I decided to return N810.
Couldn't justify $479 for GPS feature that has issues.

Last night I put unit in window facing south and it actually got signal with 1 minute on two trys.

This morning I put in same window and It could't even see one satellite in over 5 minutes.
Nokia needs to remedy this issue.
Wi Fi also had some quirks.


I am going to order a ASUS EEE as an alternative.

When you first turn on a GPS unit, it acquires all the satellites that are in range. This can take up to 10 minutes with any GPS unit. Once the sat info has been acquired, getting a fix doesn't take long at all.

This is exactly the same behavior that I found with the N810. Turn on the map software, leave it in the window sill or on the dashboard for 10 minutes. The next time you turn on the mapping software, acquisition time should be short.

I'm here in the middle of a modern metal framed office park building (truly in the middle. I see no windows from my cube) and my N810 is giving me a location in less than 22 seconds. That's starting the timer when I click the Map button on the menu and stopping it when the map changes to my location. If you're having trouble with the GPS, you might have a defective model, but there's nothing wrong with my N810. The sensitivity is higher than with my Nokia LD-1W that I used with my N800. I was never able to get a lock in this building at all with that device.

This was a second N810 .I returned the first because I thought that had a defective GPS.
As I stated above it did lock in quickly twice the previous night.
It was placed in same exact window next morning and did not show anything for five minutes. This is not a reliable product for $479.00.
My Garmin Nuvi 350 will lock in within 1 minute no matter where I turn it on.

GPS in this unit is too quirky and not worth having it built into this generation.
I bought N810 for many reasons other than GPS but I feel if you are paying for a feature it should work.
There are other devices available with bigger screen, more memory and faster processor for less money for internet use.

Nokia should have left GPS out and priced lower to compete with linux devices that are now coming out.

Are you guys leaving the keyboard slid open?

I know on my N95, the GPS radio is in a weird place and I will get unreliable GPS locks if I have the phone slide into its "closed" position.

I am virtually certain this is a software/firmware problem, not a hardware problem

jds54 - try rebooting the unit when you are having problems and see if it fixes them.

My next test is to see if rmmod/insmod the gps module will fix it - on advice from a 'real linux hacker' friend of mine. I don't yet know which module it is, but should be able to figure that out.

I share your frustration on the price/bugginess - at least if the driver was open source, it could be examined for logic flaws or typos....

Keyboard was always open when I tried GPS.
I made sure of that because of how GPS is in upper left corner.

Today I called Nokia. Some customer agent told me that they are not aware of the problem with the GPS in their N810 - maybe each of us should bug them at least 10 times to make them aware..

There's a serious problem if the manufacturer of a device meant to be driven by end-users as developers is unaware of the main problems being voiced by the end-user.

GPS seems to work for me so far... <touchwood>... I tried it in my car - the fix is only required the first time, not subsequent times - and the mapping works fine each time.

The only little problem - maybe its a feature bug - but while the cross-hair moves down the road as I am driving, if I flick the map and pan with my finger, in that case the map becomes still and the cross-hair moves out of the screen as I keep driving - in that case I need to keep dragging and panning the screen with my finger. The auto-move stops somehow.

I need to close and restart the app again for it to revert back to auto-move mode.

Otherwise its fine with me.
Wish you all luck too.

My dear friend,

I am really sorry, but you are wrong.
Sirf III gps unit is already a standard.
Any gps unit is already tested by a manufacturer
so there is no point to say about cold start at all.
I bought new Motorola A1000 6 months ago
and for days couldn't get a fix , suddently I got a fix driving a car
and got fix lost again when I stopped.

To read satellite signal level you don't need to get fix at first.
If you get no satellite signals at all,
there is something wrong with your unit (hardware or software).

Mayby the problem lies with gps unit sensivity level not set properly by a manufacturer.

Darius