[jon4400]

Hi, I'm a college student and live in Montreal. I own a Bold 9900 unlocked (using Rogers) and I can't seem to find a reliable Maps application. I have both Google Maps and Blackberry Maps installed on my smartphone and they seem to enjoy letting me down in times of need.
Sometimes it would lock on my real location or sometimes they would give me an estimate. This can be very frustrating for me as I am still new to this city. It even came down to the point where I had to use the hotspot feature to connect my iPod touch and use its mapping application to locate myself, which worked effectively.

I tried the GPS test from device Analyzer once and it give me my accurate location, I know for a fact that it's not an Hardware issue.
I am willing to pay for a great map application on App World, but for some reason I' don't trust those reviews, that is why I came to this forums to get some suggestions from you guys.
I am on the official Rogers 7.1.0.391, (might useful since BB maps version depends on the OS).
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Pete6]

Goggle Maps is probably the best mapping program for a BlackBerry.

It uses two methods to find your location.

Cell tower triangulation and GPS. The BlackBerry is a phone with a GPS receiver as an add-on. It is not a dedicated GPS positioning device. The GPS antenna is nothing like as good as a Gamin Trek device.

My own experience with BlackBerrys and map positioning is that the phone will almost always give you an approximate position based on cell towers. This is usually better than 100M. Once I get a good GPS fix, accuracy can be as good as 6M.

GPS lock is sometimes hard to get in a town. If you go to Options, Location Settings, you will see your current location information IF and only if the GPS has a current lock on enough satellites. You can force a refresh of this data by pressing Menu and selecting Refresh GPS. Note that the GPS can take several minutes to regain the satellies. This will be worse/longer in built up areas where an unobstructed view of a large percentage of the sky is not available to the antenna.

Whilst in this screen you can enable Location Aiding which will help quite a bit.

The worst case for a BlackBerry to position itself is to not have a GPS lock and to be only able to "see" one cell tower whence it cannot do triangulation.

[jon4400]

Thanks man, now I understand the location system better. When I were in an area with less buildings I would get a much accurate lock. I guess I'll stick with Google Maps then, until Rim make a better maps application.