I assume you are joking. navigation receivers don't send anything up to the satellites
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Apple Expands iPhone 4S GPS Capabilities with GLONASS Support
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I assume you are joking. navigation receivers don't send anything up to the satellites
That's about the most clueless thing anyone could have said. It shows at the same time total ignorance of what Apple is doing and total ignorance of how GPS works.
No GPS has any problems finding your location without phone connection. It takes a bit longer for it to find the satellites, but once they are found it works just as fine. Obviously you need maps on your phone so it can show you where the location is on the map. And obviously you can buy maps for about any place in the world.
Any GPS needs four satellites to find its exact location. It could do with three satellites if it has map data and guesses that you are on the surface of the earth (so if you are on top of a high building and it guesses your elevation wrong, then the location will be wrong).
Especially in a town with high buildings, there might not be four satellites in sight, and GPS doesn't work. If you have four GLONASS satellites in sight by chance, but not four GPS satellites, then it should work where a system without GLONASS wouldn't. I don't know if the system can use mixed satellites, like if it would work with two GPS and two GLONASS satellites.
Apart from that, you shouldn't notice any difference, except that sometimes you might get your location where without GLONASS you wouldn't. And someone posted that GLONASS gives more accurate results in some locations on the earth, especially high in the north.
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Why not use OffMaps? You can download offline maps data from OpenStreetMaps, it worked pretty good on my iPhone 3G for my NYC trip (i am from Europe) last summer.
I've noticed a similar improvement between my 3GS and 4S.
I had some issues with UPS that led to my having to wait to pick up my 4S on Saturday morning instead of getting it on Friday when I should have. Friday evening I decided to run out to an auto auction half an hour or so away, and hopped in the car with my 3GS and (wifi) iPad 2. Even in my windshield mount, the 3GS would NOT get a lock on the satellites solid enough for Navigon to be of any use- I eventually had to tether the iPad and use Maps on it to look up the place and plot out how to get there.
The following afternoon, after getting the 4S and setting it up, I headed out in the other direction to look at a car out up on Craigslist in the middle of nowhere. I realized too late that my windshield mount doesn't work with the iPhone 4/4S, so ended up having to leave it sitting on the passenger seat- and it still picked up the satellites good and strong and got me where I wanted to go without any issues.
Ah, my information about the frequencies was outdated. You're right about the GIOVE testbeds. They actually went as far as to launch to separate satellites on two different rockets, because they we're really worried about losing the right to their frequencies. The first transmission took place 12. January 2006, about 6 months before the allocated deadline.
And we're both right about the Galileo timeframe. I was just aware of the actually working satellites, not the testbeds that indeed met the demands of frequency allocation demands.
The initial service with 18 satellites should be ready by 2015, (was 2014 just until recently) but the full global coverage with 27 satellites plus 3 spares is supposed to be ready by 2020, according to ESA. The initial coverage could be mostly about Europe/Northern hemisphere, just like GLONASS has been good around Russia and Northern hemisphere until it again got the 24. satellite in orbit just recently.
Yes, you are right. I also read outdated information about 2014 and 2019. It seems the new numbers are 2015 and 2020 as you quote. Galileo has been very prone to delays all along the project. However, I'm looking forward to GPS III and Galileo. All of these new technologies will make satellite navigation even more precise and widespread. Good thing about Galileo is that it has been designed from the beginning to have better performance. On the other hand I think the plans for GPS III are also on the same path, but it will take longer to fully deploy.
Bull
It does. And I have WP's and tracks across the Atlantic to prove it.
Assisted GPS -is- real GPS. As gnasher said, you may need to DL maps. Even without maps try MotionX and check your velocity and direction once you get a lock on the sats.
As I recall, WAAS was primarily developed for aircraft and was never meant to be deployed to all manner of GPS. The situation was the extra WAAS satellite was low on the horizon and may easily be obscurred by big poles of signal attenuating water (ie: trees and leaves).
Our Garmin 1500 (?) chartplotting marine GPS had a differential receiver in it and that was certainly a consumer device, albeit much more expensive than the non-differential model. The receiver was basically a radio that you tuned to closest land based tower that the USCG had in the region. With DGPS operating we had resolutions down to 3 feet. Back then, the DOD still had selective availability (SA) turned on, so a stock GPS receiver was good only to 30 ft 95% of the time. The DGPS got around that. With SA off, the consumer DGPS's is not a whole lot better than a run of the mill GPS unit. The stuff Trimball uses for high end GPS is not consumer oriented, of course, and also requires post processing to regress to the really fine precision that they are capable of.
Not sure about the iPhone 4S, but with my old Verizon iPhone my GPS still worked as I drove through the entire state of Wyoming, half the time without a cell signal at all. I used Navigon for the length of the drive and it was still able to maintain a lock regardless.
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I should note by the way that the Verizon iPhone's GPS was a pile of smelly moose fecal droppings. Whether it was New York or Texas it would constantly lose its GPS signal much to my chagrin, causing me to stick my phone out the window like an idiot praying to God I'd get a signal so I didn't wind up in Oz somewhere.
Geocaching? Forget it, I was lucky to find my own ass much less a geocache.
Night and day difference with the 4S now. It's the reason I upgraded and I'm very glad I did. Navigon can now lock onto the GPS even when I'm INDOORS. It had never been able to do that before, and after several trips I have yet to lose a signal. Definitely happy I made the plunge, I just wish I knew exactly what GPS chip is now being used on the 4S and why it's been able to make all the difference (or if the upgrade was purely software in tone).
johnnyturbouk
macrumors 68000
i actually prefer the current design to the ip5 mock-ups + larger display+ edge-edge display and those crappy tapered corners
Just wish they bumped up the RAM
Just wish they bumped up the RAM
Why what is it your currently trying to do with your 4S that you can't manage to do with the 512Mb???
Settings - General - About - Diagnostics - Diagnostic and Usage Data
There it will give you a list of all the times your phone ran out of memory. I have 4 messages just from today.
Is that the ones where it says 'LOW MEMORY'?
I've just looked and I have a couple of those myself. But heres the thing, I don't have any recollection of my phone not being able to do something I wanted it to do even though I've got some of those 'LOW MEMORY' reports.
So it obviously hasn't affected me and I'm just wondering how the lack of 1GB has actually stop you from doing something with your phone??
After seeing this discussion about GLONASS we decided to check to how well it could track the Russian system so we simulated some GLONASS satellites and simulated a scenario in Taipei, Taiwan. It worked really well, and could track position even if there were no GPS satellites visible. As there are now 24 GLONASS satellites in orbit, this has almost doubled the amount of satellites the iPhone 4S can track, which should certainly help improve the satellite reception anywhere there is an obstructed view to the sky, and improve the basic positioning accuracy in most places.
Here is the video of our test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEOyUHHPCQc
Here is the video of our test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEOyUHHPCQc
What are the advantages of this new system?
GPS had worked fine for me in a lot of situations. I, like a previous poster use GPS and MotionX to map my location while hiking/biking in the rockies... never had a problem.
Unfortunately, GPS on my iPhone has been horrible in urban environments. In downtown Manhattan GPS is nearly unusable.
GPS had worked fine for me in a lot of situations. I, like a previous poster use GPS and MotionX to map my location while hiking/biking in the rockies... never had a problem.
Unfortunately, GPS on my iPhone has been horrible in urban environments. In downtown Manhattan GPS is nearly unusable.