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Something I noticed about the GPS.

Took a 300 mile each way car trip over the last 2 days. I had my Captivate and 4 year old Tom Tom XLS with 9 month old update. We didnt need the Tom Tom until about 10 miles from our destination. Turned it on at the same time as opening Navigation on the Captivate. It took around 5 minutes for them to get a satellite lock. The interesting thing was they locked at EXACTLY the same time.
Now, the Tom Tom (TT) usually locks in 30 seconds or less if I turn it on near home. If I'm over say 100 miles from home it takes several minutes to lock on. I had heard this is due to the TT looking for the same satellites or number of satellites as when it was last locked on.
So that said, when we were leaving, I turned on the TT and Captivate and did the same thing. TT locked in about 30 seconds, Captivate in about 5 minutes. When we were 100 miles from home I turned off the TT and Captivate. Turned on again at home and they both took exactly the same time to lock on again - about 5 minutes.
I noticed a similar lag with my Tilt 1 if I didnt download the quicksat updates. If they were installed, the thing locked on very quick.
So could the Captivate have no historical data of the last lock and thus is always trying to track and locate satellites that are not visible, gives up then locks onto new ones?
Am I smoking something?

With everyone complaining about the gps, I have had absolutely no trouble with it. Being very inaccurate with the famous blue circle around it is only when it does not have a CLEAR view of the sky. I bought a holder that sticks on the windshield and it locks on in about 2-4 minutes, and it deadly accurate from there. I have the cheap tom tom and the captivate is just as accurate as the TT. Actually locks on faster than my TT if Im moving. I've tested it a lot to see if I can have trouble, but unless I block its view.... I have 100% reliable operation out if it.

klloyd said:
With everyone complaining about the gps, I have had absolutely no trouble with it. Being very inaccurate with the famous blue circle around it is only when it does not have a CLEAR view of the sky. I bought a holder that sticks on the windshield and it locks on in about 2-4 minutes, and it deadly accurate from there. I have the cheap tom tom and the captivate is just as accurate as the TT. Actually locks on faster than my TT if Im moving. I've tested it a lot to see if I can have trouble, but unless I block its view.... I have 100% reliable operation out if it.
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2-4 minutes sucks bad for locking and needing a 100% clear view of the sky is also bogus. What happens if you don't live in the flat rectangle known as Kansas? The GPS on these flat out sucks. I have a 10+ year old "cobra" handheld GPS that locks faster and holds lock / is more accurate.

I live in that flat rectangle, and it still would get lost.

OP
I think you are on the right track. In addition to othe issues with the gps, such as incorrectly intrpreting the time zone and having GMT 5 hours off, regardless what other people say, it seems to be starting in"cold" mode always, whic means it needs to download all the positional data first, determine the satellites positions and the attempt to get a fix. This takes about 5 min in any gps, simply because the transmission rate of the gps satellites is very low.
Your tomtom attempts to take a shortcut assuming it's not too far from where it was turned off last time. If true, it can get a fix in 20 secs or less, if false, it would take 5 min.
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Mine always locks in within 20 seconds, whether I am moving on stationary, hot start or cold start. I've even tried turning it on 100s of miles from my usual location and still locks and holds while driving to 32ft accuracy. I am already on my second captivate, the first one liked to turn off randomly. The first one didn't have a gps problem either.
I did do the supl.google fix to both though. They were slow with factory settings.
Under LbsTestMode do you have it set to HotStart and MS Based?
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jmgelba said:
Took a 300 mile each way car trip over the last 2 days. I had my Captivate and 4 year old Tom Tom XLS with 9 month old update. We didnt need the Tom Tom until about 10 miles from our destination. Turned it on at the same time as opening Navigation on the Captivate. It took around 5 minutes for them to get a satellite lock. The interesting thing was they locked at EXACTLY the same time.
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I did notice the same thing when I was on a trip in Wyoming two weeks ago. I hadn't turned on either GPS (in this case the car one was a Garmin) and when I did both locked at the exact same time (probably after about 3-4 minutes after turning them on). It was quite surprising because I thought the Garmin would go much faster than my Captivate, but this was not the case.

