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RogerS is offline RogerS
2007-12-07 , 17:57
Posts: 772 | Thanked: 183 times | Joined on Jul 2005 @ Montclair, NJ (NYC suburbs)
#1
I've used the Nokia-branded external GPS with the N800 Internet Tablet, but I pretty much only did that in the car and headed somewhere.

So I'm a bit mystified by the reports of poor GPS performance in the N810.

Some of these are for "I was moving around indoors" situations which I never tried.

Here's what promethh wrote yesterday in the ITT forums:
I can usually keep a 5-satellite lock on a bus or near a building window. I can usually keep a 7-satellite lock when driving my Xterra or Forester. Acquisition times when warm/hot (near/at last location) have been 30sec-2min, and 2-6min when "cold" (unknown location)
Um-m, up to 6 minutes to acquire one's position? (OK, from 2 to 6 minutes.)

Is this something that can be improved by software? Or will it only be fixed by a change to the hardware (eg, doing something with the antenna)?

Or is this a non-problem that isn't going to interfere with real-world GPS use?
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khalid is offline khalid
2007-12-07 , 18:12
Posts: 69 | Thanked: 12 times | Joined on Apr 2007 @ Colorado, USA
#2
Those times sound quite normal for non-high sensitivity GPS chipset. Does any one know if N810 is supposed to have SirfStar III or another high sensitivity chipset?
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weatherman is offline weatherman
2007-12-07 , 19:11
Posts: 56 | Thanked: 12 times | Joined on Nov 2007 @ Brooklyn, NY
#3
Acquisition times are much longer for me than 5-6 minutes. I've been testing the GPS under a number of conditions and I can tell you that it is far inferior to any standalone GPS I've used. There is something very wrong with the n810's GPS, never mind the anemic mapping software. Nokia has to address this before a lot of people get seriously pissed off.
 
TA-t3 is offline TA-t3
2007-12-07 , 19:19
Posts: 3,841 | Thanked: 1,079 times | Joined on Nov 2006
#4
@khalid: It's supposed to have a SiRF Star III chipset. So all this slowness makes no sense whatsoever (except for cold start conditions), unless the antenna is inferior. But there was another post just now where it was mentioned that the GPS worked faster with an earlier firmware version..? http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=12837
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Hedgecore is offline Hedgecore
2007-12-07 , 19:23
Posts: 1,361 | Thanked: 115 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ Toronto, Ontario, Canada
#5
This really has me curious as if the GPS is cacked, I can't justify shelling out a couple hundred bucks on something that does most of the things my 770 does satisfactorily.

I doubt Nokia doesn't know how to make antennas... if that is determined to be the root cause I'll be VERY suprised.

How are people trying to use this? Are they holding it, possibly dampening signals with their hand?

One possible cause I could think of is power conservation, maybe it's just not getting enough juice to prolong battery life in a poor tradeoff between battery longevity and practical use.
 
crawdad is offline crawdad
2007-12-07 , 19:52
Posts: 11 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Oct 2007
#6
The GPS-lock time is indeed puzzling.
The N810 is the first GPS-device I've owned, so I have no base to compare, but...
At a friend's house, I routinely get lock inside of 30 seconds.
In my own front-yard it can take 3 to 4 minutes.
Inside my house, it will NEVER get a lock, but if I bring the 810 inside already GPS-locked, the lock holds firm, rather than degenerating and breaking off as I would have expected.
Although, as I write this, I just achieved a GPS-lock from inside my house in about 20 seconds.

Works great once it is locked, but the lock-on behavior is frankly annoyingly erratic.
 
sevo is offline sevo
2007-12-07 , 20:32
Posts: 190 | Thanked: 21 times | Joined on Sep 2006
#7
Originally Posted by crawdad View Post
Inside my house, it will NEVER get a lock, but if I bring the 810 inside already GPS-locked, the lock holds firm
Either it hangs in that situation, or it has some degree of AGPS - i.e. uses estimates based upon the last proper fix location plus whatever insufficient reception is left to maintain a fictive fix in situations where real GPS can't work (which it can't do indoors - at 1.5GHz, it is quite as optical as WiFi, and as a timing critical signal it is far more vulnerable to diversity conditions).

FWIW, ever since my first Garmin I have had growing TTFF and TTF on every new device I got - the Garmin either locked within 1 minute of cold start, or never. But on the other hand, while it would stop working or misread whenever the antenna was not pointed straight at a almost completely unobstructed sky (to the degree that it was almost useless inside cities), my recent devices do a good job in any position, in coat pockets, on the dashboard, under trees, in narrow streets and even in semi-indoor conditions - presumably at the price of extended fix times.
 
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YoDude is offline YoDude
2007-12-07 , 20:44
Posts: 2,869 | Thanked: 1,784 times | Joined on Feb 2007 @ Po' Bo'. PA
#8
For comparison the stand alone, BT GPS receiver (Nokia ld-3) running on the N800 w/OS2008 gives me a cold start time of around 42-45 seconds.
About the time it takes for a cars fast idle to kick down on a cold morning....
 
sevo is offline sevo
2007-12-07 , 20:53
Posts: 190 | Thanked: 21 times | Joined on Sep 2006
#9
Remove the battery, switch off for several days or move more than a few kilometers while switched off, to get a true cold start reading from a LD-3W - in my experience, it takes about 3-4 minutes from that state.
 
HowieG is offline HowieG
2007-12-07 , 22:22
Posts: 32 | Thanked: 6 times | Joined on Nov 2007 @ Derby, UK
#10
Originally Posted by weatherman View Post
Acquisition times are much longer for me than 5-6 minutes. I've been testing the GPS under a number of conditions and I can tell you that it is far inferior to any standalone GPS I've used. There is something very wrong with the n810's GPS, never mind the anemic mapping software. Nokia has to address this before a lot of people get seriously pissed off.
Has anyone checked to see if the N810 GPS performs better if the Bluetooth and WLAN are switched off? I could imagine that although they operate on different frequencies they could interfere with the reception of the very weak GPS signals unless the RF design is good. Where is the GPS antenna located on the N810?
 
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