
Garmin eTrex Vista - 3
Holux GM270 CompactFlash Card - 4
Garmin eTrex VistaC - 7
AT&T Tilt (Kaiser) - 8
GlobalSat BT-338 BlueTooth - 10
The SirfStarIII in the BT-338 blows away all the other GPS units - it consistently held no less than 9 of the 12 birds, and typically 11 or 12 - and all with fantastic signal strength. Based on my past experience, I can say this is an awesome unit for lock time, lock durability, etc, etc, etc so I was unsurprised that it was the best performer here.
The Tilt/Kaiser actually did surprisingly well, typically 1-3 birds less than the BT-338, noticeably weaker signal strength and a lot more hopping around - i.e. holding 9 birds, but a different 9 from moment to moment. Test was done with QuickGPS data having been downloaded a few days ago, but QuickGPS executable not running.
The VistaC was another surprise - I've owned the original Vista since not long after it came out, and recently got a used VistaC. A lot more hopping than the Kaiser, but consistently holding 6-8 birds for a good solid fix. I had always assumed the GPS circuitry was common across the eTrex line, but the newer VistaC was a LOT better than my old Vista.
I don't recall which chipset is in the Holux - I think it was SirfStarII. I was never thrilled with this GPS and often had to use an external antenna in the car to get decent lock durability, so I was not shocked to find it near the bottom of the list.
I loved my Vista so I didn't really realize how much GPS technology has improved - it'd be tough sell to recommend one of these to anyone today. Wonderful device, but the new Vista HCx is likely to blow it away.
Well, it was a fun little project and I hope someone evaluating the Kaiser will find their existing GPS on my list and get an idea of how the Kaiser may perform in comparison.
Richard
Nice review.
It would be nice to see a similar review of the devices while you are moving.
At this moment, Tilt's GPS is completely useless for geocaching and walking because there is not way of disabling static navigation as you can do with SirfStarIII's gps. Even if you got information from 8 satellites there are moments where you position will freeze and it won't update even if you are walking.
Tilt's GPS only really works when you are driving.
I did a similar test back when I got my Kaiser about 6 weeks ago, running it and my BT-338. Results were pretty much the same.
However, more recently, it's been harder for my Kaiser to get an initial fix indoors, even with fresh QuickGPS data. When the Kaiser was new, it would get a fix within 30 seconds running in my living room -- now it can take up to 30 minutes if it gets a fix at all. Outdoors, it still gets quick fixes -- 10 to 30 seconds.
Have a Eten M700 and Kaiser and have some comparison. For GPS reception, I would rate M700 with full mark 10 and kaiser 7. The GPS signal is unbelievably strong on M700 as it gets a patch antenna inside.
I modify my kaiser a little so that the screen can be tilt up to almost 90 degree, I can just leave it on the dashboard when using tomtom.
staryon said:
Nice review.
It would be nice to see a similar review of the devices while you are moving.
At this moment, Tilt's GPS is completely useless for geocaching and walking because there is not way of disabling static navigation as you can do with SirfStarIII's gps. Even if you got information from 8 satellites there are moments where you position will freeze and it won't update even if you are walking.
Tilt's GPS only really works when you are driving.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've used kaiser's GPS for cycling and it has worked fine with "compegps" application!
pepeto2001 said:
I've used kaiser's GPS for cycling and it has worked fine with "compegps" application!
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Click to collapse
For that it should be fine. Usually you got this problem is your speed is below 1.2 m/s (3.2 miles per hour)
Modify Kaiser?
Tonychen,
How did you modify the Kaiser to tilt almost 90 degrees? This would be awesome as the 'tilt" is not enough for me to use it on the dashboard of either of my cars.
Can you provide any pics of the mod you did and explain how you did it?
Thanks.
This would void your warranty, unless you really want it. I can write a small guide here if you are still interested.
Check the photo attached.
tonychen said:
This would void your warranty, unless you really want it. I can write a small guide here if you are still interested.
Check the photo attached.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you don't mind a tuturial would be great.
tonychen said:
This would void your warranty, unless you really want it. I can write a small guide here if you are still interested.
Check the photo attached.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Come on with this small guide we are (at least me) interested...
BUMP.
Guide please.
juiceppc said:
BUMP.
Guide please.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not that I really care, but you might do better PM'ing the guy who said he modded his rather than bumping a GPS thread and hoping he responds
Just my $0.02,
Richard
I would just like to comment that I have not experienced this lockup of the GPS while moving at slow speeds. I've played around with TomTom while walking down a city street and it seemed to track speed and direction just fine, not that it was particularly useful in this manner. It consistently tracked my speed at 1-2mph and has never had this locking up or pausing that I've read about in other threads. I've tested with the original AT&T rom and one of the Big Storage AT&T modified roms with no issues.
-James
Compared with a Garmin Vista Cx, it seems more sensitive - it can lock onto three or four birds in the centre of the ground floor of my house while the Garmin is hard pressed to get a full lock even on the top floor.
Looking at the pattern of locks on a GPS monitor program, I get the impression that it is a lot less than 12 channel - anyone seen a specification? My overall impression is that it's a useful feature for non-critical navigation, but I still carry my Garmin for the serious stuff. The combination of GPS and 3g is wonderful - open up Live Search and look for Fast Food near "Here" - yes, Garmins have a POI database built in, but it is very limited compared with the combined contents of MSN and Google!
Martin
Follow up : I am really beginning to be quite impressed by the sensitivity of this GPS. I went into London by train yesterday and switched the GPS on sitting in the middle of a crowded carriage. I got a five bird lock within a minute and retained it for the entire journey (apart from long tunnels, of course). On several occasions it was reporting locks on as many as ten satellites. Accuracy was also pretty good - assessed by comparing position reported through Google Maps with observation through the window - certainly, when we stopped in stations, the position in Google matched well. I've tried the same with a Garmin Vista Cx - on the same route - and you are lucky to get any kind of fix without sitting at a window seat, with the GPS held close to the window.

