Best GPS Accuracy Poll

[s.m.knipe]

Please post your "best" (lowest value) GPS Accuracy you have seen on your Captivate. This is to compile data to send to Samsung's technical support, hopefully to aid in trouble-shooting the issue. After voting in the poll, please post indicating which firmware you are running (pre or post update, or which custom ROM or leak). This poll is not concerned with time to lock, holding a lock, or any other GPS issue than accuracy, and is just to compile a data set to test one part of a hypothesis of mine. It seems my Captivate has a "best" (lowest) accuracy of ~16.2 ft (5m), much higher than say, an N1 or G1 (which max out around 6.6 ft).
If you are unsure how to check for accuracy to get a specific number, use either GPS Test or GPS Status (free, in the market) as they both will display accuracy of the lock in real-time. GEnerally the accuracy improves with the longer the lock holds, so for maximum effectiveness, let's set the official accuracy time at 5 minutes (leave the app open for 5 minutes, then record the accuracy) or the best value you have noticed. Also, if your value is not exactly one that is up here, please select the closest number to your value...

Thank you to all who participate...

 

[Andrewdroid]

The GPS "Accuracy" isn't the end story however, I've gotten accuracy of "5m" but on the map it is about a block (~80.5m) from where I ought to be. (Standing still) Then after the GPS "lock" it will jump around sometimes which sometimes makes it worse or better. I don't think this is a lat/long mapping problem because I'm in NYC, not anywhere rural with iffy maps. It seems to have been getting a bit better however.

 

[tvande]

Have a "stock" Captivate, approximately 1 month old (in my possession that long) and has had the AT&T "gps fix" done to it. Not rooted nor any special ROMs etc.

I also see 16.2 as the best I've seen.

 

[s.m.knipe]

I realize it is not the "end story" nor do I mean for it to be. This is just one quantifiable variable to use to see if a pattern exists. By quantifying each variable in turn, I hope to get a better picture of the issue and also have hard data to submit to the support team. This is the quantification for the Accuracy variable, and I have a sneaking suspicion it will prove to be more indicative than previously thought. ;-) I also have a suspicion that perhaps the accuracy value shown is not exactly "accurate" and hence issues like you have noticed... But I will evaluate that more once I have at least 30 data points...

 

[s.m.knipe]

Have a "stock" Captivate, approximately 1 month old (in my possession that long) and has had the AT&T "gps fix" done to it. Not rooted nor any special ROMs etc.

I also see 16.2 as the best I've seen.

Thanks, I have a feeling either the driver/firmware or the chip is limited to that, but we will see.

 

[qwertyaas]

Usually 30ft within second then down to 16ft depending on location.

 

[ShannonPricePhoto]

i thought civilian gps was not supposed to resolve more that 9 foot accuracy...

Mine has worked amazing... i guess i am the ONLY one that LIKES... LOVES the gps on this phone.... its fast to lock and incredibly accurate. one time it took about a min to lock but i blame the surroundings some for that.

window mounted in car NOT totally in view...meaning it was actually under the roof, placed so it was in front of the rear view mirror.

 

[Andrewdroid]

I hate the last guy. haha

 

[Cuerbo]

I tried several times, even on the same routes, and never got results that matched or even came close to one another.

 

[s.m.knipe]

Usually 30ft within second then down to 16ft depending on location.

That's exactly how mine is right now, always that 16 ft cap...

 

[odindra]

Mine has been wonky since the day I got it, although I bought it used (shouldn't matter, right? hehe) I did ever reset imaginable to delete/refresh to stock less Odin though. After the update 2.1 update1 my locks have been better under the auto config option (taking suggestions from everyone on here from there settings) from the lbstestmode as well as my readings but can never, ever, never, ever get an accuracy reading better than ~16 ft. Btw if it matters I am rooted and have lagfix through ryansza OCLF.

Also, my gps still sucks cuz I can remain stationary with a lock and watch as the icon on the maps moves all around...this happens while driving also as I've tested it a half dozen times going home from work.

I'd be better off reading a map while driving instead of using this....for now.

 

[s.m.knipe]

i thought civilian gps was not supposed to resolve more that 9 foot accuracy...

Mine has worked amazing... i guess i am the ONLY one that LIKES... LOVES the gps on this phone.... its fast to lock and incredibly accurate. one time it took about a min to lock but i blame the surroundings some for that.

window mounted in car NOT totally in view...meaning it was actually under the roof, placed so it was in front of the rear view mirror.