I was extremely lost last night in the city with buildings all over on a cloudy night. Gps found me and directed me in about 1 min coming from a car garage .
I've noticed it locks faster if you back out of Google maps while its finding your location and go back in. It seems to get a lock quicker. Same goes for navigation, I enter a destination and hit navigate, if it don't find a lock within say 10 seconds like it usually does for me ill hit back once and then navigate again. Then it usually finds a lock fast almost instantly ..
I do get the blue circle while navigating sometimes , but it moves along perfectly . Ill even just use google maps without the navigation and watch myself move on the map nicely...
I usually get from 4 to 7 satellites out of 12 or so.
Works for me, if it can be better cool, but its done me well so far can't complain too much.

I tried using it last night. Not sure how many satellites it locked on to, but it did give me the accurate to 5 meters message in Maps.
That said, it was ever so slightly off (probably 6 or 7 meters instead of 5) and my compass is blown. Even after calibrating it, its still a few degrees off (15 - 20 maybe?).

3rd Captivate, GPS Works

I've had 2 Captivate's from AT&T store here in Seattle and returned them both because of the well known GPS problems. I had posted a question earlier questioning what evidence made people think that it was a software vs hardware issue. After returning the second one I went back to my iPhone 3GS but couldn't handle it anymore and got a 3rd Captivate from Best Buy (they were $50 cheaper). Running all stock this GPS works nearly perfect and gets MUCH better signal than the previous two. I've run GPS Test by Chartcross Ltd on all 3 of them to view the satellite SNR and Accuracy rather than just looking at maps or nav...on the previous units I would see signals at best in the mid 20s to mid 30s and they would sit there forever and once in awhile get a lock. This was even walking outside on clear sunny days.
On this new unit that I've had for about 5 days now I'm getting mid 30s to mid 40s on the SNR even on rainy days, and even in the car. It consistently locks on to 5+ satellites and consistently is able to get 16-32ft accuracy while driving down I5. I've used My Tracks to track 5 trips back and forth to work (about 30 minutes each way) and get near perfect tracks each time. Google Nav works just as well as my in car nav system.
So, given this HUGE difference between units that I have personally used does it seem like there is still room for this being software not hardware? Might there be something software wise on my new unit that could possibly help?

my GPS testing: OK for me. My opinion...

