Is the GPS that bad?

[tokyomonster]

Not bashing the G1, and am in fact anxiously awaiting my own(the UPS site has to hate me by now)..

But I've heard pretty bad reports about the GPS on the phone being way inaccurate. Are you guys finding that to be the case?

[kirizzle]

In my experience, the phone has a really accurate GPS. Just make sure to turn on the GPS receiver and turn off the cell phone tower triangulation. The only thing that bothers me, GPS will never find your location if you are inside.

[s15274n]

yeah, the GPS seems REALLY accurate to me. Those complaining are probably getting their location by wireless signals, not GPS.

[tokyomonster]

In my experience, the phone has a really accurate GPS. Just make sure to turn on the GPS receiver and turn off the cell phone tower triangulation. The only thing that bothers me, GPS will never find your location if you are inside.

I think most phones GPS has trouble inside..I have a friend with an iPhone 3G that has issues.

[kirizzle]

yeah, i kinda figured that. thats why im not complaining, the gps actually helped me get somewhere yesterday, awesome !!!! Just used the directions feature and my location, almost as good as having turn-by-turn navigation system.

[dkw0417]

any reasonably priced hand held GPS unit is gonna have problems locating you unless you have a clear sky view. I have seen some that will lose you if you walk under trees. Mine(G1) does work inside sometimes, but it usually acurate to within 10 ft when I am outside. Just give it time to find the signal, it isn't an instant process. If you use the cell towers to find our location it will sometimes be kinda close, but that will also look at Wi-Fi IPs and that can show you way off.

[dherna]

I might be wrong but I don''t think the iPhone has GPS. I think it uses the triangulation method.

When I'm driving my GPS is pretty accurate... if I zoom in I can actually tell if I'm in the right lane or the far left.

[gavinfb]

its better if you are walking because of its refresh speed and clarity of signal

[pllb]

Seems accurate to me.

[DonPablo50]

I don't have a problem with the accuracy when I'm outside, but have any of you had really long wait times before it gets your location? I typically have to wait 6-7 minutes before it gets my location.

Not that it's terribly long, but when your in a hurry the wait can seem long.

[jokerdb78]

GPS, isn't that bad just they have some problems to fix with some of the apps. A lot of the GPS apps place the user in the wrong location due to needed updates or just glitchs, but other then that GPS is a lot of fun to mess around with.

[tokyomonster]

I might be wrong but I don''t think the iPhone has GPS. I think it uses the triangulation method.

When I'm driving my GPS is pretty accurate... if I zoom in I can actually tell if I'm in the right lane or the far left.

You're wrong ;)

iPhone 3G has an A-GPS receiver built in. It uses a combination of a GPS chip and cell tower triangulation..similar, I imagine, to what the G1 uses.

1st iPhones however did not use GPS.

[ministersin]

Works perfect for me.

[th3drow]

gps is reallly iffy for me, sometimes i turn it on and it goes right away. Sometimes it comes on and it takes a few minutes to get working at all. Not sure why either sometimes this is when im in the same place to and always outside :/

[maclondon]

I've found it to be the best I've used on a mobile phone - its not perfect - but very quick to lock on and accurate with in a few meters. Theres lots of issues with mobile GPS units - and some wont be solved very quickly.

[CLSmallwood]

only problem I sometimes have is the connection time.

[Frito]

i use the gps while driving it works great, i even get decent gps in my house!
its a 1 story house bigger houses/buildings no doubt will not work well in

[kg1128]

it works fine, working accurately to within feets when outside.
hope there was a better app for driving directions (giving turn by turn directions with auto zoom and text to speech)

[VGPOP]

In my experience, the phone has a really accurate GPS. Just make sure to turn on the GPS receiver and turn off the cell phone tower triangulation. The only thing that bothers me, GPS will never find your location if you are inside.

How do you "turn off cell phone tower triangulation"?

[Skatturbrain]

I don't have a problem with the accuracy when I'm outside, but have any of you had really long wait times before it gets your location? I typically have to wait 6-7 minutes before it gets my location.

Not that it's terribly long, but when your in a hurry the wait can seem long.
Try going back into menu and my location again after your did it the first time. That always makes mine regroup and pinpoint my location almost immediately. :cool:

[bizarro_stormy]

only problem I've had with the GPS is the substantial amount or power(battery) it uses -- other issues with GPS have been with the application trying to call on it, not the GPS itself

I can hold my phone and move it from my driver-side door to my passenger-side door and it refreshes and moves ever so slightly. I'd say thats pretty accurate (within google maps)

[webrun]

My G1's GPS is very inaccurate -- at least half a mile to a mile off most of the time, although occasionally it is accurate. Plus, when driving, it's basically worthless -- it only updates every say 5-8 minutes, and even then, again, location will be inaccurate.

