Request Comments: iPhone GPS Performance Compared to dedicated GPS receiver of comparable price

Request Comments: iPhone GPS Performance Compared to dedicated
GPS receiver of comparable price.

I'm interested in user experiences with the iPhone GPS
compared to dedicated GPS Receivers.

Thanks
-Sam

I am still new to the iPhone, but the few times I used the iphone GPS
feature it had a slow response and the accuracy was less than the Garmin's I
have owned. My only experience with the iPhone was on the road in a vehicle
which is not really a valid test for a GPS. I have my doubts about its
ability to track in steep terrain or thick cover.

I don't carry my GPS everywhere I go, but I do carry my phone so it provides
a back up and like all toys is fun to play with.

On 10-05-11 14:26 , Moderate wrote:

I compared the iPhone to the TomTom Monday night while my son drove.

This experiment allowed me to ignore my sons driving.
This is good for my nerves.

The iPhone started out with a large 'pinned' error of about 1/2 km and
as we drove towards where it was pinned it finally "unstuck". After
that it followed the TomTom solution reasonably well (I'd guess with 50m
or less difference). Though on one interchange, the iPhone position
overshot the actual position by 200 m or so.

It was a pretty short test, but the iPhone does not match the TomTom in
performance.(not that I think the crappy TomTom is anything to write
home about). This was in a suburban area with good cell phone coverage.

--
gmail originated posts are filtered due to spam.

Comparable price? Does the iphone still "brick" if you don't have it
activated? If so, that would make an iphone cost about $720 US per
year, i.e. the cost of voice and data.

You would have to be insane to depend on the GPS of a phone, at least
in the boonies. Most have maps that are downloaded, and you may not
have coverage. Then there is the issue of batteries. No phone takes AA
cells (though many can use emergency AA cell power supplies).

A real GPS rules. I had the opportunity to compare the iphone nav to
my car nav (whatever Nissan uses). The iphone had issues with the map
when the signal was lost, and in the states, you always lose that AT&T
signal.

I tend to use both a cell (HTC G1 "google" not iphone) and a Garmin
60CSx a the same time. (Hey my backpack has two straps, I have to put
something on each don't I, lest I loose my nerd ID-card?) The two GPS's
tend to have different abilities that nicely compliment each other. In
the car where external power is available, the cell phone is the GPS of
first choice. It is only in the boonies that I fall back to the Garmin.
The cell has fresher maps, has most area businesses shown on high zooms
and as far as I can tell, actually "learns" (or gets manually corrected
???) after overriding the GPS's instructions a number of times.

My cell phone (and all the one's I've seen) seem to have pretty weak,
power hungry GPS's. 3 hours is all I get on a full charge with the GPS
nailed on. Getting a car cell-phone power adaptor is the key to
happiness. Ditto for a large roll of sticky-backed velcro.

The EPE on the cell gps is often many times worse than the Garmin and it
is much lower to lock and to drift to the correct position. It looks
like the cell gps is very heavily post-filtered from how long it takes
it to drift to the new position after quickly moving from one spot to
one 50ft away. On the other hand, the Garmin seems to track without any
visible lag.

The real advantage of the cell is that you get to share your position
(and geotagged pictures!) in near real-time with friends. You can send
people a "come meet me" email message with pictures, upload your
tracklog etc, all from the trail. The no hassles tracklog sharing via
Google's "mymaps" is so easy I don't even bother uploading the tracks
from my Garmin any more. It is a real kick to see one's tracklog
supperimposed on the Google overhead imagery (misnamed "satellite").
Highly recommended.

-wolfgang