Dead horse beating: Kaiser vs Visiontac GPS Tomtom review

I went through a few Windows Smartphones before getting my first PPC (a Motorola MPx) just over a year ago. I already had a Bluetooth GPS receiver: Visiontac VGPS 700 I was trying to use it with my Motorola A1200, with no luck. However, with the MPx, and Tomtom, I was able to navigate via GPS with my own GPS system as it were.
That setup quickly (within weeks) gave way to a Cingular 8525 paired to the Visiontac GPS and away I went. I travel a lot for work. From So Cal to (this past year) Mass (Boston), NYC, Kentucky, Ohio, Tenn, Utah, Arizona, NM, and so on. I've used the 8525 in all kinds of areas, from urban areas like San Francisco, NYC, Philly, LA, Cincinnati, Chicago, and so on to areas in the relative middle of nowhere such as the So Cal desert, some areas of Kentucky, PA, and TN I've been to the last year (way, way off the nearest road). Since I've had it, I've put probably driven 20,000-30,000 miles with the Visiontac and Tomtom on. I've got a decent idea of how quick it takes to get a lock when cold, how long to get a lock after getting off a plane in another portion of the country, and how many satellites it shows in Tomtom. I've checked it against hundreds of roadside speed warning signs, and used it to calibrate the speedometers of three Jeeps now.
Then, a last week, I get the ATT Tilt (aka 8925, aka Kaiser). I move my 6gb micro SD across to it, fire up Tomtom (which I've always run off the card- it makes it easier when flashing every other week.) and go. After getting the com port dialed in (COM 4) and the baud rate (started at 4800 like many on here said, now on 57500) I've noticed that the internal GPS of the Kaiser just doesn't compare with the Visiontac bluetooth unit.
I went to San Fran this weekend (from Riverside- about 380 miles) and drove around town up there all weekend using the new phone for directions. I put about 1100 miles on the vehicle, and the navigation on the Kaiser. After losing signal in some areas of the city and having to drive until it found a satellite again and recalculated a route, where I didn't remember losing it before on the old setup, and noting that instead of 5 bars shown for signal as on the Hermes, I see a fluxuating 3-5 bars on the Kaiser.
So, this morning on the way in to work, I fire up both units, side by side to see what the deal is. I was wondering if the Kaiser really was lacking where the Visiontac/Hermes setup didn't seem to be.
Sure enough, the Kaiser running Tomtom 6 shows 3-5 (most often 4) bars on open freeway where the Hermes shows 5 bars. In the GPS configuration settings on Tomtom I find what I believe to be the answer. The Visiontac GPS tracks 12 satellites, the Kaiser, tracks only 8 most of the time, occasionally will track 12.
If that wasn't enough to cause me to lose direction and location, the Visiontac GPS appears more sensitive. The way Tomtom shows how good the signal is, is by the height of a particular satellite's bar on a bar graph. If you were to divide the bar into 5ths, the Visiontac seems to constantly be a fifth higher (20% more sensitive) than the Kaiser's built in GPS.
As for battery usage, I get about 3.5 hours of navigation (along with a few phone calls using the Jawbone headset) with the Kaiser before I get the "charge battery to prevent data loss" warning. On the Hermes, I get about 5.5 hours, with the Visiontac GPS able to run to almost 8 hours before needing a recharge. I expected a loss in battery power, due to the unit also having to power the GPS chip. I'm not sure I expected 2 hours, but I'm not completely bummed over it. My GPS usage is largely in a vehicle, or inside, to find out how far something is, so I can plug it in if needed.
I have also noticed that Tomtom is faster to start on the Kaiser. It is faster to allow you to type in addresses to navigate to, or points of interest to look up, and it calculates the route quicker. Key press response in general are quicker than on the Hermes. I expected a little quicker, thanks to the added RAM, but not this much- they both have 400 mhz chipsets. Granted, it still isn't instant, but it is an improvement.
Phone Specs at time of test said:
Hermes:
Running Starbase64's 6 3.62 WWE/HTC Rom for Hermes
Stock Battery
Kaiser:
Running ATT as-delivered ROM 1.57.502.2 (08/25/07)
Stock Battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Overall:
I just wish there was a way to up the sensitivity and/or the number of satellites that the Kaiser's GPS tracked. Compared to the Visiontac VGPS 700, it just can't compete in urban environs or in heavily wooded areas. It looses signal too easily. And, while I haven't tried some of the larger bridges around here yet, I am left wondering how it will do under them. Aside from that, it is great to not have to carry around two items to navigate, I have no more bluetooth receiver falling off my dash when going around a corner, and if I have my phone, I can find a place for dinner, or find my way out of an unfamiliar area with 90 percent confidence. The Kaiser is quicker than the Hermes for navigation, and overall is accurate, however it does leave a little to be desired. Am I happy I went to the Kaiser? Absolutely. Am I going to be selling my Hermes and Visiontac? (the original plan) Probably not for a while.
