[peter9477]

Has anyone else tried working with the GPS yet?

I'm wondering if the API has changed for it at a low level (i.e. in PPS) since nothing I've tried yet actually gets results (NDK, AIR, or Python).

I have yet to try rebuilding the NDK geolocation sample with the BB10 beta SDK...

[peter9477]

Several of us have no managed to get the Geolocation sample working, by building with the new (beta) NDK rather than the "old" 2.0 NDK. Same code, different tools, different results.

Good to know my Alpha's GPS is actually working though. I was told at the BB10 Jam that the performance of GPS on the phones should be noticeably better than it is on the current generation PlayBooks, at least in part because the antenna is no longer stuck in one corner where a hand is generally obscuring it.

[peter9477]

After further experimentation, I can only conclude that the GPS software on this thing is, for now, so unreliable as to be useless.

At least a few times a day since my last post (6 days ago) I have attempted to get GPS readings again, always under conditions in which the PlayBook worked flawlessly. Almost every time I've tried rebooting as well, to no avail.

Finally, today, I got my first readings since then.

It was configured to get readings once per second, and I got readings from 19:15:02 until 19:18:48, 210 readings in all, with horizontal accuracy gradually going from 22.7m to 2.9m.

Then it just stopped and would not work again. I'm a bit disgusted by how much of a regression this appears to be.

Still would appreciate any comments from others about their success, or lack thereof.

[SCrid2000]

Is it the software or the hardware? Can't imagine RIM invested too much into the hardware for the alphas...

[peter9477]

SCrid2000, update on progress:

Several others have now helped me test, using their Alphas, and their results were night and day with mine. They got nearly immediate readings (within about 10s after start) and no sign of it just stopping. One did see the same flakiness where it didn't work again when he exited and relaunched right away. So at least much of it's not inherent in the Alpha.

As for mine, it's improving. I suspect a few things, one being that it does do a fallback to WiFi-hotspot geolocation lookup online, another involving the downloading of almanac and ephemeris data (same as on the PlayBook). Now that I've been intensively trying to get this working for a few days, it's more likely to have up-to-date info and seems to work better.

Part of it's probably also just some wonkiness in the Alpha OS, similar to how the touch screen may simply stop seeing touches, or how sometimes when I put it into standby it won't come back out, either with a touch or with the power button, even though I can tell (via SSH) that my app is still running fine.

For me, at the moment, it's usable for testing GPS stuff again. Yay...