Quote:
Originally Posted by austerville
I'd like to know the answer too. I was also under the impression that the phone had an actual gps receiver.
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Yes, the TouchPro has a 'real' GPS. Since stand alone GPS startup can take a while because of the time it takes to locate enough sats to just figure out about where you and the sats are before it can start getting acurate without a stored data base on the time and aprox location of the sats and where you are. Cell phones have the capability to access up to date info on satellite positions and your aprox location and time via the Cell tower. This is called Assisted GPS or A-GPS which is what the TouchPro and most other Cell phones with built-in GPS have. This greatly reduces the cold start time of the GPS receiver. It can also use the towers to triangulate to give you rough positioning until the GPS receiver is locked in to enough satellites.
In another post I talked about the built-in GPS and a mode setting in the registry (at least for the predecessor to the TouchPro, the Mogul) that set the use of the GPS in one for 4 modes. They were OFF, GPS ONLY, GPS and/or AGPS(tower), and GPS and Tower.
The default mode for the Mogul was GPS and Tower which ment that the GPS only worked as long as there was contact with a provider's cell tower. With a registry editor you could change the setting to GPS and/or Tower which ment that it would use the tower to speed up start times and improve accuracy but it would also work stand alone without a tower. I changed my phone's setting to that so that my GPS location would work when I was out camping in the mountains with no Cell access.
It worked. Since the Mogul was HTC and the TouchPro is the successor I assumed that there may be the same settings for the TouchPro. I have not researched it since I have not gone camping yet but maybe I will when I get some time. I'll search the forums and my notes to see if I can find the registry settings and locate them in my phone, change them and see if the phones GPS will work out in the boonies.