Quote:
Originally Posted by dew.man
Basically good info, but I would like to add a couple of things:
There have been reports that the Qualcomm chip can multi-plex the cellular antenna thereby elimiating the need for a dedicated one for satelite based GPS.
The same argument can be made about releasing a device without triangulation/cellular based GPS being enabled as that's a function of the cellular service inherintly present in the device!
Also, I'd like to remind you of the HTC Trinity (P3600) that came out a year or two ago. It also was originally advertised as having GPS, but once shipped, any mention of GPS was completely removed from the marketing materials. At that time, there was the same type of speculation over the GPS capabilities in the Trinity as there are now over the Vogue. Plenty of people chimed in stating unequivically that there would never be a GPS enabled ROM. Then, about a year later, the ROMs began to surface. First Dopod shipped a radio update that was quickly ported over/made available, and then HTC released the official update that enabled standalone GPS. I never did understand why the delay, but heard that there were problems with the GPS/cellular radios interfering with each other that had to be worked out. Being that the 7500 is a newer chipset, I imagine that the same type of issues could be present thereby delaying the GPS release?
Now I don't know for sure that there will ever be a standalone GPS update for the Touch or the Mogul, but I have not seen any evidence that there won't! Meanwhile, contrary to some of the naysayers of yesterday, Sprint HAS confirmed that there will be SOME sort of GPS enabled. And the only reason I can think of that TelNav does not work with those devices at the time of their release (as it is a revenue source), is that Sprint/HTC is trying to work out the bugs in the interface between the assisted and the satelite based GPS...
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Couple of points
- The Mogul and Touch have both been confirmed to have internal GPS antennas separate from the CDMA antenna, so that info has changed.
- Mogul and Touch are both confirmed to get GPS updates in Q1 2008
- The Motorola Q9c, just released Friday on Sprint, already has what appears to be fully functional GPS built in and ready to use right now (at least it works with Google Maps for sure).
See here for more:
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=11874
Now the rant: I'll be honest, I don't care for HTC that much. For all their innovation and pushing products into the market, I feel they rush things, skip details and often have glaring flaws (at least with the Sprint Touch they fixed the Gen 1 Touch problems; but the Mogul just has some nasty deficiencies).
I think it was plain awful that the Touch and Mogul shipped with internal GPS antennas that are disabled in the firmware. I'm not sure if it is Sprint that was holding them up, or they just can't get the firmware right (same with RevA), but now there are
2 crippled HTC devices on Sprint meanwhile the Motorola Q9c sneaks on by with fully working GPS.
I'm pretty much sticking with Palm (I like their hardware and OS optimization for WM) and Moto (because they've had 4 firmware updates on the original Q on Sprint, which shows dedication to fixing issues). HTC needs better QC, imo.