S60 Open to new features

Have you the latest N95 software? It has A-GPS, I hear, which gives you the first fix *significantly* faster.

Thanks Tommi (you are back!)

I actually caught the announcement about A-GPS in my mess of vacation e-mail last night. (I found out from Canalys for some reason, not through any Nokia announcement. That may be a different problem.) Anyway I went through Nokia.com in USA, installed Nokia Software Updater, and now I have the new software. At first blush it does seem to be much faster. BTW if anyone out there is using old N95 firmware, there are also major fixes for camera lagtime available. Let me know if you have trouble finding the upgrades.

20 minutes is WAY too much time to lock on to a signal. I'd say 5 mins should be the max. I'm using a cheapo bluetooth GPS unit (off of eBay) with an N73 and even when it's playing up and it's really cloudy out, it doesn't take any longer than that.

I had the same problem with my N95. First time I used it, it was hard to get GPS signal. This explains why. :)

One more thing that I found interesting, sometimes the chosen route is not the best one. Two days ago, I made made a testing to go to a place where I know. Surprisingly, Nokia Maps suggested a "strange" route, which makes the trip longer.

It doesn't always happen though.

6110 Navigator and E90 Communicator were available in the same time. 6110 has A-GPS, E90 doesn't (as yet). Why? Different software design teams? Who is controlling them? Where the hell is the logic?

Antony -- I've also found the occasional "strange" route...I've also used the GPS while riding my bicycle, and had it tell me to bear onto interstate highways (or 'motorways' in King's English). That was a shock. What would be great for a next release would be a "Avoid major highways" option. Also, for next next, an ability to drag and drop routes, like they now have on sites like http://mapmyrun.com. That site is one of my favorites these days.

Horia - You've hit the nail on the head, it does not make sense. I think that lack of logic afflicts many companies, esp bigger ones, but IMHO less at Nokia than at some of the other huge multinational companies.

Also, I think the re-org (http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1134322) will eventually solve this particular problem. The idea being that one biz unit will handle creating phones, while the other biz unit will create the services. So you won't have different groups creating services for different phones. That's the theory, anyway, we'll see how it plays out...

@dshugrue: I think you can disable highway from Nokia Maps -> so that you won't get shocked. :)

My experience is actually the route suggested unnecessary U-turn. In some occasions, it suggested me to take the road that always has heavy traffic -> although I have selected fastest route (not shortest one).

When I was a teenager (20+ years ago) and still interested in stereo equipment, these integrated stereos where something for people who don't understand anything of the subject and generally something to be laughed at, because of poor (sound) quality and bad specs. The expert only looked at separate amplifier, tape-deck, radio tuner, turn-table (well CD hadn't been invented yet). Not sure how this is today.

But for mobiles today it seems to work the other way round. The high end model integrates 5Mpix camera, WLAN, GPS. But one fact is still true. The integrated device makes many compromises and the specs are worse than those of separate devices. This is particularly true for the newcomer GPS.

Remember this is the first device of its kind. A Ford model T might also be quite primitive for today's motorist. So I'm quite confident in a couple of years it will work much much better.

Compare the photos of a 7650 (Nokia's first camera phone from 2002) and an N95.

I believe the N95 has disclaimers in its newest software versions, that the slide must be open when using GPS and you need several directions of free view to the sky. Well, I click away these stupid disclaimers without reading them as everybody else, but still I know the laws of physics. And they don't make it easy for 3 GPS signals to reach a phone. 20000 km is a long way for signal to travel, especially when it comes from a little solar-powered transmitter.

Yes, with A-GPS it's a whole different experience.
Because here we can cheat physics and get valuable information via the next radio mast. Less than a minute instead of 10-20 minutes for the first fix. It's only a matter of time until all phones will have it. And as the N95 demonstrated its a simple firmware upgrade.

Quick update:

A-GPS is working GREAT now, anyone not on v 12.0.0.013 or later, you should upgrade.

To elaborate on Antony's good point above, to customize your route from the main screen, select Options:Plan Route.
From Plan Route, select Options:Settings
From there you can change transport mode to "Car" or "Foot" and you can select whether or not to include "Motoway" (highways in American English)

For me, I'd appreciate a 3rd option, by bicycle. I think the market for Bicycle GPS is growing here in the USA as gas prices continue to rise...I have a question in with the North Am. "Find New" Product Manager to see if that is in the works...

Oh yeah, for the newbies out there: to check your sw version, enter *#0000# on your phone. To upgrade, go to http://europe.nokia.com/softwareupdate and follow steps from there.

I certainly hope to see A-GPS support on E90 soon. There's no official information about hardware support for the feature, but considering the fact that practically all GPS chipsets have supported at least some A-GPS features for years. These include likes of preloading ephemeris data and current time, helping to guess which satellites are visible and which frequency bins to search, if the receiver is close to previous known position and some fancier features like ionospheric information for improved accuracy, network-based location estimation and more precise clock synchronisation. It would be nice to know which of these Nokia A-GPS devices and server support.