Droid: GPS or AGPS?

[Official_n00b]

Ok, I realize the Droid has GPS and navigation on the phone. But I'm commonly in the middle of nowhere and in areas that do not offer cell coverage.

My old phone (Nokia E71) had TRUE GPS. It used the actual satellites to give your GPS location (also had AGPS). Does the Droid have true GPS or only AGPS?

I'm trying to determine if I should sell my old phone or keep it. If the Droid has true GPS, I'll sell it. But if it's only AGPS, I'll keep the old phone for the GPS.

 

[garrett]

the droid has and uses both

 

[diverbelow]

Ok, I realize the Droid has GPS and navigation on the phone. But I'm commonly in the middle of nowhere and in areas that do not offer cell coverage.

My old phone (Nokia E71) had TRUE GPS. It used the actual satellites to give your GPS location (also had AGPS). Does the Droid have true GPS or only AGPS?

I'm trying to determine if I should sell my old phone or keep it. If the Droid has true GPS, I'll sell it. But if it's only AGPS, I'll keep the old phone for the GPS.

The Droid has GPS & AGPS.

 

[dylanthecat]

If you are using Google Nav, it won't work well without cell coverage cause it can't download new maps for your area.

 

[Sileem]

If you are using Google Nav, it won't work well without cell coverage cause it can't download new maps for your area.

This, you need to be in 3G area's to download maps (And I believe 1X works too)
I learned this the hard way :/

 

[garrett]

If you are using Google Nav, it won't work well without cell coverage cause it can't download new maps for your area.

This, you need to be in 3G area's to download maps (And I believe 1X works too)
I learned this the hard way :/

yeah 1x works too but its painfully slow......

 

[dakster]

I looked into this in detail before I went overseas with my droid. The droid does indeed work in standalone GPS mode.

However, you *have* to have the cdma voice radio turned on in order to get the initial position fix. Data can be disabled (through the testing menu, #*#*INFO*#*# or something). If you have both data and voice radios disabled, you won't be able to get the initial position lock, unless you've very recently had a GPS lock.

Once you do have a gps fix though, you can completely turn off the cdma radios (airplane mode, or whatever), and GPS will continue to work fine.

You don't need to have any kind of CDMA signal for this to work (you could be in the middle of the ocean), but there's some strange electrical wiring reason the CDMA voice radio has to be on for that initial fix.

Of course you'd need some sort of offline mapping program that has teh maps saved to your SD card. I think Mapdroyd is popular. I use maverick pro myself.

 

[takeshi]

Does the Droid have true GPS or only AGPS?

You don't understand what aGPS means. aGPS is "true GPS". It just uses data from assistance servers to speed up the receiver's ability to obtain an initial fix. GPS receivers that only operate in standalone do not use assistance servers. The Droid will fall back to standalone if it has to.

You're thinking of triangulation which is something else entirely. I know it's popular for people to use "GPS" to mean any method of determining location but GPS, by definition, uses the GPS satellites. That includes aGPS (or else it wouldn't have the letters GPS in its acronym). Any other method, whether it's triangulation, WiFi-based, etc isn't GPS.

Wikipedia isn't my favorite resource but here's more reading if you want it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS


That said, I suspect that some incidents I've had with getting a fix may be aGPS-related. I've never had such issues with devices that operated only in standalone mode.