I haven't had much luck with the N900's GPS performance when network assistance wasn't available. Without assistance, GPS locks would take 5 or 10 minutes, if they ever happened. Until yesterday.

For the first time since I updated to the latest firmware, I had occasion to use my GPS when there was no network available.

As I was jetting my way across the southeastern US at 12,500 meters altitude and 550kph ground speed, I decided I'd like to see exactly where I was, so I fired up Ovi Maps, and to my complete astonishment, within 60 seconds I had a fix.

Previously, when I was moving at anything over 10mph, I was out of luck without the network to help.

So good job to all those who put in their time filing bug reports and fixing the problem!

The only minor problem I had in getting my location was with the Location Test program, which continually attempted to connect to a network even with assistance turned off in the settings and the positioning mode set to GNSS rather than AGNSS. Ovi Maps did it a couple of times, too, but that's only a minor issue compared to not getting a lock.

I've apparently gone stupid, because I couldn't figure out how to make Ovi Maps keep the map orientation as north up..

As written in https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8126 - if nobody files a request about it, maybe nobody will fix it. :-P
Be my guest by entering a new ticket in bugs.maemo.org.

I could have sworn that north was always up in the original release. Oh well, I'll file a new bug if I can't find one someone else has already filed.

Edited to add: Bug filed as #9349

maybe it was quicker as you were 12500 metres closer to the satellites! less cloud cover etc to interfere.

LOL. Usually it's harder to get a lock at high speed and in a metal tube.

All the clouds were below me, though.