Google Maps for Mobile gets 'virtual GPS'

I'm checking www.google.com/gmm but its only showing v2.0.0 😞
Does it make a difference because i'm checking from India ?

That is seriously impressive - works great on an E61 in London (where GPS can sometimes struggle). They must have signed a lot of deals with mobile companies to get all the cell location info?
(Arcade - I suggest downloading it anyway and trying, it didn't say beta during the download).

It also showed v2.0.0 for me from my n95-1, but when I went ahead to install it, it showed v2.00(3) and does indeed have the "virtual gps" feature.

it's actually called "My Location" on google maps. Is quite unpredictable though but still quite good coupled with satellite view.

great to hear this, i didnt want to have to pay for my GPS!

I don't imagine it was too hard to convince the mobile companies - after all, you'll be downloading map data from THEIR phone network = money!

BTW, I only seem to get v2.0.0 for my Nokia 9500. Which is crap since I can't get GPS to work on it, as the buggy JVM crashes when it attempts to access GPS via bluetooth (Nokia: you suck).

yes it says 2.0.0 when you go to the download page, but once you install it and hit options>about then it says 2.0.3

Damn, tried it on an N70 but after installing, it says Location isnt compatible with my device..
Weird- Its just operator data, shouldn't it have worked on atleast my N70 if not all phones..?
Is it working for anyone in asia/india on a v3 phone ? Thanks Alistair ..

Isn't this just the 'A' bit of 'A-GPS'?

I mean, plenty of phones have A-GPS these days; the difference is that they need the GPS to get the A. What google have is the Assistance (optionally) without the GPS.

Seems like a logical enough step. I wonder why no one has thought of it before - perhaps they have.

Arcade wrote:Damn, tried it on an N70 but after installing, it says Location isnt compatible with my device..
Weird- Its just operator data, shouldn't it have worked on atleast my N70 if not all phones..?
Is it working for anyone in asia/india on a v3 phone ? Thanks Alistair ..

Plus it does not show you your location but the location of the tower you are connected to right now and the blue circle covers the area the tower covers. But, all in all, a very good option for people who do not have GPS on their phone.

Thanks google 😊 Keep sending more free stuff like this.

Arcade wrote:Damn, tried it on an N70 but after installing, it says Location isnt compatible with my device..
Weird- Its just operator data, shouldn't it have worked on atleast my N70 if not all phones..?
Is it working for anyone in asia/india on a v3 phone ? Thanks Alistair ..

I don't think there's any reason this feature wouldn't work on 2nd edition phones. I wrote an app that reports the cell, network and country ids to a web server, and that works just fine on 2nd edition phones...

It doesn't work on my 3250 either, btw, but I'm in China, and Google seem to ignore China for interesting stuff like this.

No, nothing to do with A-GPS, it works in a totally different way. This is cell tower stuff, while A-GPS uses Internet data to look up satellite ephemeris/almanacs.

davidmaxwaterma: They might just not be very interested in supporting old versions of S60. As you're a developer, you should know how much time it takes to port code between 2nd and 3rd edition.

puterman wrote:davidmaxwaterma: They might just not be very interested in supporting old versions of S60. As you're a developer, you should know how much time it takes to port code between 2nd and 3rd edition.

Well, yes, but they already have the app working on both, it's just this feature that isn't, and, IMO, that is pretty simple - though clearly I'm no expert on *how* this feature works. I just plugged in an already existing library to give me the info I needed, and wrote a wrapper over the top of it to make it the info the same as that given on 3rd.

Are there any more technical details on how this works? Does it require service providers cooperation to give a map of 'networkid/cellid' to 'lat/long' or something like that , or does it only work in networkid/cellid combinations where someone has previously been with a GPS (ie, a server has recorded the lat/lon and cellid info already)?

Max.

