Technical Specs of iPhone 3G posted

In article <[email protected]>,
Larry <[email protected]> wrote:

> Right, thanks. If GPS could do what Sellphone vendors want....GARMIN, not
> them, would have already been doing it.....and they're not because it's
> physically IMPOSSIBLE.

iphones can do it, so it's not "impossible"... but GPS systems cannot i
agree... that's why iPhone 1 has WPS and iPhone 2 has WPS and GPS.

---

› See More: Technical Specs of iPhone 3G posted

In article <[email protected]>,
Larry <[email protected]> wrote:

> That goddamned sales meeting of fanbois didn't "explain" anything of the
> sort. I'm still appalled he was giving 12-year-old kid explanations to a
> room that was supposed to be full of developer professionals....and they
> applauded the most stupid toys.
>
> Show me where the GPS antenna is located on an Iphone and how that antenna
> has a clear view of the sky in your 8th floor living room of the 24 story
> building.
>
> Bull****....pure bull****.

you wouldn't need GPS in that situation, the iPhone is smart enough to
use WPS when it is needed. (like your example)

i know steve speaks over your head, but there is no reason to have a
tantrum about it.

-

In article <[email protected]>,
The Bob <[email protected]> wrote:

> Apple is not better- it will only work when on network. Garmin works
> everywhere.

no bob, it will work anywhere... and since it's running OSX you'll have
MUCH better software than what comes on a Garmin, TomTom, etc.

At 12 Jun 2008 23:59:08 +0000 Larry wrote:

> Right, thanks. If GPS could do what Sellphone vendors want....GARMIN,
> not
> them, would have already been doing it.....and they're not because it's
> physically IMPOSSIBLE.


My Nemerix-based iBlue BT GPS does a pretty good job indoors- the first GPS
I ever owned that worked inside my house.

But even forgetting that, there are more ways than just GPS to locate a
cellphone- you just seem to get worked up over semantics. Take tower
triangulation, for example-think of it like a lower-quality backup for GPS,
much like GPRS is a lower-quality backup for 3G. This allows cellphones to
use tower location where/when GPS doesn't
work (indoors, prior to first fix after cold starts, etc.) Sure, it isn't
true "GPS", but if it quacks like a duck...

And Garmin WOULDN'T be doing THAT unless they build a nationwide two-way
radio network to receive signals from their GPS units and estimate their
position based on triangulation and timing like the cell companies can.

Why shouldn't cell companies leverage their positioning info as an
augmentation of (or substitute for) "real" GPS, particularly when the Feds
make them do it for E911 anyway?

> Now, I CAN see the sleazy sellphone bastards bull****ting the customers
> with some GPS app that gives them the lat/long of the towers, which does
> have a GPS receiver in them because it is where the TIME set on your
> sellphone display comes from. Look at a cell near you closely and you'll
> see a little white dome antenna down on the building or near the base of
> the tower feeding a small coax into the building. That's a GPS antenna,
> just like the ones on someone's yacht.
>


That's only part of it- the cell company knows via timing exactly how far
from a tower a phone is. Armed with that information, fairly accurate
location of phones with NO on-board GPS (like iPhone the First) is possible
with cell carrier intervention (which even makes the claims of "GPS" being
"added" to v1 iPhones with the 2.0 upgrade possible, if you'll stretch the
definition of "GPS" to include ANY location method.)

WiFi makes it even easier- before the iPhone/iPod Touch/Google WiFi stuff,
a little clown outfit called Navizon (www.navizon.com) has been offering an
app for WinMobile (and jailbroken iPhones!) for over a year that uses a
community-created WiFi/cell location database contributed to by GPS-enabled
phone users (that frankly worked better in Manhattan for me last week than
my BT GPS did!)

The Bob wrote:
> GPS does not require assistance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS

At 12 Jun 2008 08:15:58 -0600 David Moyer wrote:

> assisted just means it also has WPS, first cell phone to have it.


Um, no.

www.navizon.com

Navizon was first, offering "WPS" on both Windows Mobile (and eventually
jailbroken iPhones) for a few years.

They even offered"virtual GPS" softwarethat output the "WPS" data in NMEA
GPS format for use with other GPS programs.

Another Apple "innovation"- slickly repackaging others' ideas...

The Bob wrote:
> Ron <[email protected]> amazed us all with the following in
> news:[email protected]:
>
>> http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
>
> I see they won't be touting battery life as a big draw. They still limit
> the phone in choice of audio and video formats. And it still doen't have
> true GPS.

It's not clear from the specs. "Assisted GPS" can mean two different
things. It can mean that he phone has a GPS receiver _and_ use A-GPS
when a good satellite signal is unobtainable, or it can mean that the
location can _only_ be obtained via the assisted GPS server.

