A quick guide to… A-GPS

GLOBAL – Location-based services are becoming more and more popular on your mobile. We’re all very used to using services on our mobile that tell us where the nearest shop or cinema is, to mobile applications like Ovi Maps that gets you from A-B using location information from your phone. However, this is just the beginning.

Over the next few years, we’re going to see more services and applications becoming location-aware. One of the areas where location information is predicted to be used more and more, is social networking. Both Twitter and FaceBook now include ways of including your location in your Tweets and your Status updates, and location-based games like FourSquare just wouldn’t work without your location. Ovi Maps now has the ability to share your location with your friends too, posting where you are directly to your wall on Facebook using the Check-in feature in Ovi Maps 3.06 currently at Beta Labs.
But for all these services to work correctly, you need to be able to calculate your precise location. It’s always been possible to calculate roughly where you are by using the nearest mobile base station, or cell site. However, while this is fairly accurate – estimating your position to the nearest 10-100 metres, in towns and cities where there are lots of base stations, as soon as you start to move in to more remote locations, where base stations are further apart the results become too vague – accuracies drop down to 1-10 miles – to be useful.

A-GPS

Assisted global positioning system (A-GPS) is a system created to enable mobile phones to quickly and more accurately establish their location. It combines a traditional GPS system where your location is calculated from the radio signals from satellites, and position information calculated from your networks’ mobile base stations.

GPS

Traditional GPS systems work well when you’re outside and ideally in the direct line-of-sight of three or more satellites. However, if you’re indoors, or surrounded by large buildings, receiving a signal will be harder, if not impossible due to the restricted view from the satellites above. Even when outdoors, the GPS system can sometimes take at least 40 seconds of data from the satellite before it can calculate your position. This isn’t good if you’re waiting for driving directions in a busy town centre.

The benefits of using A-GPS

By combining standard GPS location information with the location information from the networks’ base stations – which can penetrate into buildings and suffers less from inaccuracies through bounced signals – an A-GPS system gives much more accurate location information. Additionally, because it’s always collecting information from your local base stations, it’s also much faster.
With A-GPS, you have the speed to be able to add a location to your Tweets while you’re on the move; the accuracy to allow Ovi Maps to give you the right turn-by-turn information; and it means when you’re indoors or out you’ll always know where you are within seconds

(source : http://conversations.nokia.com/)By Adam

Nokia X3 Slider GSM Quad-Band Unlocked Cell Phone with 3.5 MP Camera and 2 GB SD Slot Memory -- U.S. Version with Warranty (Blue)




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