Just tried on my Sony Ericsson P1. I can only download version 2.0.0. If I go to Menu | Help | My Location, it says My Location is not available on this device. Rats :frown:

It gets worse, I can no longer zoom in and out with the scroll wheel :frown: :frown:

I ve tried on my P1i and it gave me the 2.0.0 version. I noticed that the url of the link for v.2.0.0 was: http://www.google.com/gmm/gmm.jad?make=Generic&model=Advanced%20MIDP2&ver=v2.0.0 .Can somebody who has downloaded the v.2.0.3 give me the url of the link he used. I think that the v.2.0.3 will work on my P1i. After all it is just a java app...

Note that there are separate Java and S60 3rd Edition versions. And (I suspect) there's even a separate 'N95' version. All a bit frustrating for UIQ 3 smartphone owners though, no doubt!

There is very little innovation here, other than the use of cell information for mapping. Users positions have been estimated by cell location for years, perticularly in europe with operator specific local place finding txt services. Ive heard of this being done over 3 years ago, id be more interested to ask: "Whats taken people so long?". But ofcourse once the Google marketing machine is on the case, they are a golden example of achievement.

As a side note, you might want to consider googles recent NEGATIVE press, aswell as their green efforts (which have little to do with phones, and in this context a lot more to do with editorial bias).

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/27/2235251

not available for UIQ3 and java generic devices yet AFAIK

http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-for-mobile/browse_thread/thread/9ea3839202bf1104

Regarding this system, well, my network here in Portugal have a similar localization service since 4 years ago, although it only give text information about the location of the user or other friends in his private network

A-GPS used to mean Assisted GPS, which, as someone has already said on here, was the art of using cell triangulation to work out roughly where a handset was. 3 launched a service which used this feature in their early NEC & Motorola phones, and it worked pretty well when outside. I think they called it My Nearest. (the NEC e616, Motorola A925 & A1000 had A-GPS). The Assisted part here is something helping the phone tell the user where it is, using simple radio triangulation.

These days it's taken on a different meaning, whereby the true GPS position, as calculated by a built in GPS receiver, is aided by the phone's network triangulation being sent to a server, which then returns to the phone which GPS satelites it should be looking at, therefore reducing the time it takes for the phone to calculate a GPS fix. The Assisted part here is the phone's cell triangulation helping out a real GPS chip.

I'm using a recently bought a T-Mobile N95-1 (using v12 firmware) ...

With the new version of Google Maps "My Location" works quickly in the city centre, but out in the sticks it throws up a feature not supported error message and switches on GPS. Unfortunately the most reliable method for me to get a GPS fix is within Google Maps when it already has the approximate location from from Cell ID:icon4:

The Register also thinks this is a Google maintained database of cell IDs - http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/29/google_gps_my_location/

With T-Mobile it is actually quite easy to work out roughly where you from T-Mobile's own data - open a Web'n'Walk net connection, select the "Out & About" link, then the "Where am I" link and finally "See Map" to see a small Multimap with a ringed approximate location. 😎

Looking forward to T-Mo approving the N95 v20 firmware, so that I can get A-GPS. 😊

ttfn,
TonyN

PS Steve - yes my N95 does have the Welcome app you mentioned in your v20 post, and auto-ran when I first started the phone.

Hmm.... I think you could be wrong here, though goodness knows I'm not an expert. From my own research, Assisted GPS isn't cell tower related in any way, it's simply a way of getting a GPS device the latest information on where all the satellites are in the sky.

Wish someone who worked in this field could comment or write the definitive account of how Assisted GPS works though. i.e. what *exactly* is in the data packets that a smartphone pulls over its Internet connection at the start of an A-GPS session?

I tried for about an hour to get it to work on my E90..
The old version (1.70) worked fine.
But for some reason the new version either does not like Finland or it does not like E90 or both..
I still had the 1.70 sis on my HD so I was able to revert.
That is OK again..
I went to Google Maps forum...
There is already 130+ pages of complaints/moans

I found a link to the 1.70 version sis here.
http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34496

This technique for approximate location based on signal strength and cell position is not new, various mobile networks (see Vodafone Live since about 2004) have been using it for years.

