Nokia 5230 Express Music - GPS Navigation
The Myths about Integrated and Assisted GPS
A week ago I bought Nokia 5230 from M-tel mainly because of the integrated GPS. This is my first meet with this kind of device and after some GPS "problems" I`m ready share my experience(At the end of this post there is explanation how to turn on/off different types of positioning methods).
Using Assisted + Integrated GPS the positioning is completed for a few seconds(outdoors) but(I noticed that later) this results in small GPRS traffic(mainly for the "cold start") which costs some money so I tried to avoid it and turned "Assisted GPS" off.
Later when I try it with "Integrated GPS" only it was unable to connect to satellite, so I started reading forums and post what is going on. In this discussion I learned about the TTFF(Time To First Fix) and after reading that this fix can take an hour I went mad. Fortunately the real tests give better result.
In my case the positioning takes few minutes(less than 5) when I was standing still, on a clear place and holding phone in a way that my hand doesn`t cover the GPS antenna. After this time no other issues and connection loss. For a trip that contains of about 10 minutes in a bus, 10 walking(the phone was in my pocket), 15 indoors(in a shop) and 10 more walking it didn`t loose satellite connection. So don`t worry that you`ll have to a pay a lot of money for GRPS traffic, bluetooth GPS device or else. Just hold you position for a few minutes and wait the phone to connect, after this the device will be working absolutely fine. Have in mind that seeing satellites in the "Satellite status" doesn`t mean that your position is already calculated. Wait until you see the green bars on the bottom of the map(instead of the yellow one). The satelite status can be check in Menu->Location -> GPS data ->Position -> Options -> Satellite Status
How to turn on/off different types of positioning methods: My phone originally had older version of Ovi Maps(maybe 2.x) and I updated it with the latest one(3.03). After installing it I noticed the "Location" application in Menu->Applications(I`m not absolutely sure whether it was there before the update). If you open it you will seen 3 choices "Landmarks", "GPS Data" and "Positioning". From "Positioning" choose "Positioning method" and you will see 4 options - "Asissted GPS", "Integrated GPS", "Bluetooth GPS" and "Network based".
Have a nice navigation and feel free to ask if you have any questions.