Touch Pro GPS lag

[BooDaddy]

Im not necessarily referring to the accuracy. the TP2 is capable of 12 channel parallel reception much like the Nuvi. GPS triangulation is not complicated, and doesnt take alot to do succesfully, so in theory the phones GPS chip should be as accurate as the Nuvis.

Our phones have a Sirff chip, which is comparable to the Nuvis 255w (which is Garmins "low-end" PND). The only advantage the Nuvi has is WAAS. But, I really dont have any WAAS transmitters in my area, so thats a moot point.
When I monitor the actual position coordinates on both the Nuvi and the TP2, they are only a few seconds (as in LAT/LONG seconds) apart, and they both have very very little drift, so the chip is pretty dang accurate in our phones, and quite comparable to a normal PND.

What I am talking about is the update or polling delay in either the chip, or our ROM. For some reason, our phone only polls the gps chip for updated coords at a pretty large interval (more so than a normal PND). I am hoping that the polling registry hacks I posted above will improve the update frequency and cut down on the lag. That is what is killing me on walking. With the default polling freq lowered down to 100ms in the registry, I think I should see some better results. I would test it tonight, but its cold and rainy outside, plus its 5am and Im lazy tonight. I will try the edits tomorrow.

I should be able to snap some video on Tuesday, as I will have my Fiance here to drive me around while I film

[jjday7]

I have a problem with my gps too. I have been testing it for the last couple of days and it seems that it is always behind by a couple hundred feet. when i am passing intersections, I notice that there is a 5 second delay onscreen. I also notice a lot of re-routing even when I am on path. I am getting my phone replaced today due to dead pixels and active sysnc issues, so I will have to test my new one to see if there is any difference.

[mswlogo]

Originally Posted by jjday7

I have a problem with my gps too. I have been testing it for the last couple of days and it seems that it is always behind by a couple hundred feet. when i am passing intersections, I notice that there is a 5 second delay onscreen. I also notice a lot of re-routing even when I am on path. I am getting my phone replaced today due to dead pixels and active sysnc issues, so I will have to test my new one to see if there is any difference.

Hate to clue you, but every Window Mobile Phone has active sync issues.
Ever since I finally switched to Exchange life has been so much simpler.
I believe there are free services that give Exchange behavior now.

I also can guarantee your lag is not your phone either.

Couple 100 ft lag is too much (but normal at say 70mph). Out of the box (or Hard Reset) try Google Maps. DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING. Except "Use GPS" in google maps. If Google Maps (set to default) works your phone GPS is fine.

[jjday7]

I will try iguidance today with the old phone and see if there is any lag without doing anything extra. I will report back.

The activesync issue I have is not with the software. Ther issue is with my phone never wanting to keep a connection. The phone just randomly drops connection. This happens with my charger too. the phone is a week old.

[BooDaddy]

Originally Posted by mswlogo

Hate to clue you, but every Window Mobile Phone has active sync issues.
Ever since I finally switched to Exchange life has been so much simpler.
I believe there are free services that give Exchange behavior now.

I also can guarantee your lag is not your phone either.

Couple 100 ft lag is too much (but normal at say 70mph). Out of the box (or Hard Reset) try Google Maps. DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING. Except "Use GPS" in google maps. If Google Maps (set to default) works your phone GPS is fine.

Ive never had a phone that had active sync issues, so I have to disagree with you there. jjday, sounds like you may have a bad charge/data port. My first Sprint TP had a bad pin on the data side, so it would never be recognized when plugged into a pc. It definately sounds like you have some hardware probs in that connector.

You need to do some searching mswlogo, there is TONS of threads, posts, articles you name it dealing with the laggy GPS on the Touch Pro's (and the TP2 since they are essentially the same phone internally). Theres hundreds and hundreds of pages of threads over at XDA concerning the lag, and there have even been several mods and new drivers created in an effort to reduce the lag. I find it hard to believe that each and every one of those folks had a simple "misconfiguration" (especially the ones that developed the code for a new gps driver). If you would like, I can post all those threads to make it easy for you to do some research.