Hopefully this helps any who are later to the game than I am and/or still sitting on the fence trying to decide whether or not to jump in.
Would adding the external antenna help, for the areas whre it is a pain?
I don't know what it looks like or how painful that would be, but it may be an option.
I'm not completely happy with the GPS performance of my Tytn2. I had a MDA Vario (pre-pre-decessor of the Tytn2) and an external Adapt-700 bt unit. That one worked brilliantly. Even inside a Renault (with the coated windows) it worked flawless. Alway perfect reception. It's different with my Tytn2. In the morning, it takes some time to get a fix. I was used to 10-15 seconds before a fix was there. Now it is sometimes 1 minute.
But...I've notices something. The QuickGPS program makes it work a lot better. I knew that it should improve the performance, but the program is a bit misleading. It says that once you retrieved the data, it's valid for six days. So...you'd be in the clear for the rest of the week so to say. But I noticed that when you do a 'refresh' in the morning (every day), it works much, much better. I can even get a fix where it wouldn't before.
So, my tip would be to run the QuickGPS every day, or every time before a drive.
Over2land
Another question. How well is TomTom performing for you 'quality of mapwise'? I've read a few posts complaining about how old the maps are for Nagigator 6, and especially for the U.S. Also comments about 'no rumored upgrade' for Navigator 6.
I just purchased it, so I got it for whatever it's worth. But just curious about what you are seeing.
ewingr said:
Over2land
Another question. How well is TomTom performing for you 'quality of mapwise'? I've read a few posts complaining about how old the maps are for Nagigator 6, and especially for the U.S. Also comments about 'no rumored upgrade' for Navigator 6.
I just purchased it, so I got it for whatever it's worth. But just curious about what you are seeing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Missed the first question, sorry.
I have no idea if an external wired GPS antenna would help it. I would hazard to say it couldn't hurt. However, with the Hermes, there was evidence put forth that the external antenna (for the radio/GSM) fried the output circuits or some such, rendering it useless as a phone. I'd be worried about that happening here. Also, I've got like 5 vehicles on the road right now I rotate through, or try to rotate through, and a hard-mounted wired antenna wouldn't work for me.
In San Fran, there are issues with Tomtom not knowing where and when I can or can't turn a certain direction which really annoyed me. In So Cal, there are certain areas (understandable with the housing boom) that it just doesn't have on the maps. Areas that are 3 or 4 years old still aren't there. I've also noticed the same thing in NJ, intersections don't exist in the maps and so forth. I guess really there is something I've noted everywhere I've gone. Tomtom always gets me there, often with less fan trouble than if I was one my own, I find it more accurate than Mapquest also.
They really do need map updating.
And, they really need to look at updating quickest routes. Half the time in my local area, I don't follow Tomtom's freeway suggestions due to congestion, which is persistent congestion that should be noted. Areas like the 15/91 interchange, the 10 between the 5 and 405, the 10 where it drops south to hit the 60, and so on.
Then again, I've not used any other map/ turn by turn software so I have nothing to compare it against either.
ewingr said:
Would adding the external antenna help, for the areas whre it is a pain?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I still have an external GPS antenna in my car. I didn't have time to hook it up yet, but I'll check if it makes a difference. With my previous GPS receiver, which I kept in my glove compartiment (hence the antenna), it worked well. Not that it was really needed, but I just wanted optimal reception.
This is a great post. I am trying to buy a used kaiser now so I don't need a extra gps receiver. Seems I need to consider it again.
What ROM are you using on your Kaiser? There have been great differences in GPS performance between ROMs. From general advice AGPS should be disabled too for best performance.
Personally I'm very happy with mine, I'm working a lot with different GPS modules, and the performance is as good as the best ones I have. Sat count might be a bit lower (which gives fewer bars in TomTom), but the performance is really similar.
As already noted, an external antenna could help. The typical GPS antenna you'll find in a stand-alone module is a 25x25x4mm ceramic block weighing 30gr, no need to say that it's impossible to fit such a thing in a phone, so obviously the integrated antennas in those are a lot less sensitive.
Of course our uses are different and if you always use the combo in your car it doesn't matter much if you have 2 separate devices. I tend to rather use it walking, running, biking, flying so in lots of different places and with a separate receiver I would of course not have it with me most of the times I'd have needed it. Having the integrated one is great for me, even if there's a little tradeoff in performance.
I am using Romeos 4.2 and have never had a problem with my gps on mt TYTNII. I get a fix indoors which I cannot do with my Garmin Rino no external antenna required.