This is possible that you and your friend that are on different networks and at same place are getting different results. Let's take an example of Google Earth. A few years ago when it was launched; it didn't have place name of each and every location compared to today and even still it's getting finer each day. If you are a member of Google Earth community then you can contribute by sharing the names of those places that you know. The same thing applies here at GMM. Google didn't say but it need volunteers. Here the information is mobile carrier specific. That means On the same place ATT tower might be registered to GMM MyL but it's not necessary that Vodafone's tower is also registered in MyL database of Google.

As i said earlier Google needs volunteers that means only those people who have GPS Handsets with GMM Running or Handsets which are attached to GPS Accessories like Sony Ericsson HGE 100 or any Bluetooth GPS Accessory and GMM software ON can help Google to enriched it's database of Mobile towers.

Now again let's move back to the problem when 2 people on different networks are at same place. If a first person gets the approximate location information on GMM that means that some times ago a person who has GPS Phone or Phone with GPS Accessory had passed to that location while GMM was running so GMM has sent the information of that Tower and saved into the database.

So, if you have a phone that can work with GPS and you want that your area or village gets fully covered on GMM so that other citizens or tourists who doesn't have GPS Phone can take an advantage of it; then you have volunteer for it. If there is a vacation or weekend then just attach GPS accessory or start in-built GPS and on the meantime start GMM. Now just roam around your favourite places. Next time when anyone without GPS functionality will use GMM; he will not receive error messages like "location temporary available" and at the end of the day you will feel content that you did something for your area or locality and now it is fully covered under your favourite mobile carrier/ Operator.

If this method is getting costly to you then do one thing, start Cell Information on your phone. Now if you see a new location name on screen then just start your GPS and GMM and Google will register it. Now exit the software. Again if you come to that place where different location name is showing then do the same thing. Thus your favourite area will get 100% covered.

In short, if more people with GPS use this service in different areas the more it will get enrich.

@DevilsRejection who said "yes it says 2.0.0 when you go to the download page, but once you install it and hit options>about then it says 2.0.3"

Sorry, you're wrong. I did actually download GMaps for my 9500, before reporting that it really *was* v2.0.0 . The app is missing any option for finding the location (plus the installer only says "2.0"😉.

A-GPS, lets close this subject off once and for all, since it seems most people cant use google. I have family working in projects including GALILEO ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_positioning_system ), so perhaps I have a better background knowledge than some. Anyway, a quick wiki on A-GPS reveals the following:

An A-GPS receiver can address these problems in several ways, using an Assistance Server:

* The Assistance Server can locate the phone roughly by what cell site it is connected to on the cellular network.
* The Assistance Server has a good satellite signal, and lots of computation power, so it can compare fragmentary signals relayed to it by cell phones, with the satellite signal it receives directly, and then inform the cell phone or emergency services of the cell phone's position.
* It can supply orbital data for the GPS satellites to the cell phone, enabling the cell phone to lock to the satellites when it otherwise could not, and autonomously calculate its position.
* It can have better knowledge of ionospheric conditions and other errors affecting the GPS signal than the cell phone alone, enabling more precise calculation of position. (See also Wide Area Augmentation System)

Having said this, google is NOT using A-GPS in this software. It is merely estimating location by the cell ONLY - not using any live GPS data, whereas A-GPS would have.

In my opinion the ionosphere is the most interesting part, that will give you more accuracy, everything else is just a complicated compensation for poor GPS hardware on nokias part, resulting in slow lock-on times.

SiRF III chipsets have been arround for a long time now, and are much better than a lot of other GPS hardware. My advice is to buy a bluetooth GPS receiver and use that instead - thats what im doing atleast. SiRF III GPS receivers get a faster lock without any of this nonsense.

A wise man once told me: a complicated software system is no substitute for using the correct hardware. He was talking about machine vision systems, but the same principle applies to many applications of technology.

I tried but I prefer calssic GPS receiver� But it�s very cool!
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