I bought my first Captivate at the very beginning of August. I wanted the GPS to work, so I could use it instead of a separate GPS unit sometimes. After about 5 days the GPS was really struggling to lock. I put it outside under the open sky for 5 minutes with GPS Test, and it saw lots of satellites but used zero. I reset the phone and poof, it worked properly again. That seemed like a strange bug to me. I heard an update was coming by the end of September, but that was going to be outside my 30 days, so I returned my Captivate to Best Buy and got my $230 back, no problems.
Sept 7, I bought a new Captivate, now only $150 at Best Buy. This one worked fine and the GPS never completely failed like the first one did. But I didn't test much as I waited for the update. September 22 I forced the update on my normal unrooted captivate, and it went fine. I did some testing and the GPS seemed to track OK and lock in a reasonable time. Now its a week later and it still seems good.
Here are a couple comments.
First a note on my GPS experience. I own 3 GPS units besides the Captivate, and older MIO C230, a Garmin eTrex Centure HC, and SPOT 2 GPS Messenger. I also have extensive experience with a Garmin Nuvi 1390T. I ride a dirt bike in the desert and have used tracks to navigate extensively.
- Time to get satellite lock. The Captivate does often take a while to lock on the satellites. But so do all my other GPS devices. Sometimes they lock quickly, but often they can take a minute or more. This is related to whether they have stored data on where they are, and thus know where to look for the satellites. At any rate I don't always get a quick lock on the Captivate, but it has never failed to get a lock under a clear sky if I give it up a minute or two. 10m resolution is typical once locked under a unobstructed sky. For those having trouble with this: Are you giving the Captivate a clear view of the sky and a couple minutes? Yes, sometimes GPS's lock indoors and really quickly. But in my experience this isn't always true. What I'm saying is the Captivate works similarly to the other GPS's I use. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. But it is always locking under a clear unobstructed sky within a couple minutes.
- Google maps. After it locks, the captivate shows my location on the map well. As I said above, sometimes lock takes a minute or more. And it requires a clear view of the sky most of the time.
- Track quality. I tested with "My Tracks". I run around town on a scooter every day, so its easy to turn on the tracker and and see what happens. I put the Captivate in my pocket on my thigh, back side facing the sky. The only thing obscuring its view is my body. Basically, it seems to work fine. It certainly works as well as my Garmin eTrex. The eTex tracks are always a bit rough too. Yes, the Captivate track does sometimes cut the corner or the curve and is off the street that I actually rode on. But it basically follows my route well. It has always followed me when I loop around a block, or drive down a short dead end and come back. I can definitely tell where I went and what roads I took when I look at the track. I'm not bothered if it shows me 20-40 feet off the road on occasion (as I have noted, so does my Garmin eTrex). I expect this with a 10m resolution.
- Navigation. I've been using the google Navigation app on drives in the car. I mount the Captivate in a mount on the dash, so it has a clear view of the sky through the glass. It's not on the seat, or in the ashtray or in a cup holder. It's mounted to the windshield close to the front, so it has a good view of a broad expanse of sky. This is exactly how I mount the Mio GPS or Garmin etrex or Garmin Nuvi when I use those in the car. Used like this, my Captivate navigation has been excellent. Frankly, its far better app than the Mio or Garmin Nuvi 1390T that I have used. The searches are quick and I like the presentation. Obviously, in Navigation the app knows to lock you on the street. And when I drive past an indicated turn it always notices immediately.
Summary: So I don't know what has changed since my first Captivate, but this one seems fine to me. I don't know if it's the hardware, or the SW update. But so far mine works as well as the other GPS devices I have used. If it keeps working like this for another week, I'm definitely keeping it. I'm sure some have trouble, as I did with my first Captivate. And I do think some others expect too much: I don't expect the Captivate to be "THE BEST GPS" I have ever seen. I expect it to lock within 2 minutes, work for navigation in my car, to find me on a google map and to record a track of where I went. This all seems to be working for me. (And usually it locks in well under a minute for me). I think I'll keep it... if this performance keeps up.
IMO, YMMV
Carl

vintagephone/Carl. Yours is a very useful write up. I use a Garmin GPS for Geocaching, some street navigation and bicycle riding in the country. What you wrote should be very helpful to someone not so familiar with GPS devices in general. Thanks.
= Ron

I completely agree. People looking at 'my tracks' and showing that there are some slight variations - we don't even know if the google maps is 100% accurate, as I know there are certain places where it doesn't match up directly with the road. I think as long as no errors are being presented during navigation (mine is doing fine in navigation mode) there is not really any complaining that can be done. Even my built in car GPS makes a mistakes once in a blue moon.

I'm not sure what Garmin Nuvi you're using, but I have a 2 yr old 250W and it smokes this phone. The phone has me driving through people's yards and buildings. It has gotten better since the JH7 update, its almost what I would call usable now. Try doing a Mytracks track on it, its a joke how far off it is. Its certainly unusable for that.

derek4484 said:
I'm not sure what Garmin Nuvi you're using, but I have a 2 yr old 250W and it smokes this phone. .
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I'm very familiar with the Garmin I used, a Nuvi 1390T. Negatives for the Garmin included horrible traffic reports, and searches for my destination took forever. Basic Navigation was OK, if you knew the address of where you were going. And if you were going someplace more than 30 miles away (a common undertaking in the LA basin), you just couldn't get there. Searches on the Nuvi only include locations within 30 miles. Frankly, the search was much worse than on my old Mio. I had the Nuvi 1390 for a couple weeks and returned i just as I got my second Captivate. For basic GPS navigation, the Nuvi was OK, but I saw no advantage over the Captivate. Are you mounting your Captivate in the same way and place you are mounting your Nuvi? I actually use a modified Nuvi windshield mount with my Captivate, so my mounting is literally identical.
Now, you Captivate my not work as well as mine. My original Captivate was worse than this one. As I said, YMMV (your mileage may vary).

