N900 GPS useful?
 

I don't think it can substitute for a car GPS. The reasons:

1. The map is too small to see it in the car.
2. It needs full internet access when drive.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Both of these problems can eventually be fixed by third party or Nokia software. In the mean time, keep an actually useful GPS handy.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Speaking of the GPS, does anyone know how to lock the red dot of your location in the center of the map instead of having it move around while the map remains stationary?

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I haven't been able to figure out how to do much of anything with it, but don't plan to waste much time on it. I've been using various handheld Garmin GPS for over fifteen years, used Street Atlas USA for a while around 12 to 14 years ago bfore I gave up on M$ OS completely. Lately, I also use TangoGPS and Maemo Mapper. All have different UI's that were quick to pick up on.

I'll just use other devices until Maemo Mapper is (officially) out for maemo 5.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

To take of the screen being too small, they just need VOICE NAVIGATION with announcement of actual street names like Google Map Navigation. With actual announcement of street names, you dont' actually have to look at the phone that much while driving.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

The GPS is standalone, by the way...

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Then why this one needs internet connection? Just confused.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

The internet connection is used for AGPS (basically a method to get a lock-on faster).

However, I believe there's a bug that makes the GPS useless without AGPS (even if you stand outside in the middle of a field all day long waiting for a signal) right now.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

The GPS in my N900 works without AGPS, so if there is a bug out there it does not affect my device. I got a location widget on my desktop and it shows my location with and without data connection.

The mapping and routing software supplied with the device (Ovi maps) lacks a lot of functionality and the UI is bad. The maps themselves seem to be accurate, at least in the SF Bay Area.

I also hope for a substantial SW improvement, be it a better version of Ovi maps or a third party application.
My take: A dedicated GPS device is currentlly superior. The N900 with the supplied maps is better than nothing.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

At first, I thought he was saying the screen is too small, but he said the maps are too small, which is different. I have used many GPS with smaller screen than the n900 and they all worked fine for use in a car.

It is just a matter of proper font and feature size. Voice announcement is certainly worthwhile, but not needed. Most of he GPS devices that I used could beep at best. I would prefer (clear) voice, but do not need it.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I am one of the few (apparently) people who paid for Wayfinder on the N800. One of the best things about it was that it came with a suction cup mount to mount on the windshield.

When I upgraded to the N810 I was able to adapt it for the N810 and it was easy to transfer the license over. I'm not all that thrilled with OviMaps but I just fired it up the other day. I might give it a try this weekend just to mess with it, but it looks like a step backward so far.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

If you route to a destination at the bottom of the screen is a "track me" button that will do just that. But if you're just driving down the road it doesn't look like it will follow you, just manually update your location when you push the red dot button at the upper left hand corner. :mad:

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Yes. I mean the street in map is too small. I think we need a voice, otherwise it's not safe to keep checking the map. I think we need to keep the car GPS.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I haven't even been able to get my GPS to work through maps or any other application. The GPS satellite icon continues to flash as if it is trying to grab a signal, but after 10+ minutes either the phone or I finally give up. What's up with that?

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I tested the GPS, it only needs Wireless connection at start up. Then doesn't need it. Anyway the gps is not useful for a car drive, first the street is too small, second no turn voice.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

This is using GPS with no mobile service connection. When I first tried the GPS, I thought it was broken. Considering I was in a vehicle at night, with several people, and we were a little lost, I thought this is a moment for the device to shine. It was a miserable failure.

Later on, I decided to try it again. I was able to get a fix after a considerable period of time.

For standalone GPS use, I am disappointed.

The mapping application was also disappointing to use with GPS. State highways (USA) are labeled as interstates. Some street names were not given. Zooming in and out takes way too many taps to get to a desired level (This could be me needing to learn the interface better).

For navigating on the go, I would love to see voice navigation.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

This is a bit of a thorne in my side too... every GPS app on the planet tracks your location by default, why not this one? WTF?

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

just give us a qual mapping siofty please

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

There is short cut for the zoom, the three stripes triangle above the - + zoom sign, tap on the triangle will give you 1 step zoom to country/state/city/street.

bun

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Well even though the gps isnt the greatest. It did help me out in a couple of car drives. the track me always followed where ever we drove. My complaints would be that when we go of route it doesn't recalculate. And no voice. But other wise it got everyone to the place and back home.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

The device could also be giving your location based on GSM triangulation....

And not on GPS


Bye

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

As long you get it locked once with the Network data connection guide. Then close it down, next time it will be faster to get a lock without Internet connection. But if you restart your device, it will take somewhere between 20 to 40mins to get a lock without the guide of data connection. Mine works but i warmed up the GPS first with data connection before I leave the house. Then when I leave the house I just reopen the app again and let it search for satellites using Location app.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Ovi Maps on Maemo needs love.

I wasn't impressed when one time Ovi Maps jumped repeatedly between the start of the route and my current location, jumping about once per second, making it completely unusable with tracking on. Rebooting fixed this.

I wasn't impressed when it tracked my location and scrolled but the red circle didn't show.

I wasn't impressed when it was loading and I couldn't see a way to minimise it to get on with something else while waiting - it's quite slow to load.

I wasn't impressed when it become unresponsive, twice, locking up the GUI so that I needed to power off the N900 to recover.

I wasn't impressed when I couldn't read the map while stationary because it rotated by a random angle every few seconds. At least I could stop that by turning tracking off.

I wasn't impressed when I couldn't read the map while tracking me walking, for the same reason.

Being able to turn off rotation and just show my orientation with a small arrow would have fixed both the above.

