The GPS performance on the Nokia N810 is often criticized. This is for a good reason: It has historically taken a great deal of time to obtain a satellite lock. Often, GPS units could take between two and five minutes to get the first lock and under a minute to get subsequent satellite locks.Diablo proports to have Assisted GPS support enabled. Often A-GPS is thought to require cell tower triangulation to help the GPS chip along in finding the right satellites. This is incorrect, however. A-GPS can use cell towers, WiFi, measurement of fragmented GPS signals, or even more advanced calculation of the signals it receives. A popular example of this is the Skyhook service on the iPod touch. Skyhook is not perfect, however - it still thinks I am sitting outside my old apartment when inside my new apartmet 30 miles away.
Regardless of the system used by the N810 in Diablo: It helps! The first GPS lock took a very long time, but subsequent tests were better. Here's a little overview:
Test 1: Start Wayfinder software in a moving vehicle from a fresh Diablo installation - 14 minutes to lock.
Test 2: Reboot the same N810 (power off/power on) and start Wayfinder (also in a moving vehicle) - less than 1 minute to lock.
Test 3: Do not use the same N810 for 48 hours. Drive 22 miles away from the last locked position and start Wayfinder software (from a stationary position) - 1 minute and a few seconds to lock.
Stay tuned for additional tests non-Wayfinder software.
16 comments:
I thought agps required a cellphone signal. When you performed these tests, did you have the n810 tethered to a cellphone or not?
Does the A-GPS functionality instated through "Diablo" require a cellphone to be tethered or otherwise connected to the n8xx?
Unfortunately I cannot confirm your findings.
My GPS is super lame, even on Diablo and with a cell phone connected to it over Bluetooth. I already thought that the device was broken since I had to wait 15 minutes and more, but you have to wait as long as me.
Only in one place I get a fix in less than one minute: It's near to my house. Also after the update to Diablo it fixes super fast on this place, like if the location was cached somewhere. But if I go to another place the GPS is unusable, so much time takes the fix.
The point is that I am a pedestrian who switches on the N810's wayfinder only from time to time and always in another place.
Dan did not talk about the AGPS-UI and that's weird.
May be he used it once and forgot about it ?
Anyway to have AGPS working you should run AGPS-UI (it's in the repositories) at least once and give it an approximate position of where you are.
After that, it should start automatically and transparently each time you use the AGPS.
For more info check out the Nokia Beta Labs:
AGPS-UI @ Nokia Beta Labs
I installed the AGPS-UI the very first day already. Then I put the red dot to Berlin where I live. It didn't change anything at all. What's the AGPS-UI for? The menus only say "Settings" and "Quit".
The map is a worldmap so it's quite difficult to put the red dot where I live. No zoom or something helpful. "Settings" is only for connecting to my cell phone, but that didn't help me.
It helped me A LOT, instead.
It just needs to know approximately where you live (to know which satellites are in you sky view, and send that list back to you).
I did enable everything on the Settings pane and it sped things up a lot.
I did notice it:
- run Map application and click to show the satellites in view. At the beginning it shows nothing (just lines, with no numbers underneat) or one or two satellites (if you're lucky enough).
- then I noticed it was connecting thru my cellphone connection automatically
- after being connected to the internet (let's say after 1 or 2 secs) I saw at least 8-9 numbers underneath those lines. That is, the AGPS framework asked for the satellites in view in the area you told him on the map and got it.
- after other few seconds it was getting strong signals from those satellites and was able to compute the fix in less than 10 seconds overall.
Hello Aniello,
I don't know what's wrong with my N810. Having read your last comment I went out to test it on a bright sunny day in Berlin, Germany. Here is my log:
1.) The first time to fix was 40 seconds after I connected the N810 via Bluetooth to my Nokia E61i cell phone for an internet connection. Great!
