Yesterday I did some more experiments with the N810 GPS.

For testing I did try to get a fix in my house downstairs. In that location it is normally impossible to get a fix, but I just wanted to see what signal strength MaemoMapper GPS details show. After about 10 minutes of wait I had signal from 3 satellites. The strongest was about "30". I did not get a fix. (All this with A-GPS enabled.)

I moved upstairs where the signal strength is better. My strongest signal improved to about "33-35". After this GPS started to find more satellites, and finally got a fix in about 3 minutes.

Once the GPS has fix the satellite signal strength bars are updated much more frequently, maybe about once per second. I experiment how much holding tablet in hand in different positions affects signal strength. I did find some surpising results:

1) In general holding tablet on hand anywhere else than upper left corner increased signal strength significantly (up to "10"...) This appear to be due to "grounding" the tablet chassis.

2) Holding hand above (close but not touching) the tablet upper left corner significantly increased signal strength on some satellites. Some in excess of "10"! It appear that the most gain was with satellites where hand was exactly placed between satellite and N810 GPS antenna (located at upper left corner?)

3) Combining 1) and 2) doesn't seem to bring any more gain.

These are my basic findings... Especially the 2) surprised me a lot. The only explanation (?) I can think is that the hand will form an antenna element (similar to the "sticks" in front of the yagi/dipole antenna) to increase antenna gain. Now you guys with more experience in RF and antenna theory can chime in...