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EVO 4 gps accuracey


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I just got the EVO 4 phone and it does not get as close as my old pm20 that I lost. The pn20 came within 10 feet of the cache, but the EVO comes within 100 feet. At least I can not zoom in closer. Any ideas?

 

Moderator edit: promotion of prohibited app deleted per Groundspeak request, as it wasn't pertinent to the question

Edited by robertlipe
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I just got the EVO 4 phone and it does not get as close as my old pm20 that I lost. The pn20 came within 10 feet of the cache, but the EVO comes within 100 feet. At least I can not zoom in closer. Any ideas?

Don't have an EVO, but every GPS I've used in a phone is not very accurate, not sensitive, and highly affected by nearby things (foliage, buildings.... oxygen...)

 

I've hunted using my Nexus One twice, but as soon as I went under foliage, there went the accuracy... Same with my old WM phone, so I used my Bluetooth GPS I've owned since geocaching with my Treo's. Working on convincing some Android SW writers to implement Bluetooth GPS in their programs. :laughing: GeOrg's author is working on it, but he's limited what he can do so it's not fast going so far, but he is working on it.

Edited by robertlipe
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The GPS antennas in all current cell phones, and possibly all cell phones for the foreseeable future, are nowhere near as powerful as those in standalone GPSr. That is not their primary function and powerful antennas would only run down the phone's batteries quicker.

 

The GPS is only for convenience. In addition, most phones use cell towers to assist in the accuracy of the GPS, that is why you'll hear the term assisted GPS when referring to the GPS in most cell phones.

 

If you bought a cell phone for the GPS function you will be sorely disappointed in its accuracy.

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The wife and I use G1s as our primary caching devices. Theyve gotten us about 95% of our finds. The only time we have had to pull out a secondary GPS for our own use (usually its just something for the kids to play with when we're out) is when we were far enough out of T-Mobiles network that it couldnt log into Google Maps due to no network connection. Otherwise our phones are within a few feet of the GPSr.

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The GPS antennas in all current cell phones, and possibly all cell phones for the foreseeable future, are nowhere near as powerful as those in standalone GPSr. That is not their primary function and powerful antennas would only run down the phone's batteries quicker.

 

Do antennas even use power? I think the power is consumed by the chipset.

 

My Droid can be extremely accurate, BTW.

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The GPS antennas in all current cell phones, and possibly all cell phones for the foreseeable future, are nowhere near as powerful as those in standalone GPSr. That is not their primary function and powerful antennas would only run down the phone's batteries quicker.

 

The GPS is only for convenience. In addition, most phones use cell towers to assist in the accuracy of the GPS, that is why you'll hear the term assisted GPS when referring to the GPS in most cell phones.

 

If you bought a cell phone for the GPS function you will be sorely disappointed in its accuracy.

Umm.... That doesn't really make sense. Antennas don't consume more or less power based on their effectiveness. A highly directional and efficient antenna will have great performance while a dummy load with the same input power won't work at all.

 

Most handheld GPS receivers just have a simple patch antenna for reception.

 

New smartphones (such as the Droid, Evo, Eris), have a "true" GPS receiver built in. They do not rely on the cell networks exclusively to determine location. They, generally, use the network to get a general idea of location then, if the user has the actual GPS receiver enabled, it switches to that for greater accuracy.

 

All Android phones actually have a compass built in as well as it is a requirement by the operating system.

 

All Android phones are very good caching devices. With the latest algorithms and WAAS, my Droid will take me, on a good day, to 5' or 6' accuracy.

 

The key is to make sure you have the GPS radio turned on while you're caching (turn it off when you're not as it'll save your battery immensely).

 

I just got the EVO 4 phone and it does not get as close as my old pm20 that I lost. The pn20 came within 10 feet of the cache, but the EVO comes within 100 feet. At least I can not zoom in closer. Any ideas?.

Make sure you have your GPS radio turned on. I think Sense UI includes a handy widget for you to do this from your homescreen. Turn the GPS radio on when you're geocaching, then turn it off when you're not. If you don't have the GPS radio on, the phone tries to determine your location via fancy systems using the cell tower locations. While those work for determining what town you're in, they won't help you find a geocache in the woods.

Edited by robertlipe
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Sorry, let me be more clear. When I was referring to the power of the antenna I was actually referring to the entire GPS sub-system and the 'dedication' to the task. As it stands, a cell phone has various antennas, there are antennas for the cell phone network (various bands), wifi network, bluetooth and GPS. Due to the limited space and resources in a cell phone in most cases the antennas are not dedicated and are designed to perform more than one task. Also, since there are so many functions in a cell phone the available battery power has to be doled out to all those tasks. If as much power was dedicated to the GPS on a cell phone as it is to a standalone GPS there wouldn't be much left for everything else it has to do therefore it only seems reasonable to assume that the GPS will suffer a little.