You are not alone in appreciating your phone's abilities, but I have to caution here about opinions to both keep this thread on task and relevant (I don't want to give the moderators any reason for shutting down or moving the thread, and losing it in the monstrosity that is "all things GPS" or some other equitable punishment). So, liking and loving aside, this is a fact-finding purposed thread, so it is not meant for posting or voicing judgments (especially negative ones), but I also love this phone OTHER THAN THE GPS.
I should point out why I am studying this GPS issue to begin with, and mainly that is centered around lapses in accuracy, which results in odd occurrences when tracking. Even your map shows some cut corners, just like mine always do, and that is what has me so bothered about this phone's GPS. We have (supposedly, according to Broadcom) a superior chip, and yet get consistently worse accuracy and therefore results than the competing phones. My N1 (which is actually a pain to use generally now by comparison) gets down to 6.6 ft and stays there. There is almost never a blue circle in maps or my tracks, yet it is a constant reality with this superior chip. And it is apparently something Samsung either did, or is not doing that is limiting the performance of our GPS's, and that is my frustration and what I want to work towards solving. Once I understand the issue, I will be okay with it if it is a real limitation, I just have to work towards the "why" aspect, it is just who I am I guess ;-P

Also, yes that is the military's official stance, however I am an Archaeologist, and it is expensive but we have equipment that we use to map bone scatters that can have 5cm precision by itself, and with setting up two other stations at known land datum points within about 200 yards, we can map to the cm. It is an indirect method (GPS to the exact center of the total station, then the relative direction and distance to the pointing tool), but the accuracy for the total station is so small it is negligible (~ 1 cm) in comparison... So whether the military acknowledges it or not, companies like Trimble can get you nearly perfect accuracy if you were willing to pay for it...

 

[s.m.knipe]

I notice that there are about 5 votes above that are less than the 16 ft majority, are those people using Cognition ROMs?

 

[fldude99]

I'm thinking of a Captivate, coming from a Nokia N97, where I'm lucky to be inside 100 feet. What's the big complaint about the Captivate?! 100-300 ft accuracy is routine for my N97 and I use it without a major complaint

 

[lordfly911]

I have seen it lock dead on in seconds and other times never lock or tell me that I am about 1/2 mile away. In some cases it showed me on the other side of town.

The part I really don't like is the averaging. I had that turned off before the update and now I have no idea how to turn it off since I can't get back into the settings.

Instead, I use the app Bluetooth GPS Mouse with my BT359. That works better than anything.

 

[s.m.knipe]

so is this it then? I will run some statistics/probability tests and email over to them. It is very clear that MOST Captivates are limited to 16.2 ft accuracy, and those few that are better than that are probably running Cognition or some other fix (no one posted or replied back) and are a statistical oddity or a separate population... Still, this is just barely enough data points to assume normalcy and be able to say anything about though, I was hoping for more...

Thanks again everyone!

PS I am beginning to think that the JH7 update played with the accuracy reading that the apps display/use, versus what it actually is. There have been several times that Maps/Navigation/My Tracks (Google apps) have shown no blue circle no matter how far I zoom in, but in GPS Test and GPS Status and Toolbox the accuracy is still showing 16.2 ft. 16.2 ft on my N1 and G1 still shows a small circle about the size of the interior of the orange triangle at the default zoom, my Captivate shows nothing at the default zoom, giving the illusion of a better lock/accuracy. If this is correct, this could account for the "flurbs" where the location instantaneously jumps around yet the accuracy still seemed good- the accuracy "bubble" is actually expanding momentarily for some reason (the root of the problem), and the location jumps to reflect this, but the app is told that the accuracy is still good so the blue circle does not reflect it...
Just thoughts, but seemingly increasingly likely the more I look at this in my own experience and the overwhelming % at the theoretical "cap"

 

[reinbeau]

I regularly have accuracies down to five feet with my Garmin iQue 3600.

I'm on firmware version 2.1 on my Captivate, Eclair.UCJH7. The best I've seen is 5 meters (and forgive me, but that means relatively little to me, I just can't think in metric). I know it is much worse than my beloved Betty (the iQue). It takes 119 seconds to get a lock, that's horrible.

Without dragging this further off topic, I have to say, there is a setting in the iQue that's used to make the track stay on the road - all GPSs jump around the way I've seen described here, unless there's this setting available to control it (Stay On Road). Dedicated GPSs handle this seamlessly.