Internal GPS hack for TomTom for those who should not want it...
Altough TomTom Navigator works on the N95 and other S60 3rd edition phones. It does not support the internal N95 GPS. For over a year now the N95-owners were forced to buy an external bluetooth GPS if they wanted TomTom to work on their phone. In comparison CoPilot, Route 66, Smart2Go/NokiaMaps, Navigon, Nav4All all worked with the internal GPS. However www.tweakers.net, a dutch tweakers-website, reports that a group of hackers called 'Binpda' have released a workaround for Tomtom Navigator 6.02. It works through adding an extra bluetooth profile and running a small virtual bluetooth-gps program that accesses the internal GPS. Allowing TomTom to connect with the internal GPS thinking it is an external bluetooth GPS.
Why TomTom themselves has not added support for a phone that has already sold over 10 million pieces is unclear to me. As such, Nokia Maps was the best option for me last year. This despite at that point there were some stability issues and missing AGPS support. I should say it worked well despite some lesser choices in routing. The price per year (for a 3-year license) was 1/6-th of that of a TomTom license per year. For those not needing it for daily driving during office hours and not requiring real time traffic info, it was a particular good choice. And cheap, very cheap since TomTom forced you to buy an additional bluetooth GPS mouse for another 60+ euros. For those looking for ultracheap satnav there is still Nav4All for the N95. Taking only a minimal of mobile internet usage to guide you. The cheapest yet unless roaming!
To date Nokia Maps 2.0 beta is nearly out of beta. It has been improved on nearly all fronts. It has the ability to use internet if available for POI searches and routing. It gained a much better display layout, much better routing and has become very stable. There is a AAS review of Maps 2.0 beta 1. Also real time traffic info data is now a extra option. And no, Nokia did not asked money for these free upgrades. Excellent and fair. In Nokia Maps 2.0 beta 2 only few bugs and issues remain. As such Nokia Maps 2.0 is becoming a serious competitor in price and quality compared with TomTom. And Nokia is already making in-roads into the car business. Renault is selling special edition cars with Nokia phone's with GPS navigation and factory built-in carkits (Renault Sandero Nokia with the N95, Renault Twingo Nokia edition with the Nokia Navigator 6110).
It looks that that gold digging in the satnav sector with PNA's is past its prime. And companies such TomTom will no longer be able to support themselves by selling PNA's. Looking back, putting TomTom on the stockmarket by their founders last year was a great way to cash-in timely. Convergence will connect all the different little sales markets of consumer navigation into one big battlefield. The fight for dominance and survival will become fierce. Giving consumers the top dollar for their euros.
My Groups
-
Nokia N95 Users Group Updated: 2 days ago
-
nseries (host) Updated: Nov 6, 2009
-
S60 3rd Edition Updated: Nov 3, 2009
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
Comments
Odly, I only take a separate GPS with me for hiking, because then it needs to be IPX-7 (water and shockproof). And a magnetic compas and altimeter are pretty nice to. The biggest advantage of a bluetooth GPS is the extra lithium-ion powersource for the GPS. But in the car I have a powerplug and when walking the battery drain is pretty limited for lazy persons ;-) But if need be there is my b-powered or a proporta recharge battery.
No I like my all-in one swiss pocketknife mobile, even with it's minor faults.
Don't blame Nokia for the inaccuracy of GPS. There inaccuracies inherent in the GPS technology. Partly due to the fact that the atmosphere is not homogeneous and the traveltime of radiowaves as such has unknown variations. For pinpoint accuracy positioning information of a additional local groundstation would be required. Still the GPS offers great possibilities as does their latest stepcounter application.
Besides a pocketknife is only a pocketknife, not a dedicated powertool.
I get far better accuracy with an external BT unit, including fewer improbabilities (such as walking at an impossible speed through brick walls!)
"Besides a pocketknife is only a pocketknife, not a dedicated powertool." First of all a separate GPS has much less problems with interference of other electronics in close proximite. Like radio interference from wifi, 3G/GPRS, GSM and bluetooth signals. Secondly, the TI GPS chip is a power optimized chip with a lower sensitivity meant for civilized use. It is designed to be better at solving GPS signal reflection issues (from nearby buildings) than high sensitivity partly relying on AGPS support to enchance reception and location accuracy. Full AGPS support could yield localtion data inside buildings. But few cellnets supply this info.
And for the N95 (8GB) you really need to open the slide to get full signal reception as stated in the manual.
Usually it gets a fix but can have trouble keeping hold of it - even with the keypad open and pointed at the sky! Strangely enough I was able to get a fix on a jumbo jet over the Atlantic despite being the hurdles (being in a giant tin with tiny holes fo windows and travelling at many hundreds of miles an hour) but getting it to work on a train is harder!
Your complaints are not convincing. Each and every one happens with other GPS too. Even in a clear field my Garmin outdoor GPS can have trouble with reception. A direct side to side comparison is required to see the difference
The USA can drop the connection, or I can stand in a tightbeam radio link. Hell sometimes the radar of the trafficspeedmeasurements gets my GPS on tilt. Garmin, Nokia or otherwise. There are some know deadspots. Even sunspots can completely blank the GPS signals. So... A direct side to side comparison is required to see the difference. Feel free to do so and give us a blogpost ;-)
Have a look at this test from GPS Passion.
P.S. Trains contain far thicker radioshielding than airplanes.
It's still handy to have GPS capability in the phone - it's one less thing to carry/forget, as well as being good enough to get a rough fix on where I am. If it's accuracy I want though, for me, it's gotta be BT.
Now, if a bunch of BT GPS manufacturers want to loan me some units and if WOM World want to lend me a bunch of GPS-enabled phones, I'm more than willing to spend a month on the same route putting the whole lot to the test.
Ha too late, swoop down on this test.
Looking at the tracks I draw, with some hesitation, two conclusions:
first: AGPS seems to improve the signal correlation results. Particular in situation where there are problems with more singal reflections. Paths seem less jittery and reliable.
second: Location errors caused by signal confluences are in the same order as the differences in accuracy between the different GPS. A more exact comparison requires a more statistical approach. I.e. averaging of multiple tracks. I suggest at least 10. 100 tracks would be very nice, reduces the error in the average 10 fold. Still as such the difference in quality of the different GPS-systems for logging tracks is small.
Your suggestion to look at multiple tracks is spot on. Even simply walking the circomflex of a stone building (maybe even with a bit reinforced concrete in them), no more than 2 meters from the wall, would give an alternating signal strengths of the different sattelites on the horizon. Proper statistics would require some fancy mathematical calculations and requiring a bit deep thought. Though not of Douglas Adams' proportions.