I use a Garmin V GPS receiver for Geocaching and some other activities which demands a very high degree of accuracy. This receiver will use as many birds as it can find (seldom less than five) to determine its location but a cell phone GPS receiver may limit the number of satellites it tracks to conserve battery power.
Using four satellites, the accuracy of the Garmin V typically comes down to a target area that is two to twenty feet in diameter. This unit is fast; I can watch the current location triangle move past streets just as I am able to make out the street signs.
The Captivate I ordered will not be here until later today so I can't report anything about my experience with that device. I have been using an HTC device (AT&T "Tilt") and Google Maps for several years now and can report it has very good GPS accuracy and speed when compared to the Garmin unit. I would be pleased indeed if the Captivate even comes close to the performance of the Tilt.
As with any GPS device, it has to have line of sight visibility with at least three satellites to report its position with any reliability. Clouds (with heavy moisture), trees and tall buildings can reduce GPS accuracy substantially. Bicycling through heavily forested areas reduces the accuracy of my Garmin V from a few feet to hundreds of feet. As it takes a few minutes for the receiver to "lock on" and recalculate its position, after pedaling through a forested area I can be a mile up the road before the display catches up. Even at bicycle speeds (15MPH) I have missed turns simply because of trees!
With the Tilt, moving on foot around tall buildings, Google Maps sometimes can't figure out where I am. In the car, I usually pull the sunroof shade back so the Tilt gets a clear shot at the sky.
One final point: If I have the Garmin running at home, shut it off, then restart it again when I am fifty miles from home, it takes maybe five minutes to find three in-view birds. There is a feature in the Gamin that allows me to move its cursor to about where I think I am and it, then it uses this information to find new birds. I use this feature frequently and it usually saves two or three minutes locking on to a new set of birds. That feature is not available with the Tilt and it can take a full five minutes for it to find three birds when I change location with the GPS receiver turned off.
I hope these comments are useful. A cell phone with GPS capabilities is understandably no match for a single-purpose GPS receiver and particularly so when the two devices sell for about the same price.

I doubt that it is Maps or myTracks that is off (although I had wondered about this as well) because when you run the Captivate side-by-side with an N1, the N1's lock and track are very fast (almost instantaneous) and flawless. Of course we all know the Captivate's lock and track issues. The N1's track would not be so perfect if it were an issue with the base map accuracy, when the app on both phones is the same and accesses the same data.
The issue can also be seen running GPS Status or GPS Test together too, the N1's lock is always better, although I see no appreciable difference in SNR values for each satellite. It is just like the Captivate simply will not lock, even when it sees the same satellites. That is why I am sure it is the driver issue and therefore fixable.
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50% error in GPS tracking a walk on S2 3G in standalone mode

I walked a 5K downtown with the Gear S2 3G in standalone mode, starting and stopping at the finish line, and the S Health summary screen says I only went 1.8mi, a little more than half of a 5K, 3.1mi. That's a tremendous error.
What's strange, though, is the map of my path is accurate, and if you use a tool like Google Earth to create a path roughly following this picture, you'll get about 3mi. The area is downtown Knoxville, if you're wanting to try it out. Race course map is also attached.
I don't see how it can draw the map correctly and then be unable to measure the distance of the line.

Yep...Gear S had same problem. Needs a better GPS tracker
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health activity disconnecting issue
Hello
The problem with s2 is that , after a period of time, it disconnects from the phone. I'm talking about the s2 non 3g version, that from the official specs it doesn,t have GPS. The local store where i bought the watch it said that it has internal GPS, so that's why I bought this watch. Anyway, in health activty, like running, after a 6 km running, the s2 only showed me 5.5, because it disconnected a period of time from the phone. Why in the hell is disconnecting when you are in an sport activity, isn't this the main reason that you sell this watch, Samsung ? I am so pissed of of this, I will sell it if they do not fix it in an update. When you are running, cycling or any gps monitorised activity, the s2 SHOULD NOT DISCONNECT from the phone until you stop the sport activity ! If you know any fix about this problem, please share it ! Thanks !

I wrote a pretty long review of my similar experience. I saw your post before buying and decided to try it anyway. When I got to the end of my street, my Garming Forerunner said .40 miles and my watch said .20. This is using the AT&T version with the GPS. Pretty terrible.
Its a shame because it was really nice as a smart watch. I would really love to get a running watch that doubles as a smart watch. I can't justify the smart watch alone. Really putting hope into the Moto 360 Sport....