In article <[email protected]>, SMS
<[email protected]> wrote:

> It's not clear from the specs. "Assisted GPS" can mean two different
> things. It can mean that he phone has a GPS receiver _and_ use A-GPS
> when a good satellite signal is unobtainable, or it can mean that the
> location can _only_ be obtained via the assisted GPS server.

i've never seen assisted gps mean the latter. assisted gps means
exactly what it says -- it's a gps that can in some situations, be
assisted by the cell towers. the rest of the time, it's a normal
ordinary gps receiver.

On 2008-06-13, nospam <[email protected]> wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, SMS
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> It's not clear from the specs. "Assisted GPS" can mean two different
>> things. It can mean that he phone has a GPS receiver _and_ use A-GPS
>> when a good satellite signal is unobtainable, or it can mean that the
>> location can _only_ be obtained via the assisted GPS server.
>
> i've never seen assisted gps mean the latter. assisted gps means
> exactly what it says -- it's a gps that can in some situations, be
> assisted by the cell towers. the rest of the time, it's a normal
> ordinary gps receiver.

Every CDMA phone manufactured in the last 5 or 6 years has an
"Assisted GPS" receiver which works exactly like that. The
phone itself has about 20% of a GPS receiver (the 20% closest
to the antenna) and relies on the carrier's network for the
other 80%. If you want to know where you are you need to get
the carrier to tell you.

I doubt the Apple phone works like that since GSM networks (unlike
CDMA networks) aren't required to have the GPS infrastructure
you would need to provide that assistance, and many overseas
operators avoid GPS both for cost and for who-controls-the-on-off-switch
reasons, which means that a less-than-full GPS implementation
in the phone wouldn't work at all in a lot of places. It is the
case, however, that "Assisted GPS" is an utterly ambiguous term.
It could mean a lot of things.

Dennis Ferguson

On 2008-06-13, Todd Allcock <[email protected]> wrote:
> My Nemerix-based iBlue BT GPS does a pretty good job indoors- the first GPS
> I ever owned that worked inside my house.
>
> But even forgetting that, there are more ways than just GPS to locate a
> cellphone- you just seem to get worked up over semantics. Take tower
> triangulation, for example-think of it like a lower-quality backup for GPS,
> much like GPRS is a lower-quality backup for 3G. This allows cellphones to
> use tower location where/when GPS doesn't
> work (indoors, prior to first fix after cold starts, etc.) Sure, it isn't
> true "GPS", but if it quacks like a duck...

Yes, that's correct, but even when you can hear the satellites there's
still help you can get from the network. The network could provide
cold start information so you don't have to wait for a few minutes
for the phone to find satellites when it has lost its almanac or been
moved a long way when turned off. The network could send DGPS
corrections measured at the local towers to improve the accuracy
of the phone's calculations. And the way to detect and correct
GPS signal impairments (Larry's reflections and whatnot) is to
overdetermine the navigation solution, not only by tracking more
satellites than you minimally need for a solution but also by
throwing position data you can get from other sources into the
pot.

There's a lot of interesting possibilities for this, though what
Apple means by "Assisted GPS" is ambiguous until they explain the
details.

Dennis Ferguson

On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:18:21 GMT, Dennis Ferguson
<[email protected]> wrote:

>There's a lot of interesting possibilities for this, though what
>Apple means by "Assisted GPS" is ambiguous until they explain the
>details.
>
>Dennis Ferguson


They got it all *****ed out here.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/gps.html

On 2008-06-13, Ron <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:18:21 GMT, Dennis Ferguson
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>There's a lot of interesting possibilities for this, though what
>>Apple means by "Assisted GPS" is ambiguous until they explain the
>>details.
>
>
> They got it all *****ed out here.
>
> http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/gps.html

Not really. That desciption of how their Assisted GPS works could
be used pretty much unchanged to describe how the GPS in my Verizon
cell phone works, yet I can tell you the GPS in my Verizon cell
phone is useless to anyone when the phone is not attached to a network
and is pretty much useless to me under all circumstances.

Dennis Ferguson

The Bob wrote:
>>
>>> Apple is not better- it will only work when on network. Garmin
>>> works everywhere.
>>
>> that's totally false. the gps in the iphone does not require a
>> network connection.
>>
>> if a cell connection is available, it can assist in obtaining a fix
>> (hence the name 'assisted gps'), or if it's not available, then the
>> gps functions as any other gps would, by using the gps satellites.
>>
>
> GPS does not require assistance.

It sounds like you need assistance in grasping this simple concept.



--
Mike

In message <[email protected]> Todd Allcock
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Another Apple "innovation"- slickly repackaging others' ideas...

It surprises me how often the "threaded SMS" gets touted as an Apple
invention. I mean, I realize Palm has squandered their market share,
but Palm had this many moons before Apple.

David Moyer <[email protected]> wrote in news:meetme-748065.21463512062008
@n003-000-000-000.static.ge.com:

> you wouldn't need GPS in that situation, the iPhone is smart enough to
> use WPS when it is needed. (like your example)
>
>

Geez, Iphone may be the answer to ship navigation!