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Old 11-29-2007, 12:58 AM
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Kasracer
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aGPS does some cellular triangulation to get a rough idea where someone is and to help the GPS device using aGPS to lock onto a GPS satellite.

This does not mean that the new Google feature is using aGPS in a traditional sense. Typically aGPS is only used when a GPS device can use it (it is, after all, meant to assist a GPS device and not be a stand alone device or service).

Since Google's and Microsft's Live services both have this feature, I very much doubt that they are using Sprint's (or any other carrier's) Assistance Server mainly due to the fact that some of the services, like Microsoft's, never required any updates on the device itself (as far as I know; I never tried it). Besides, if an API was either non existant or locked out that Google was using, I'd imagine you would get an error message or Google would handle the error properly and tell you it's not supported.

Of course I could be mistaken as to how Google is implementing this feature but you very rarely see any aGPS used without a real GPS unit as it was designed to help the GPS unit lock onto a satelite (by definition, you may never see aGPS used as a stand alone function but see something very similar that uses triangulation).
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