WITS A81G, frustrating GPS

baldilocks

Member
Jan 2, 2011
5
0
Been on bit of a road trip for the past week, first real test for the A81G GPS used with Navdroyd. For comparison I had just managed to get my new phone an Orange San Francisco(ZTE Blade), rooted and romed to Froyo. Navdroyd worked pretty well, has an issue in its routing algorithm as will offer a pretty dumb route at times but if you drive past the offending junction it usually promptly sorts itself out. However the GPS was a pain, it kept losing lock for no real reason, in the end I spent some time driving with GPS Test running and on the blade. Both could see 12-13 satellites but whereas the blade was using 7-8 of these the Wits usually only used 3 and would often drop to 0, hence losing lock. Even on totally clear days when traversing open farm land same happened.

Given the Wits is seeing the birds but not using them and the signal strengths look good enough in GPS test I am seeing the finger of blame pointing at the chipset, anyone any other thoughts? ROM wont address that as its separate I believe?

The WITS did much better with Aldiko as Ebook reader as the 7 inch screen makes a big difference, but its GPS is definitely sub par.
 

Barry S

Member
Apr 8, 2011
8
0
Been on bit of a road trip for the past week, first real test for the A81G GPS used with Navdroyd. For comparison I had just managed to get my new phone an Orange San Francisco(ZTE Blade), rooted and romed to Froyo. Navdroyd worked pretty well, has an issue in its routing algorithm as will offer a pretty dumb route at times but if you drive past the offending junction it usually promptly sorts itself out. However the GPS was a pain, it kept losing lock for no real reason, in the end I spent some time driving with GPS Test running and on the blade. Both could see 12-13 satellites but whereas the blade was using 7-8 of these the Wits usually only used 3 and would often drop to 0, hence losing lock. Even on totally clear days when traversing open farm land same happened.

Given the Wits is seeing the birds but not using them and the signal strengths look good enough in GPS test I am seeing the finger of blame pointing at the chipset, anyone any other thoughts? ROM wont address that as its separate I believe?

The WITS did much better with Aldiko as Ebook reader as the 7 inch screen makes a big difference, but its GPS is definitely sub par.

I haven't come across a decent Android Sat Nav application that doesn't rely on mobile assistance, so I think we have a useless option like the Bluetooth feature. As it doesn’t even sense my location in Berkshire I have disabled the GPS option in an effort to reduce battery drain.
 

mal_k100

Member
Apr 14, 2011
18
1
GPS works fine on my A81G capacitive.
I did find that some of the freebie satnav apps were a bit flakey though but it wasn't the device, just the app.
 

Carlos0371

Member
Jul 5, 2011
5
0
Hi all,

I'm getting my A81G this evening, and will be loading up Co-Pilot 7 on it, I will report back with the findings......

Carlos.
 

greenfrog

Member
Aug 11, 2010
17
0
Make sure you have the latest ROM installed there has been a lot of updates to the GPS driver.
 

DanU

Member
Mar 4, 2011
130
16
Sygis is a good offline GPS app with maps and POIs, though a little bit pricey at Eu 15.

Greenfrog, what firmware are you having good fortune with? My GPS works okay once I find the birds, but it takes a while to link up with them. I usually turn on the tablet and start the app, then go drop the tablet in my car so it can have the satellites located by the time I need to go.
 
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