A week after its official debut, the honeymoon for Verizon Wireless Palm Pre Plus owners might be over with an increasing number of users complaining about problems with imprecise GPS signal locking. When using Google Maps on the Pre Plus, many owners are noticing that the Pre Plus is locating them at a point that is several yards to several miles away from their actual location with the Pre Plus apparently using aGPS and not satellite GPS for location detection. For some owners, the problem can be temporarily alleviated by launching VZ Navigator and then closing it before agreeing to the monthly service fee which suggests that VZ Navigator is able to wake the GPS and obtain an accurate satellite GPS lock that is then passed on to Google Maps. This is not a Verizon Wireless only problem as Pre Plus customers on Canadian carrier Bell are also reporting a similar issue. The problem seems to be relegated to the Pre Plus only with Pixi Plus and original Sprint Pre owners reporting zero problems with their GPS. Thus far, neither Verizon Wireless, Bell nor Palm is officially acknowledging a problem with the performance of the GPS on the Pre Plus. Anyone Palm Pre Plus owners care to comment on the accuracy and precision of their GPS?
UPDATE: We didn’t mean that there was aGPS sandwiched on top of a GPS chip — and we didn’t mean because the phone had aGPS it didn’t have traditional GPS capabilities — there is obviously only one GPS-type device in the phone. What we were reporting on is that some users are only getting a network triangulation tower lock, and that the actual GPS satellite signal is not finding them.
[Via PreCentral]
