[shreyas99]

Hi All, as mentioned by "ask77" i too use my N95 1gb with "Mapmyindia software". I purchased the Inav Loaded as it does not required a GPRS connection and all the map data is stored on the memory card. One thing i need to say out here, if there is anyone who has mapped our great indian roads its MapMyIndia. These guys have every single road mapped of the 170 cities that they boast of, and also to mention are the point of interests that they have. It can find you a restaurant, fuel stations, emergencies like hospital police etc anywhere.Ill try and share some screenshots from my mobile.

[Steeroid]

Went into the desert and found to my dismay the limitations of phone-based GPS software.

So I've finally got myself a Garmin 670c. You pay a price for quality and yes its worth it and a lot more.

When you really need a GPS, there are no shortcuts - phone or pda-based navigation is okay for cities with marked streets but when you really need help you go to the experts.

[shreyas99]

Originally Posted by Steeroid

Went into the desert and found to my dismay the limitations of phone-based GPS software.So I've finally got myself a Garmin 670c. You pay a price for quality and yes its worth it and a lot more.
When you really need a GPS, there are no shortcuts - phone or pda-based navigation is okay for cities with marked streets but when you really need help you go to the experts.

Hi Steeroid, I read Garmin has map data only for the metropolitan cities and not other cities ? Also can you tell me what are the differences b/w a phone based GPS unit and standalone gps unit ?

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by shreyas99

Hi Steeroid, I read Garmin has map data only for the metropolitan cities and not other cities ? Also can you tell me what are the differences b/w a phone based GPS unit and standalone gps unit ?

Well it can not be generalised like phone based is always bad,
On mobile phones we can have various kinds of GPS technologies

1. Pure Satellite based by using dedicated GPS chip set.

Pro : Highly Accurate
Con : Battery life of phone is reduced considerably , Main function of mobile
is still to make and receive Voice / Data calls and by using a pure GPS you can not get battery life of more then couple of hours

This type was present only in earliest prototype and not present in commercial mobile handsets of today.

2. Software based GPS ( Triangulation method)

In nutshell network always knows the location of mobile as mobile is always camped in a cell and does continues monitoring of neighboring cells and send measurement reports to network , which network uses for triggering handover.
By using power measurements and neighboring cell info the distance from nearest base station ( BTS / Node -B ) is always known and by using measurements from 3 or more neighboring cells location can be determined quite accurately as long as Cell size is not too big.

Pro : NO extra power drain , No new hardware required , Low cost , works well in urban areas , fulfills leagal obligation from US gov. ( yet to be mandated )
Con : Inaccurate , highly inaccurate if cell size is big.

PS: Please do not confuse this with locality infor displayed on some mobiles like low end Nokia , That is just the display
of Cell in which mobile is camped.

3. Assisted GPS or A-GPS :
There are multiple types of A-GPS , Some of the features are standardized and others are fairly proprity to chipset network vendors example
qualcomm Xtra-GPS.

(a) This is actually a hybrid and tries to draw best of both the worlds , In A-GPS network can determine relative location of mobile and using this can
determine right satellites to track. Also satellite tracking can be done at network end ( nearest node) thus reliving mobile of power hungry tasks.

(b) In some other A-GPS , Network provides relative coordinates and then mobile itself does the tracking with satellites.


Clearly method 2 and 3 do not work well if there is no network around.

Regards
Amit

[ask77]

Originally Posted by Steeroid

Went into the desert and found to my dismay the limitations of phone-based GPS software.

So I've finally got myself a Garmin 670c. You pay a price for quality and yes its worth it and a lot more.

When you really need a GPS, there are no shortcuts - phone or pda-based navigation is okay for cities with marked streets but when you really need help you go to the experts.

Can you explain what exactly a garmin 670c can do in a desert that a phone or pda based gps cannot ?

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by ask77

Can you explain what exactly a garmin 670c can do in a desert that a phone or pda based gps cannot ?

Well Phone or PDA based GPS will not work in case there is no network and
it is implementing method 2 or 3 as explained in my earlier detailed post.

Also if the network exists but does not support A-GPS , GPS assistance will not be there.

[tsk1979]

All you need while doing offroading is to write track logs, and be able to follow them. Most "in car" systems, even the garmin nuvi series have this thing blocked, atleast in lower versions. In higher end versions unless you select off road mode, tracks snap to road.
The Hiking GPs like Vista HCx etc., don't have any such limitations.
If you don't want to spend 200$+ then mio/navman etc., which are windows CE based GPS systems will do the trick.

As for phone based on PDA based GPS systems, they will be the best, because you can run programs like Oziexplorer which are geared towards off road adventurers.
So its not the fault of the GPS, but the crappy software running on the phone.

For off roaders, a good phone software is OSMtracker - OpenStreetMap
This can write gpx tracks which you can follow later.

Originally Posted by amitk26

Well Phone or PDA based GPS will not work in case there is no network and
it is implementing method 2 or 3 as explained in my earlier detailed post.

Also if the network exists but does not support A-GPS , GPS assistance will not be there.

If your phone as a GPS chip inside, you do not need to have network access
Many PDAs phone have GPS capability. A-GPS is just used to get a fix quicker

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by amitk26

if the network exists but does not support A-GPS , GPS assistance will not be there.