2.) But then I closed the Wayfinder application and opened it again. My GPS location was lost. After connectiong the N810 again to the E61i I didn't get a fix and gave up looking for the GPS satellites after 3 minutes. I was annoyed and closed Wayfinder again.
3.) Then I reopened it and did the same as before. The time to fix was 15 seconds. Amazing!
4.) Then I closed Wayfinder, lost the fix, opened Wayfinder again and could not find the satellites anymore.
QUESTIONS:
A.) What am I doing wrong? Maybe sometimes I am shrouding the hole where the GPS looks out of the N810 to search for satellites? Where is the GPS hole of the device?
B.) Maybe the Nokia A-GPS server accepts queries only from time to time? I realized that I always have to establish a new Bluetooth connection to the E61i to get a GPS fix.
C.) But most annoying: Why does the device forget where the GPS satellites are when I close Wayfinder? Aren't their positions stored elsewhere?
Thank you very much for your fast comments. I am a happy user of the N810 for five months now, but GPS always sucked for me. Hopefully you can help and my observations can help others.
Best regards,
Markus Göbel
I think your answer is in the "BETA" word at the end of "AGPS-UI" :)
I need to restart my tablet sometimes to have the AGPS working again.
Oh, regarding C), the satellites change their location. They move.
So it is of no use to store their last location.
At least that's what it looks like.
Thanks a lot. I think I understand now and will go on trying as I did. Hopefully A-GPS gets better with time. I love the idea to use it as pedestrian in unknown cities.
I have gone from extreme disappointment to something like minor dissatisfaction with the GPS. I started getting fixes at home in Seattle in non-glacial time with Diablo, and that has continued on my trip to Dallas.
The time to fix can be very uneven (sometimes seconds, sometimes up to 15 minutes), but it's much more often in the seconds to 2 minutes timeframe than it was before, which was never. And the connnection still isn't very robust. The N810 still loses a fix more frequently than any other GPS device I've used.
Now that I can license Wayfinder 1 month at a time, I suppose I can start using this now as my GPS when I travel. It'd be cheaper than renting one with my car. (I still wouldn't want to pay $150 for a 3-yr license when I can get a more usable, dedicated device for the same money, but that's a different story.)
Oh, one other thing. Has anyone noticed the GPS staying active after it's been disabled, and running out the battery? I've had a dead NIT twice in the last week, and both times I had been playing with the GPS.
Yep i did notice it too.
I still think it's because of the "BETA" near AGPS-UI...
Let's hope it'll become stable soon
I have found zero improvement on the GPS since upgrading to Diablo. I love my N810, don't get me wrong. But the GPS is useless. It takes too long to lock in. The maps around Austin are just plain wrong (yes, I submitted this and no, I haven't heard anything back).
Definite improvement for me!
Was stuck in slow traffic just now, so switched on GPS on to test.
It saw 5 or 6 satellites within 30 seconds and locked onto 5 of these after another 30 seconds or so!! That's a huge improvement!!!
Traffic cleared, so as a further test, left the GPS on, slipped it back in the Nokia provided pouch and into my jacket pocket, lying on the passenger seat.
To my surprise, when I parked up and checked the GPS status it looks to have kept tracking, through two layers of fabric, or at the very least locked back onto the 5 satellites so quickly I didn't notice it had lost it's lock!
Since I flashed to Diablo a few days ago I have left GPS running a few times, while at home, for around 10 - 30 minutes. Not sure if this may have helped it in finding and locking ever since...
For those still having issues, why not try the same? i.e. Allow the tablet to remain GPS locked for extended periods from a stationary location. Worth a try, surely?
BTW, I haven't installed any extra GPS software, e.g. AGPS/GUI etc.
I may have spoken too soon. I took my N810 with me this weekend and even sitting on the console in my car it locked onto GPSes and started tracking in about a minute. So yes, improvement.
However the Austin area maps are still wrong.
Generally speaking, I have found little difference in the cold-lock time of the gps using Diablo. It still takes 5-10 minutes to lock while driving.
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