 

Now, I can't speak directly to how the EVO is designed but, as far as I've been able to find out, all cell phones share the same basic design when it comes to the GPS. They don't have a dedicated chip, it's part of the cell phone chip (this doesn't mean it's bad, it just means that because of space and power constraints compromises are going to be made) and the antenna is not dedicated and has to perform other functions as well (again meaning comprises are made).

 

Under ideal conditions a GPS enabled cell phone will be just as accurate as a standalone GPSr but under less ideal situations, which is probably most of the time, a standalone GPS will be more accurate. All of it's available resources, battery power and antenna, are dedicated to the task of its main function, acquiring satellite signal.

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In decent conditions under some trees in a city park my Oregon and Evo both got me to within 4 feet of the cache they did differ slighty on the readings and distance but not enough to say that one was more correct than the other.It still wont replace my oregon for dedicated trips or hiking but for FTF hunts urban caches and spur of the moment caching I love it.

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U

In decent conditions under some trees in a city park my Oregon and Evo both got me to within 4 feet of the cache they did differ slighty on the readings and distance but not enough to say that one was more correct than the other.It still wont replace my oregon for dedicated trips or hiking but for FTF hunts urban caches and spur of the moment caching I love it.

 

The thing is that I lost my pn20 and I needed a new phone so by the answers I received, I will have fun with the gps on my evo4.

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U

In decent conditions under some trees in a city park my Oregon and Evo both got me to within 4 feet of the cache they did differ slighty on the readings and distance but not enough to say that one was more correct than the other.It still wont replace my oregon for dedicated trips or hiking but for FTF hunts urban caches and spur of the moment caching I love it.

 

The thing is that I lost my pn20 and I needed a new phone so by the answers I received, I will have fun with the gps on my evo4.

 

okay i just got my answer . i used my EVO phone for about 4 caches and it took me to within 5 feet of them . it is great and i can use it as a paperless cashing device. i can get the cache

information on the go right where i am at and have fun .

so if you do not have a smartphone or a gps device this would be a great time to get this phone.

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Most handheld GPS receivers just have a simple patch antenna for reception.

meh. the better GPS receivers have a quad helix antenna, which (arguably) provides the best results, but also takes up quite some room. other GPS receivers have a ceramic antenna, which also gives quite good results, but is much smaller. the patch antenna is the most popular of the cheap/simple ones, but is not as sensitive as the previously mentioned ones. smartphones will probably invariably have patch antennas only.

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I have the EVO and what little I've used it, it seems accurate enough. Any GPSr will seem good or less than good IMO depending on what accuracy the cache was hid with. If you have a centimeter-accuracy survey grade $6000 unit it will seem off if the cache was hidden with a unit with only 13ft accuracy plus error due to method and/or adverse conditions.

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Glad your phone GPSes work for you all :) I've had a HTC Tilt, Tilt 2, and a Nexus One, all of them suck for anything that requires sensitivity or accuracy.

 

Day to day stuff, carnav, all fine.. Anywho.

 

And I doubt tje G1 has WAAS. It's a Qualcom chipset. ;)

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Glad your phone GPSes work for you all :) I've had a HTC Tilt, Tilt 2, and a Nexus One, all of them suck for anything that requires sensitivity or accuracy.

 

Day to day stuff, carnav, all fine.. Anywho.

 

And I doubt tje G1 has WAAS. It's a Qualcom chipset. ;)

Really? you haven't had good luck with the Nexus One? It should perform fine as a GPS. Grab GPS Status and take a look at your accuracy and satellite reception and see if there's something going on. The iPhone has a notoriously horrendous GPS accuracy (No idea on the iPhone 4), but the Nexus One should be plenty.

 

The one thing, I think, that these Android programs lack is some sort of smoothing algorithm. The arrow bounces around more than most handheld units, but, I'm not totally convinced that it's an accuracy issue. It appears as if, for example, Garmin smooths their arrows out a bit so It's not quite so confusing. Whenever I've been side by side with a Garmin unit, if I pay more attention to the distance rather than just blindly follow the arrow (like is so common among cachers), I end up in the same place, but my arrow spins around quite a bit more than the Garmin's arrow.

 

While their's no doubt that all these phone's performance under tree's suffers, Their performance is absolutely enough to find a cache.

Edited by kb1rma
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My HD2 works pretty good sometimes. Then again it goes stupid on me sometimes to. I just use it to get me to the area then go to the real GPSr. Also having the GPS function on KILLS the battery fast. I've burned through a battery in less then 8 hours when I forgot to shut off the GPS.

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