GPS will work even in absence of Network. AGPS just makes it faster to acquire initial position.

In my experience, GPS worked fine in Tala National Forest that does not have cell coverage. It took a minute to catch signals though. I was using Nokia N82.

[ask77]

I use software like Aftrack and smartcomgps to record tracks and waypoints on my N95 gb, the recorded tracks can be used to either navigate back to the starting point using gps or it can be plotted on a map using google map to see the route taken and the various waypoints can be marked . basically a smartphone is just like a handheld computer with gps either external or internal so the useability is mainly limeted to the software.

[hrag]

Originally Posted by hrag

OK, this combination of the Holux GPSlim 240 and the Motorola Q8 GSM was working fine until recently. I upgraded to the latest version of Google Maps and now, my phone is not able to pair with the GPS.

Can somebody please help me pair these again?

Originally Posted by hrag

Somebody, anybody, please help?

I uninstalled Google Maps from my mobile. Reinstalled the latest version and was able to pair the GPS with my phone. Looks like there was an intermediate version that didn't work.

[DerAlte]

Ah, at last I am able to run mgmaps on my Touch. Quite an uphill climb, one must say - primarily because much of the stuff is undocumented, forcing one to adopt a hit and trial method.

1. Reflashed the ROM with a cooked one - Onyx. Was forced to do that because Esmertec Jeodek was not good enough - JBed is a must, and Onyx has that by default
2. Couldn't find GPSPort, so downloaded GPSGate Client (native PPC/ARM code, not Java). And then it took a couple of tries to figure out how to connect it to mgmaps. Even now I am not sure whether it is working with COM3, COM4 or 'TCP server 20175'
3. Blessed GPSGate requires an orderly shutdown - doesn't like the device to be shut off when it is working! Found it out the hard way. :(
4. mgmaps is now recognizing the SD card, so Stored Maps are working. Able to switch between Google and Yahoo stored maps

IMHO, mgmaps is simpler to setup and use on the BB than on the Touch - possibly because they have done the right things in Java on the BB.

[rkbharat]

hey DerAlte, I am in mohali, so could not reply to you earlier post. Good to see that its working now.

Mgmaps is proving to be a great help for me in Mohali. where I know which sector I am driving in and how do I reach destination sector.

Originally Posted by DerAlte

Ah, at last I am able to run mgmaps on my Touch. Quite an uphill climb, one must say - primarily because much of the stuff is undocumented, forcing one to adopt a hit and trial method.

1. Reflashed the ROM with a cooked one - Onyx. Was forced to do that because Esmertec Jeodek was not good enough - JBed is a must, and Onyx has that by default
2. Couldn't find GPSPort, so downloaded GPSGate Client (native PPC/ARM code, not Java). And then it took a couple of tries to figure out how to connect it to mgmaps. Even now I am not sure whether it is working with COM3, COM4 or 'TCP server 20175'
3. Blessed GPSGate requires an orderly shutdown - doesn't like the device to be shut off when it is working! Found it out the hard way. :(
4. mgmaps is now recognizing the SD card, so Stored Maps are working. Able to switch between Google and Yahoo stored maps

IMHO, mgmaps is simpler to setup and use on the BB than on the Touch - possibly because they have done the right things in Java on the BB.

[shreyas99]

Originally Posted by shreyas99

Hi All, as mentioned by "ask77" i too use my N95 1gb with "Mapmyindia software". I purchased the Inav Loaded as it does not required a GPRS connection and all the map data is stored on the memory card. One thing i need to say out here, if there is anyone who has mapped our great indian roads its MapMyIndia. These guys have every single road mapped of the 170 cities that they boast of, and also to mention are the point of interests that they have. It can find you a restaurant, fuel stations, emergencies like hospital police etc anywhere.Ill try and share some screenshots from my mobile.

Guys, as mentioned earlier I am posting some screen caps of MapMyindia software from N95.

[rkbharat]

BTW I noticed, though Google maps are good for most of the places, for some places Yahoo maps is too good. Like in North, There is nothing for Shimla in Google maps but in Yahoo maps, it has all the details for roads and POI.

also POIs are better in Yahoo maps.

I download both Google and Yahoo maps for north(upto zoom level 12), Delhi NCR (upto zoom level 17) and Chandigargh/shimla upto zoom 17. Just a click to switch between and Google and yahoo on the move.

Originally Posted by DerAlte

Ah, at last I am able to run mgmaps on my Touch.

[harjeev]

Originally Posted by rkbharat

BTW I noticed, though Google maps are good for most of the places, for some places Yahoo maps is too good. Like in North, There is nothing for Shimla in Google maps but in Yahoo maps, it has all the details for roads and POI.

also POIs are better in Yahoo maps.

I download both Google and Yahoo maps for north(upto zoom level 12), Delhi NCR (upto zoom level 17) and Chandigargh/shimla upto zoom 17. Just a click to switch between and Google and yahoo on the move.

Hi Bharat
You seem to use the Google and Yahoo Maps alot.
WHat Tile and Hash settings do you use? I use Hash 1 & Tiles 8. The maps load faster but the no of files is a issue. But if I raise the no of tiles per file the map takes a lot of time to load on my Nokia E90 and browsing the maps becomes a pain. Any solution??