I've created bug 2877 to let Nokia know that we are not thrilled with satellite acquisition times on N810.

Please go to

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2878

and vote for this bug.

Thanks.

using the statusbar process viewer, the following command will allow you to start the GPS and log NMEA output to the external card (without running the actual map program):

sh -c '/usr/libexec/navicore-gpsd-helper >>/media/mmc1/gpslog.txt'

It is not timestamped, but can show the acquisition process.

You can watch it better in an xterm, but this lets me turn the GPS on for my old zmapper I ported from the zaurus.

just voted for the bug. Here's hoping someone pays attention!!

Voted! #1 biggest irritant with the otherwise great n810!

It's interesting that so many people complain about this ... I'm running OS2008 build 2007.50-2 on an n810, and I get lock times of far less than a minute when in my car. The first lock time after purchase was under 3 minutes or so. The lock times compare favorably to my Garmin eTrex.

I wonder what causes some people to have such a poor experience? I was prepared to be underwhelmed, and was therefore pleasantly surprised by what I found.

Just added my vote.

I imagine that geographic and weather conditions play a significant part in this. Like if you're around tall steel buildings for example, I'm sure it doesn't help anything.

I just tried it today, but it locked fairly quickly. But it was on my dashboard with a very open view of the sky.

This would be a great GPS chip to have in a future tablet:

http://www.u-blox.com/products/lea_5h.html

1 second TTFF with offline AGPS, 4 HZ update rate, 50 channels, sees both GPS and Galileo sats.

Generic use mobile devices are always compromises, that thing is not: it's huge! The chip footprint is 8 times the footprint of the current TI chip, and that's what matters here (as long as a minimal level of performance is reached) -- anyone interested in high performance can just buy an external device.

If we look at the current crop of TI offerings, as we should for future products, the difference is actually 15 times (25 mm2 vs. 381 mm2). I'm sure the power requirement difference is in the same direction...

It's only 17x22 mm. Roughly the size of a miniSD card. Sure they could find space for it in a 5" tablet.

The chip is supposed to be very power efficient.