Garmin XT issue

does anyone have this? the program will not run anymore. it loads the splash screen then it goes back to my home screen? are there any solutions?
I had the same issue a couple of weeks ago - never figured out how to correct the problem so I re-installed the program from scratch (on SD card of course) and soft reset and it worked fine...but I don't like Garmin XT that much so I switched to Igo8 instead: the maps are not as smooth but works faster and better + Igo has maps of regions of the world that neither Garmin nor Tomtom have...
One thing for sure, this is not an issue related to your internal GPS so don't go around messing with those settings...
Oh, and you might want to try Tomtom Taster version (with 1 free area downloadable map) - it doesn't take up much memory and it would confirm to you that there is no problem with the GPS itself...
i had tomtom and it sucked. way to many buttons to push just go get a route
the only reason i stuck with garmin mobile xt for so long is because of the free traffic update and gas price, but the software and navigation is slow and choppy, and the random freezes (disabled the agps fixed the freeze issue).
now i finally settled with igo 8... had a good run with tomtom, and probably never touch garmin again. it is a shame, their garmin nuvi is so good
theclueless said:
now i finally settled with igo 8... had a good run with tomtom, and probably never touch garmin again. it is a shame, their garmin nuvi is so good
Click to expand...
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So does iGo have free traffic rerouting and gas price listings like Garmin Mobile XT? These two are my deal-breakers for selecting any GPS routing app.
My Garmin Mobile XT is flawless
I've not had one issue in over four months of use. I've run it at the same time as my Garmin in the car and they both are perfect. What do you mean by slow maps? I'm in the US and the maps have not sent me wrong once. I can't believe how well it works. What version are you using. There are updates online and their tech support is very good without a wait. The only issue I've had is the chip (hardware) doesn't sync up cold for three minutes at times. This happens with Google and Garmin. With garmin you can see the signal strength of each satellite. It usually syncs on eight or nine. I've noticed that several at a time start flashing. I've read that this is a faulty chip issue and HTC says they will replace the whole board free. I haven't sent it back yet because once it syncs it works great for hours of driving.
A hot and warm sync is less than ten seconds. I've tried to contact HTC and the chip manufacturer but haven't been able to reach anyone technical. They just want to change the whole board.
when i start navigation with garmin mobile xt, the position cursor updates once every 2-3 seconds (sudden jump), instead of the smooth movement like tomtom and iGo and google map, even to the highest detail.

Vivid GPS

The GPS on the Vivid is amazing; it gets a lock in a few seconds outdoor. It works pretty well in door too. Not sure what GPS chip is in the Vivid but it works even better than the Galaxy S2 (which has the SIRF IV chip).
Yes, I agree. Coming from the Captivate, this is like heaven!
GPS!
BEST.GPS.EVAR!
seriously kids, im in awe of the gps on the vivid.
Tested with Mapping Programs
I did a multi-mile hike using the Backcountry Navigator program where I had downloaded aerial photos of the area. Often the Vivid GPS showed me within 5 feet of my actual location. Occasionally I might be 15-20 feet off.
When I used the GPS with the CoPilot routing program, I noticed that when I reached an intersection, the program/GPS showed me at that location.
So, I have found the GPS to be accurate and responsive.

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