Blackberry

I have just acquired a Blackberry with built in GPS. The manual tells me
that I should just go to the Maps menu item and if there are satellites
detected by the device a map should appear on screen. All I get is a lot of
diagonal lines. Presumably there is some secret way of setting these things
up, which isn't in the manual. Does anyone know - or can anyone suggest a
more appropriate newsgroup to ask in?

On Wed, 9 Jul 2008 22:02:26 +0100, The Todal wrote...

I don't know anything about the Blackberry GPS, but I suspect a
combination of the following:

(a) Presumably the Blackberry comes with maps pre-installed? You don't
need to buy them and load them in?

(b) Many GPS devices don't work very well indoors, since they can't get
a signal from the satellites. Try it outdoors.

(c) Since the device is brand new, it won't have any up-to-date
ephemeris data stored. That's data about where the satellites were in
the sky when it was last used, which gives it a head start when working
out where it is now. So it may need to spend 10 or 20 minutes locating
satellites and configuring itself.

There may be some way of inputting a rough value for your current
location in order to speed this up. Setting the time correctly may also
help. But if the manual doesn't tell you how to do these things then I
can't help.

(One Garmin GPS that I bought believed it was located in a factory in
Taiwan when I first switched it on... Well, at least it shows they
tested it!)

--
Tim Jackson
news@timjackson.plus.invalid
(Change '.invalid' to '.com' to reply direct)

You have to enable the GPS
Initially in advanced setting and turn it on. It may be called LSB for
location based services
Then each time you use it, you by clicking the GPS map icon, you have to
turn it on.

If you don't have the map icon, the go to the blackberry web site and hunt
it down, download it and install it.

Thanks. I've got that far, and it says "searching for satellites" and then
eventually displays a "map" which is merely a field of diagonal lines, with
a red dot labelled "you are here". The maps themselves must, I think, be
downloaded from the Blackberry service whenever the device requires them,
but it doesn't seem to be downloading them. Frustratingly my provider is
Thus Plc (under an arrangement with Vodafone) and the people at Thus never
know the answer to any question.