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Droid Bionic sux for caching for me.


WarNinjas

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I have been caching for a few months with the original Droid and it has worked perfectly. Taken me right to GZ and stuck me there. I never understood all the hate for cell phones. I just upgraded to the Droid Bionic and it will get me to GZ but when I stop there it goes all crazy and can even move to 10M or more away while standing in the same spot it just said was GZ. Then I will follow it again and it will take me somewhere else and do the same thing. I can only find them with a good hint. >:( Today I finally found one and checked my phone and it had me at 11M away from where it was. Needless to say I am going to take it back and try out the Droid 3. Just thought I would share my experience to possibly help someone else out thinking of switching. This is just my experience with the phone others might find it to work fine. Other then that it is a great phone but I need this part to work for me like my old one did.

-WarNinjas

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I have been caching for a few months with the original Droid and it has worked perfectly. Taken me right to GZ and stuck me there. I never understood all the hate for cell phones. I just upgraded to the Droid Bionic and it will get me to GZ but when I stop there it goes all crazy and can even move to 10M or more away while standing in the same spot it just said was GZ.

Now you understand the hate for cell phones, sadly. My suspicion is that the antenna for the GPSr chip gets stuck wherever the designer can fit it in, and that will usually be a poor position from the point of view of GPSr functionality.

 

I hope you find a new phone that is accurate. If you do, please share the model details with us!

 

If you can't, but still have to get a new phone, you could try adding a Bluetooth GPSr logger: I use a Qstarz BT-Q818XT and the Android "Bluetooth GPS" application (which is free). This combination (at the cost of an extra, small, device to carry) gets me high sensitivity and accuracy, plus saves the phone battery.

 

This idea is not original with me; someone made it in a posting here and I must track that posting down both to credit them correctly when I pass along this suggestion and to thank them.

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I was giving it a chance and it was always off but I thought I could live with it because many give out good tips. Today was not the case and I realized it could be a pain in the future. I have had 2 DNF I know I could have found with my old phone. I only have 14 days to decide and today I realized I want a better one. I will let you know of the Droid 3 is better.

Thanks for the tip ollave I might need it.

-WarNinjas

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I have been caching for a few months with the original Droid and it has worked perfectly. Taken me right to GZ and stuck me there. I never understood all the hate for cell phones. I just upgraded to the Droid Bionic and it will get me to GZ but when I stop there it goes all crazy and can even move to 10M or more away while standing in the same spot it just said was GZ.

Now you understand the hate for cell phones, sadly. My suspicion is that the antenna for the GPSr chip gets stuck wherever the designer can fit it in, and that will usually be a poor position from the point of view of GPSr functionality.

 

I hope you find a new phone that is accurate. If you do, please share the model details with us!

 

If you can't, but still have to get a new phone, you could try adding a Bluetooth GPSr logger: I use a Qstarz BT-Q818XT and the Android "Bluetooth GPS" application (which is free). This combination (at the cost of an extra, small, device to carry) gets me high sensitivity and accuracy, plus saves the phone battery.

 

This idea is not original with me; someone made it in a posting here and I must track that posting down both to credit them correctly when I pass along this suggestion and to thank them.

 

That sort of behavior is not specific to smartphones. I've had the exact same thing happen with a Garmin Nuvi 1300 GPS. (Sirf Star III chip) Some of that may be due to ionospheric disturbances, clock drift, and satellite orbit errors which is what WAAS is designed to counter. So a GPS without WAAS may have accuracy issues due to those factors. There's also the fact that, even if you are standing still, the Earth isn't and neither are the satellites. While my smartphone apps don't have a way to guess the accuracy, the Nuvi does and I have found that if I stood in one place and held the GPS in one spot while in an area where the accuracy wasn't that great, it would usually get better for a while. (Though there seemed to be limits on that due to things like trees in the way.) That sometimes would shift my position slightly even when standing still.

 

Around the 11 meter mark I'd usually be using Geosenses more then the GPS though, there are limits to it's accuracy after all. Unless you have access to a Surveyor quality GPS receiver, but even then there would be the issue of the error factor of the hider's GPS, which would likely be less accurate. :)

Edited by EdrickV
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The guy at the store talked me into keeping the Bionic because of the 4G and said it is way better of a phone. I am going to try out that GPSr logger. I also like to use my geosense in finding but it is frustrating that it moves around so much when I get near ground zero. If it would just stick with being the wrong spot it would be better then jumping all over. I guess I was just spoiled by my droid 1 being so much more accurate. I can still find most of them with it but sometimes because of muggles I end up leaving because I am looking in so many different areas. It might just be my phone, I also got my daughter the same phone and am going to check hers when she comes to see if it is just something that is up with mine.

-WarNinjas

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Thanks for the great offer michaelnel! I have already ordered one but if I have problems that would be great or sounds fun anyways! I have only cached with my daughter and nephew. I'm thinking there might be a problem with my Bionic. It has had other weird glitches from the beginning when we got them. I got one and my daughter and hers was working great from the first min we got them and mine was tweaking out.

10 feet would be great I don't need more then that. I also use c:geo. It will seem like it is working like my old one but it will count down and I think I am at the spot but when I stop it starts changing and goes to around 10 meters or more away. Then I walk away and start over and it takes me to a different location. Pretty frustrating as it is still doing the same and I think it should be better. I am going to try my daughters this weekend and see. I still find most but takes more time and sometimes I don't have the time or it just looks weird. If there is no hint or just a general one it can be hard to find in a area that the driving gps gets me more into the area then the compass. I had a 14 hour work day today but luckily one of the logs said there coin (a steel penny) got stuck to the magnet so I knew it had to be on some metal or I would have had a hard time finding it.

-WarNinjas

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