Message from Justin with GPS test results

Ran some more tests with my phone and the galaxy and also borrowed Kaan's for a test run too.

The Xperia seems to be the most accurate and updates the most.

The iphone is very close behind in accuracy although appears to update less frequently (still very good)

The galaxy I think is a lost cause.. both inaccurate and slow update time.

Sean has the result recorded including a drawing of the gps path for each test, I'll post the link so you can view it.

http://s1.pharmatopia.monash.edu/track/map.html

Red & Yellow: Xperia

Blue & Aqua: Galaxy

Purple: iPhone

Perhaps we should try the HTC Desire? If not maybe look at getting another Xperia but not from footscray.

The Gingerbread Trails

After optimising Android 2.1 (Éclair) to the nth degree we decided to take the leap and trail Android 2.3.2 (Gingerbread) due to its alleged GPS performance improvements on the Samsung Galaxy S. Because Samsung have yet to release the official update to Android 2.2 (Froyo) for our particular device let alone the new Gingerbread firmware, we were forced to go with an official yet unreleased firmware and flash it onto the device using Odin 1.7.

After an initial scare where the phone became temporarily bricked due to Samsung Keis processes still running in the background of my computer, we were able to recover the update and the phone booted up in the new OS. Aside from all the shiny new improvements the stock GPS settings were very similar to the optimisations which I had previously applied under Éclair.

Prior to the upgrading to Gingerbread, Éclair on the Galaxy S was tested alongside Éclair running on the Sony Xperia and confirmed not only that the GPS on the Xperia was infinitely better, but that we had achieved an enormous improvement with the Galaxy S over its stock GPS files and default factory configuration. When we reached the location the Xperia remained locked to the position while the Galaxy S would drift 5-15m, this was an enormous improvement over the 100m drift we experienced originally.

For the Gingerbread trails we went to the extra effort of developing a web application using the Google Maps API's to trace the journey (images of this will be up soon.) We also added upon the location test we had developed to trigger event messages once we got within range of the destination location. What we found was that the accuracy hasn't changed much while the refresh rate seems to have suffered slightly. One big improvement however was we no longer received error messages if the device lost its position, so from a usability perspective Gingerbread seems more desirable. We will be performing further tests today and will be posting some traced maps so stay tuned!

Optimising GPS on the Samsung Galaxy S

With all the pretty stuff now out of the way we have now shifted our focus towards development. The first bridge to cross was implementing the HTML5 based geo location. We soon discovered that for all its awesomeness the Samsung Galaxy S doesn't fare so well as a GPS device with the factory configuration. To get the most out of this device we were going to need to look at ways of fine tuning the accuracy.

The first method we experimented with involved entering the hidden LbsTestMode menu by keying some numbers into the phone and then optimising the settings. This offered a small improvement but for the level of accuracy we require we needed to take things to the next level.

For the Galaxy S this meant flashing GPS files leaked from JI2 which would involve first rooting the device to gain super user access and then flashing a recovery manager onto the device. Now that the new GPS files have been successfully loaded onto the Galaxy we will be performing more testing and fine tuning alongside the development until we have achieved the desired results. Stay tuned for more updates soon.