I wasn't impressed when I could see a major road covering half the screen, but not the road's name ("A5") because the name was placed off screen instead of being dynamically placed on screen where there was plenty of room.

I wasn't impressed that despite the excellent high-res screen, it didn't show street names without zooming in quite a lot, at which point it was hard to see surrounding context for navigation.

Particularly a problem when GPS wasn't working and I needed to scroll around looking for a street - because searching for the street didn't find it.

I wasn't impressed at the slow scrolling sometimes, given how smoothly the N900 can be made to draw in things like Bounce Evolution. But scrolling was sometimes fast. Strange.

I wasn't impressed when it did not recalculate the route after I had to deviate from its calculated one. So for about 20 minutes in my journey, away from the calculated route, there was no clue about directions to take, as the calculated route wasn't even on screen at a zoom where you could see street level turnings.

It would have been nice if the journey time estimate showed estimated time to arrival from tracking current position, instead of just journey time.

I would have been nice if an Address in the contacts list could be clicked on to show that position in the map, and it would have been nice to do that when selecting a route endpoint, instead of having to search for a street name.

And of course, I wasn't impressed when I wanted to know my position in an unfamiliar town to route a journey, mobile data wasn't available because (my pre-pay had run out / 3G signal wasn't available (choose occasion)), and GPS didn't lock.

The GPS needs a bit of work with its locking problems, but even if/when GPS is made perfect and lovely, Maemo's Ovi Maps application needs quite a bit of work in the UI and reliability department, imho.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

At the moment, the N900 GPS is useless for me. This is why I keep my N95 on me wherever I go... talk about multitasking.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Maybe tomtom compiles their software on the N900 as they have done on everythimg else. Or maybe not.

Either way, as far as gps go, there simply is no alternative to purposly made HW.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

In addition to this, I am hugely unimpressed with the latest Points of Interest provided by Ovi Maps. I was with my friends and they wanted Domino's Pizza (pretty nasty, but that's a different argument) so I search "Domino's Pizza" in Ovi maps and I got results for locations 50+ miles from where I was at. What the heck? There are at least 2 Domino's Pizza locations here locally so this was inexcusable. Of course I whipped out my N95 and used Google Maps and within a few seconds (Ovi Maps took me a few minutes with its sluggish loading, clunky interface and slow search results) I found several local Pizza joints including Domino's and all was well, no thanks to Ovi Maps on the N900.

Another thing is that if you just try to use Search to find an address, for some reason Ovi Maps does NOT find anything and does not like it. You have to go to Route then Add Route, THEN it will find whatever forsaken address you want. Pretty unintuitive if you ask me.

Of course the N900's GPS can be useful but due to the crappy GPS software it has available it is completely rubbish.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Instead of grabbing your N95, you could have used maeMaps :-)

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

For me GPS is not the ovi maps application... and with this in mind the GPS is quite good. I used it several times with the app GPXView for geocaching and it turned out that the GPS is quite accurate. At least as accurate as my Garmin Forerunner 405. 405 is a small GPS but also a good one in my opinion.

My 2 pence.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I was shocked that there was no voice. I did find it handy when going to a specific place to copy the map of my destination then load it into Liqmap for browsing when I got close.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I used to use my N810 GPS on the road all the time with Wayfinder software. I sold 810 months ago.

Now I am looking at N900, but after reading this thread regarding GPS it sounds a little discouraging. Basically the N900 can't even be used as GPS like previous device 810, but it comes with GPS chip anyway. Hmmm.

So what is the main issue here... is it that Wayfinder or some other companies like Tom Tom or Garmin have not released their "app" for the N900/maemo platform? Or is the screen size of the N900 such that it's not a good device for GPS? I don't get it.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

i took n900 with lotta excitement but was terribly disappointed with the GPS. It really sucks big time. My 5800 XP with free turn by turn is amazing..with voice guided nav and gets lock within a min. where as n900 even on downloading map needs connection and very hard to get a lock from my car unless i am at home on a wifi-connection. Very upsetting indeed !

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Does MaeMaps have offline maps?

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Can confirm this. Waiting for a GPS Signal take much longer than usual.
And it's not very precise.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Using maeMaps will make you broke..with the amount of data transfer you do unless you have unlimited plans. But anyways i will still prefer to have my gps device working offline without the need to rely on data connection.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I don't know what you're belly aching about. I can use my Ovi maps on the N900 with no issues and get to my destination without a problem.

It follows me up the road, the screen is no way near small compared to a tom tom, either sort some glasses or zoom the map in so you can see where you're going.

I can even pick up a gps signal inside my house. And NO it does not require Wifi to start up either.

Another thread moaning about something that can be easily over come with a bit of fiddling.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

Meh, I think even the N810 GPS was more useful, and I have been quoted to say it was useless. The N900 map software has lost it's way.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I think you need to see what ovi maps 3 has to offer. Then you will release wht you are missing here.

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I get a gps lock on my N900 in seconds rather than minutes, even indoors, so no problems there for me.

However the hardware is let down by the appallingly bad Maps software, I find myself having to dust off and use my N95-2 with Garmin XT installed when I need to use navigation.

I long for something like the Garmin app on my N900...

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

I agree. We all knew that the N810 had poor GPS, and were led to believe that this was because it used an older chipset. Naturally I assumed that the N900 would be better.

It sounds like the N900 GPS works OK for folks with an always-on data connection, but that's not possible for me.

For me, the three let-downs of the N900 are the small screen size, poor battery life, and the GPS.

Regards,
Roger

Re: N900 GPS useful?
 

the only thing of not connecting in offline mode makes gps on n900 utterly useless.