Hey,
I was looking into a few phones to buy in the near future. I know that some Nokia models now have free (voice) turn-by-turn navigation. I wanted to know what the dealio is with the other GPS phones available, like the Samung Monte or the Corby. The Monte has google maps-based GPS, which accoring to gsmarena.com doesn't offer voice turn-by-turn navigation. Does anyone have experience in GPS phones other than Nokia and how well they work (if at all !) ?
Hi,
My wife has a Nokia 5800 and the and the free nokia routing software is really quite good. the GPS itself is quite efficient, and A-gps ensures a pretty quick fix.
I've had GPS phone since 2005 (HP HW6515 --> HTC TyTN2) and I've found them pretty useful especially when you are in a strange land.. (Was really useful in locating restaurants in Zurich recently) -
On the Hardware side, Both the phones have some sort of ephemeris downloading to speed up fix time, the HP worked as advertised ; HTC has been less reliable, especially after firmware upgrades. phones with sirfstar3 chipsets are your best bet for fast reliable fixes.
On the software side, Nokia (Symbian) with free maps is unbeatable, otherwise Windows mobile still offers the most options on software / maps. On a personal level, i would highly recommend garmin XT (both symbian and win-mo versions are available)
just a small note on GPS/ A-GPS.
All GPS hardware use gps satellites for navigation. a lock on 4 satellites are required for a 3d fix, and 3 satellites for a 2d fix. A lock happens when the GPS unit clock is sync'd with the satellite clocks; and the GPS knows exactly where the satellites are overhead (ephemiris data) this data needs to be downloaded to the gps reciever. this is part of the gps satellite signal and it is downloaded slowly, slowing the time taken to get a fix (TTF).
one method of speeding up the fix time is to get a rough approximation of future satellite positions and download this data to the gps receiver over the internet. this is used by in most HTC gps phones (Quickgps) and it speeds up the time to fix greatly. from 2-3 minutes to 20-30 secs from a cold start.
AGPS (SUPL) - uses the cell towers to triangulate the approximate position, and downloads a much more accurate, current ephemiris to the GPS reciever, enabling really fast GPS fixes (less than 10 seconds). this is not the same thing as simple cellphone triangulation as one sees on googlemaps mobile.
hope this clarifies.
cheers
EDIT::: found a good article on GPS / APS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS