I use Google maps and sometimes the GPS is way off, showing a range of 1700 meters. But sometimes it is accurate, showing a 10 meters range. Why is that? Not enough satellites over my head? How can they miss by 1.7km?
When you are accurate to 1700m, its actually using the cell towers to figure out your location, based on the tower, and the signal strength. To use the GPS, you need to activate it in Googlemaps,
He was correct. You need to "Start GPS" in Google maps to actually use the GPS, otherwise it's just cellular towers telling you your location. Quick note: if you're on Verizon, you cannot do this, they disabled GPS.
To have any amount of accuracy with any mapping tool you need to pick up a bluetooth GPS reciever. I have a Holux GPSslim 240 which is about the size of a pack of Wrigleys chewing gum and it has a place on it to install a cell phone lanyard. I just toss the thing on my dash of my car when ever I am looking for some street or address. It is very accurate. I can walk down my driveway with this thing hanging on my neck and it will accurately put me at the street when I get there.
I use it with Blackberry Maps most of the time. I have not installed Google Maps on the BB yet. Maybe some weekend project.
I know this but it is not avaliable on my phone and it appears I need use Alltel's mapping stuff package. It shows in the GPS menu (Device GPS), I activate it and set GPS Services Location On but it still does not work when using it with mapping programs like Blackberry Maps. I am assuming it is blocked or the line of site view to the satellites is not good enough to use in the car. Its about the only thing that appears to be blocked on this phone. The Target Icon is on in the Home page so I know that the location feature is working for E911. I doubt that it is using the GPS though so it is probably using the cell towers.
With Alltel, you have to download the Telenav application...you don't have to use it, just download it...and the GPS in the 8830 will work with 3rd party applications like Google Maps. I get accuracy to 20 meters in my livingroom.
I downloaded telenav, and got google to work, but is alltel going to charge me a per month fee for the telenav? someone said first month free then $9 a month, yikes. Know anything about that?
That's interesting. My understanding was once you downloaded/installed it you were locked in to pay the monthly fee. Least that is what I was led to believe.
With Alltel, you have to download the Telenav application...you don't have to use it, just download it...and the GPS in the 8830 will work with 3rd party applications like Google Maps. I get accuracy to 20 meters in my livingroom.
I downloaded telenav, and got google to work, but is alltel going to charge me a per month fee for the telenav? someone said first month free then $9 a month, yikes. Know anything about that?
I used telenav 3 or 4 times in the first week after I downloaded it - have not touched it since - and that's been long enough ago now that if it was going to show up on my bill, it would have - and it has not.
And I still prefer my Garmin Nuvi 750 to any GPS app on my bb.
Well I wanted to report back here and let you know what I found out with attempting to get the GPS working in my 8830. I downloaded both Google Maps and TeleNav to my phone. I got Google Maps working first and verified my Bluetooth GPS unit worked with it and it got me spot on where I was at. So that convinced me it was working correctly. I turned off my Bluetooth GPS and switch the GPS unit back to the Device GPS in the phone. I let the phone sit on the car for about 10 minutes to let it sync up with the satellites (did not know how long it would need and there was no way to tell but figured 10 minutes was enough time). I started TeleNav and got it eventually to the username/password prompt. There was no option to Switch Applications in the menu and the escape key did not work so I used the End Call button and that got me back into the Home Screen. I verified TeleNav was still running and I then started Google Maps. Google maps never used the GPS it went eventually to using cell towers to determine my location and it was not even close. Pressing the 0 key a few times but it never used the phone GPS. The accuracy of the cell tower approach was not good. Typically it was 5 miles off. I suspect the cell towers in this area are not all in their database so it attemped to locate me based on one and I know that there are more CDMA towers than that.
So I think I followed the directions given as best I could. I need to go to the "big city" this weekend where I am sure those towers will be in Google's database. I'd like to see it work with just cell tower information.
As far as getting the GPS going, I was not successful.
So did I do something wrong in my test? My guess is that Alltel discovered their little mistake and corrected it.