[mswlogo]

Originally Posted by BooDaddy

Ive never had a phone that had active sync issues, so I have to disagree with you there. jjday, sounds like you may have a bad charge/data port. My first Sprint TP had a bad pin on the data side, so it would never be recognized when plugged into a pc. It definately sounds like you have some hardware probs in that connector.

You need to do some searching mswlogo, there is TONS of threads, posts, articles you name it dealing with the laggy GPS on the Touch Pro's (and the TP2 since they are essentially the same phone internally). Theres hundreds and hundreds of pages of threads over at XDA concerning the lag, and there have even been several mods and new drivers created in an effort to reduce the lag. I find it hard to believe that each and every one of those folks had a simple "misconfiguration" (especially the ones that developed the code for a new gps driver). If you would like, I can post all those threads to make it easy for you to do some research.

I've had the Mogul, Vogue, Diamond and Touch Pro 2. They have all worked fine for me. They all required GPSGate for iGuidance to work properly with no lag. I've never seen so many threads of laggy GPS as I do on the TP2. I never had a Touch Pro. Never saw any complaints on the Diamond Forum about it's GPS being laggy which I regularly visited for the year I had it. It has the same hardware as Touch Pro. I did see the normal confusion on Diamond around release time of needing GPSGate and the normal my TomTom won't work right threads and the Verizon threads that had to unlock it or threads about QuickGPS and getting quick locks. But nothing about laggy after it's setup right.

I do believe most of it, is setup. It is very confusing first time around and a bit of a PITA that iGuidance requires GPSGate (or an Application requires direct connect to WM GPS API) for proper behavior. Many Nav apps will hunt for a COM port automatically and find the bogus COM4 (may be different port on Touch Pro or different ROMs).

Comparing to something like a cadilic Nuvi is not fair either as it may do interpolation, may have a compass, or do animation between screen updates.

Comparing Diamond and TP2 they are nearly identical.

I ran TP2, iGuidance (with GPSGate) this morning and iGuidance would beep for turn right about at the cross walk when driving at residential speeds.

ActiveSync (over USB or Bluetooth is a piece SH$T). I used to sync 2 computers through the phone and it was a constant battle (2 computers did complicate things). I always ran the latest version of Windows (on Windows 7 now). You'd get duplicates, you'd get errors that it could not tell you why or where. It was slow as molasses. I can sync after a hard reset over Exchange faster than I could over USB. It's just terrible. I have not used it over the past couple years now. It's so nice to be able to Hard Reset on the road and Sync OTA if I want to.

Only time I use activsync now is to burn ROMs. And I never setup a Profile any more and that has been fairly stable since Vista.

[BenC]

No lag on the TP and yes lag on the 1st and now the 2nd TP2 regardless of the application.

[mswlogo]

Originally Posted by BenC

No lag on the TP and yes lag on the 1st and now the 2nd TP2 regardless of the application.

How are you setup?
Which Applications?
Which Com ports?

[AstronusX]

I also have lagging issue with my TP2. I tried GPSModDriver and it seems to resolve the issue. You can find the the GPSModDriver here

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=571266

[AZTECHKA]

Originally Posted by BooDaddy

Figured I would start a thread over here like the one in the original touch pro forums to get a feel for folks like me who experience GPS lag.

I have been experiencing some GPS update lag when using various gps apps. I have tried Garmin Mobile XT, Google Maps, CoPilot Live 8, iGo, and GCz (geocaching app). I have also tried each program using the "windows managed" option as well as setting it to com 4.

I usually have really fast locks, but the GPS chip only updates the position every 30-50 feet or so. When I am driving, its not really noticeable, but when I am walking, the lag is very noticeable.

I will post up a poll, so please vote, and please post up comments and possible fixes. Thanks!

I'm confused. You want to know if we experienced lag on our old Touch Pros or on our TP2?
Not that it matters to me as I did not experience lag on my TP.... Although my TP2 is even faster on GPS than my TP I wouldn't call it lag. My wife uses the TP and we sometimes run telenav simultaneously and it just sounds like an echo. Mine gives direction and hers follows.
p.