I am glad I found this thread. I purchased an S2 3G for the sole purpose of replacing my Moto 360 and using it as a standalone GPS running watch. I am 2 days away from reaching the end of the 14-day return window and had not yet used it on a run.
So after reading this thread, I immediately went for a run. I am glad I did. The watch is going back to T-Mobile tomorrow. I ran with the watch in standalone mode and with my phone so that I could compare the two.
According to my phone using Runkeeper, I ran 2.16 miles; the watch: 2.02 miles. Also the watch lost GPS signal after walking under a tree. I then compared the maps. Runkeeper had an accurate map of the entire run. S Health only tracked on the map something the equivalent of a quarter mile but yet showed 2.02 miles.
Thank you guys for bringing this to my attention.
Edit: I too hope great things for the Moto 360 Sport.

Xlegendxero said:
I am glad I found this thread. I purchased an S2 3G for the sole purpose of replacing my Moto 360 and using it as a standalone GPS running watch. I am 2 days away from reaching the end of the 14-day return window and had not yet used it on a run.
So after reading this thread, I immediately went for a run. I am glad I did. The watch is going back to T-Mobile tomorrow. I ran with the watch in standalone mode and with my phone so that I could compare the two.
According to my phone using Runkeeper, I ran 2.16 miles; the watch: 2.02 miles. Also the watch lost GPS signal after walking under a tree. I then compared the maps. Runkeeper had an accurate map of the entire run. S Health only tracked on the map something the equivalent of a quarter mile but yet showed 2.02 miles.
Thank you guys for bringing this to my attention.
Edit: I too hope great things for the Moto 360 Sport.
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If youre looking for a running watch, I ended up getting a Garmin Foreunner 230. Smart watch wise, it doesn't come close to the Gear S2, but is great for running. 10 hours with GPS active. I can even see what side of the road ran on during a past run.
You get Notifications, but can't respond to them. The screen isn't backlit either, but front lit. I don't see me liking the Moto 360 Sport better than this, but I figure I can return the Forerunner if the reviews are good for the Moto.
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I am a runner and I first tried Garmin Forerunner 235. Smartwatch features doesn't come close to Gear S2 but GPS worked perfectly and runner software features were great. My wife wanted me to be reachable when I run so I returned it and got gear s2 with great hopes. Unfortunately I didn't read these forums, there was one good review somewhere else and I got mine from t-mobile last weekend. However, gps is really bad. I believe some of the issues can be resolved with software updates but if the gps reception is bad, there won't be any remedy for that. I will try a few more days and return probably. I tried to attach the screenshots from a walk recorded with gear s2 nike+ and runkeeper on galaxy s4.
nsical

I'm in the same boat. I talked about it more in the Nike+ thread, but my watch is currently at Samsung being diagnosed. I'm not hopeful that it will be fixed though, seeing that everyone else is having the same issue.

Has anyone compared the Moto Sport 360 GPS to the Gear S2 3G GPS?
Also, do we know anything about what type of GPS chips they both use? It doesn't look like iFixit has done a teardown on either device yet.

Lucent said:
I walked a 5K downtown with the Gear S2 3G in standalone mode, starting and stopping at the finish line, and the S Health summary screen says I only went 1.8mi, a little more than half of a 5K, 3.1mi. That's a tremendous error.
What's strange, though, is the map of my path is accurate, and if you use a tool like Google Earth to create a path roughly following this picture, you'll get about 3mi. The area is downtown Knoxville, if you're wanting to try it out. Race course map is also attached.
I don't see how it can draw the map correctly and then be unable to measure the distance of the line.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello everyone.
I have a s2 3g gear and when I use the s-health of the clock to register my race training it does not record the route taken with the internal gps. Now if instead of opting for a race training I start a bicycle training the gear s2 makes the registration of the course from the beginning to the place of termination of the training on the map. Is there any way to make the s2 record the route taken in the race training? Or does my gear have a problem? Because that does not make any sense if it's the way that samsung programmed the app!

Gear s2 range from phone

Has anyone tested how far the watch can be away from the phone before they lose connection?

In a warehouse I can leave my phone in my office and travel about 50 feet away and get notifications. In my house I can leave my phone upstairs and travel all around the house and be connected.