I've been trying to piece together the status of the GPS navigation applications in the N97 from the many reports on the forums, but I have not really succeeded. It is apparent that the position/speed readout from the GPS receiver drops out at quite short intervals when using maps 3, and also when looking at the position data in the GPS application itself. As I immediately upgraded to version 3 upon receiving the phone I do not know what the status is with maps 2. Also, do other applications experience the same drop out as maps?
What I am trying to get at is whether this is a software problem that we can expect to be fixed in a later version, either of the firmware or maps, or whether it is a problem with the GPS receiver itself. The fact that it works correctly when using a Bluetooth GPS receiver, which publishes its data through the same API as the internal receiver, is a bit worrying with respect to a internal GPS fault.
The reason for my wondering is that if it is purely a software problem I can expect that a fix will be coming some time, and I will be prepared to wait. However, if there is a hardware problem, combined with my scratched lens I will seriously consider to return the phone and demand my money back. Which is a shame since I really like the other aspects of it.
On a related note, for some unexplained reason all my installed maps (using Nokia map loader) disappeared, and after some time I got a notification that a new version of maps was available, version 3.1, which I installed several weeks ago. Any suggestions or explanations?