Any solutions? I only bought my phone Nov 2. I haven't downloaded any updates yet. Would that have anything to do with it? How do you download the updates, and is it generally recommended to download the updates/patches as they come out?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[tymewillcome]

I have found out why innacuracy happens with the GPS. When I am not in a 3g area, and I have GPS UNCHECKED in security and locaation, it does not work properly. ALways make sure the GPS box is checked. IF I am in a 3g area, the gps works pretty darn well. I walked from the front of my house, to the furthest most point of my backyard. THe GPS pinpointed me moving, and also could locate me in the corner of the yard...I am pretty amazed! When I have the problems with the GPS, I simply restart the phone. In time, more kinks will be worked out, and the full potential will be unleashed- ROck on G1

[Frito]

People if your G1 is reporting your location off by more than 20-40 feet and your outside when you tried to use it you have the GPS turned off in your settings, and its using cell towers and wifi to locate you and that is very inaccurate,
in google maps
the blue dot is where it thinks you are, if its located on a cell tower it will have a giant blue circle that is roughly a half mile or more in size, this means gps is not on or cannot get a lock on you position and you are somwhere inside that blue field (the rough range of the cell tower your phone is connected to

now this is what is interesting that i discovered messing with my phone with gps turned off, if you have wifi turned on and your connected to a wifi network the phone will use that connection instead of the cell tower to determine your location, in my case it said i was about 6-7 miles north of my real location, i was like wtf?? then i realized that where i said i was located is my ISP (comcast) main office in my city!!!

it uses the IP addresses on wifi to determine your location!! this can work well if the connection the wifi is on is a T1 or something but at least with cable internet connections i can tell you its ofc way off

now last if you turn off use wireless networks and only have GPS on you should get very accurate location readings as long as you are outside or in a small 1 story house that does not block the GPS signals much (i can get about 7-8 sats locked from inside mine!! ) this can vary though depending on your location you may not have that many sat's above you where you are at geographically and the less sats it has to use the longer and more inaccurate it will be to determine your location

here in the SF bay i have seen as many as 13 sats locked on my phone so i can see why it works so damn well here

also if you want to see how many sat's your phone has locked download the app called GPS tracker it will tell you

[yunggunner94]

Mine works and locates me perfectly while driving, the blue dot keeps moving as I drive. However inside my house it is off my half a mile.

This is while having both wireless and gps on..I will try turning wireless signal off and see what happens.

[webrun]

OK, thanks! GPS was turned off. Turned it on, and seems to work perfectly!

[G-won]

Well I was gonna say that the GPS pin pointing me is crappy when I'm inside but glad to hear that the rest of you is noting this as normal :D

Otherwise it does pick me up nicely when I'm driving and like someone else noted it even notices when I'm in the north/south/west/eastbound lane of whatever highway I'm tackling.

The ONLY thing I wish for is #1 some way to notify an update since I came across a street that was blocked off and thus couldn't turn on. Turns out that it appeared to be recently blocked off from road I tried turning on and thus wasn't reflected in Google Maps. Also, TURN BY TURN VOCAL DIRECTIONS!!! Oh that would be epic win. Otherwise I'm happy with the GPS functionality which saved me a few times.

[JPH3]

Takes a while to really get the accuracy dialed in. I just fired up GPS and after a few mins, I'm tracking 9-10 sats and accuracy is 39 ft. Higher than usual, though. Accuracy is usually in the teens and once made it 6 ft.

[mwenn1]

The GPS has been right on for me, little spotty if I am inside but that is to be expected. It works well in the car as well, tracks very well as I am driving along. No issues here very accurate

[MobileMan]

I have found out why innacuracy happens with the GPS. When I am not in a 3g area, and I have GPS UNCHECKED in security and locaation, it does not work properly. ALways make sure the GPS box is checked. IF I am in a 3g area, the gps works pretty darn well. I walked from the front of my house, to the furthest most point of my backyard. THe GPS pinpointed me moving, and also could locate me in the corner of the yard...I am pretty amazed! When I have the problems with the GPS, I simply restart the phone. In time, more kinks will be worked out, and the full potential will be unleashed- ROck on G1

Ill have to remember this. I dont really care about the GPS feature since I own a Garmin. But it would help if a unplanned trip to a store or restaurant comes up (while Im out) and I dont know where I need to go.

[shookyang]

I would expect GPS to be inaccurate if you are inside the house. You need to be in an area that is not blocking satellite signals. If you take your stand-alone GPS system (like a Garmin) inside the house, it's going to take awhile for it to grab a signal and probably won't be accurate.

I have used Maps last week when my wife and I were in NY attending a wedding. We went to reherssal with one of her friends, as both my wife and her friend were in the wedding party. Her friend's Mio GPS system led us 10 miles past where we needed to be. I fired up Maps and we were able to track where we were going and I was able to tell our driver when to expect to turn. Came in very handy. Much better than my Curve and 8800 from work.

[DDM123]

It pinpointed me down to the bench I was sitting on in NYC. I even used it on an elevated subway line and it found me, although it was less accurate that time.

It's actually better at receiving GPS signals than my somewhat old Garmin pocket GPS thing, although the Garmin was way better at getting an accurate altitude.