Technical Specs of iPhone 3G posted

In article <Xns9ABB638CBFC31noonehomecom@208.49.80.253>,
Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:

> I sorry, Bob, I disagree. Pick any GPS phone. Click to Menu and bring
> up your GPS position. My ROKR Z6m is supposed to have GPS. There is a
> GPS position subroutine in the test section you can bring up with the
> secret code. It never shows anything. My V6 was the same way.
>
> If the phones' GPS was installed, they'd be using it for a sales gimmick
> and Lat/Long would be displayed on the home page to brag about it to you.
>
> I think the reason it's not is purely physics. GPS birds are 16,000
> miles away on a slice of 2.4 Ghz microwaves, which are line-of-sight,
> period. To get a fix at all, the phone would HAVE to be IN YOUR HANDS,
> OUTSIDE, with an UNOBSTRUCTED view of the sky from an antenna mounted on
> the SKY SIDE, not pointing towards the ground from the back, of the unit.
> GPS signals at ground level, even outside in the country, are very weak
> requiring a fantastic receiver with an unobstructed antenna. They're not
> going to make it, reliably, through the LCD or the keypad pointing up.
> It's unobstructed antenna isn't on top because that's where the microSD
> card slot is located.
>
> Notice that on ANY handheld GPS there is an RF transparent plastic panel
> about 2 X 3" above the display on the UPSIDE, when you're looking at it,
> of the unit. The high gain 2.4 Ghz antenna is under that plastic. Where
> is that on your sellphone....or your iphone? The display has a massive
> grid of intersecting CONDUCTORS transparent to your sight, but NOT to 2.4
> Ghz at -110 dbm. The antenna can't be there.
>
> The antenna can't be on the back because the GPS signal doesn't bounce
> off the sidewalk. Even if it did, the timing would be all screwed up as
> you move the unit around making the fix move all over a 50' circle,
> rendering the fix useless...especially for speed.
>
> Nope...there's no antennas...so there can't be a GPS. I think it's a lie
> for the druggies and Feds. You CANNOT pinpoint the position of the phone
> as soon as you pass through the front door of the high rise building.
> That's just fantasy. The last good fix it got was just outside the door.
> That fix would be what the cops would see.
>
> More Sellphone bullshit.

larry, please put yourself out of your own misery, WATCH the Keynote
since it explains all of that... (to huge applause by the way) learn
about skyhook and you'll understand why you can be indoors and still
have it work.

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/

bottom line it has true WPS & GPS

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc08/

In article <Xns9ABB38F6A69BBbob@216.196.97.136>,
The Bob <nospam@bob.com> wrote:

> No- they don't use true GPS. It is Assisted GPS, which is inferior to the
> real thing. Do your homework- the Apple Assisted GPS is network dependent
> on either GSM or wifi.

assisted just means it also has WPS, first cell phone to have it.

> > apple has the better system, that's for sure... it's just you are
> > jealous, that's all.
>
> Better than who, fanboi?

Garmin, TomTom, etc... those companies are now toast... at least in the
consumer space.

David Moyer <meetme@world.com> wrote in news:meetme-C1C712.23394811062008
@news.qwest.net:

> and the 1.0 iPhone have the excellent WiFi positioning system via
> Skyhook, and the 2.0 models have that and true GPS, so if you are
> indoors or out, an iPhone will work... not so with most Cell Phone GPS
> systems.
>
>

Dream.........and the dream comes true..........
Dream.........it's the thing to do..............
(play the song while reading this)

GPS DOESN'T WORK INDOORS!.....IT'S IMPOSSIBLE....

How can you triangulate from WiFi when you have NO IDEA WHERE THE WIFI
BASE IS AND THE WIFI DOESN'T SUPPORT TRIANGULATION?.....Impossible.

The phones are, ON PURPOSE, so weak they don't cause more than 1 or two
towers to hear them....the reason SELLphone companies keep turning the
damned power down...3 watt to 600mw to 300mw to 200mw to 150mw...as the
system has more and more SMALL footprint cells turning off the BIG
footprint cells the AMPS system used to increase users/sq mi and profits.

To triangulate the position of an RF transmitter, you need at LEAST TWO
good LOPs (Lines of Position) from TWO separate, KNOWN locations with
STEERABLE antennas Sellphone towers DON'T have. A Sellphone tower has 3
PANEL antennas, each covering a little more than 120 degrees. The system
can tell you WITHIN 150-170 degrees, which direction a user is in because
it can see he's better on antenna 2 than 1 or 3. He's, sort of, THAT
WAY> as opposed to ^that way or <that way. Now, if by some magic, we've
installed REALLY NEW equipment that can send him out a PULSE and have him
RETURN the pulse, which I don't think Sellphone companies have, we could
determine how FAR out into this WIDE ARC from the tower he is located,
making each sector he's being heard in have a 150 degree ARC of position.
IF 3 towers had a good 150 degree ARC at some timed distance, and those
arcs intersected, that's where he'd be in OPEN COUNTRY. That fix would
be "fairly accurate" IF we knew the EXACT time it took for the cheap
Sellphone to turn that pulse around, different for every one, I'm sure.
But, alas, he's IN THE CITY where most of the customers are located....in
canyons of REFLECTING buildings causing MULTIPATH PROPAGATION DELAYS
between this wonderful Supersell and that user. His signal is BOUNCING
AROUND off these objects, making any timing-based, TACAN-like pulsing-
pulse-returning based system virtually USELESS...because the PATH
distance to him is FAR longer than the ACTUAL distance to him, at the
speed of light.

If you're interested in the TRUTH about the effects of multipath on radio
direction finding, the Canadian military has a gift for you:
http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTR...51&Location=U2
&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

This report is about VHF RDF. The higher you go in frequency, the WORSE
the effects of multipath propagation, especially in cities where there
are thousands of reflecting surfaces around, becomes. Notice how UHF TV
has LOTS more ghosts than VHF TV. Ghosts on analog TV signals is caused
by multipath signals reaching your receiver bouncing off things.

Have you ever used an AM band pocket radio's loopstick antenna to RDF the
station? It's so low in frequency, and the station runs so much power,
RDF is easy and fun. Tune in a station over 10 miles away on the AM, not
FM, band. With the radio standing upright, turn the radio on a vertical
axis until you find the NULL of the loopstick antenna, which is the line
of the ferrite core of the little radio's antenna, out the narrow sides
of the case, in most radios. This gives you a LOP, a line of position.
The station can be anywhere along that line. Now, move to a new position
a long way from the first position and plot another LOP on that signal
null the same way. Use a roadmap and plot them. Where they intersect is
the station transmitter. Because you have LINES of position, not ARCS of
position like a Sellphone system would have to have, you only need two
LOPs to find the station. We used to find U-boats that way from loop
antennas mounted on destroyer and cruiser ships in WW2. There's few
reflecting surfaces at sea.

Don't believe every hype Sellphone or Government bureaucrats tell you.
It's nonsense. As you can see from this Canadian military report, RDF is
very hard to accomplish under the best of conditions. Finding a
Sellphone inside a building where no GPS signal can go using RDF
techniques is DAMNED NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to accomplish with any usable
accuracy.

Sellphones AREN'T clairvoyant or some kind of black magic.....

In article <Xns9ABB38F6A69BBbob@216.196.97.136>, The Bob
<nospam@bob.com> wrote:
>
> No- they don't use true GPS. It is Assisted GPS, which is inferior to the
> real thing. Do your homework- the Apple Assisted GPS is network dependent
> on either GSM or wifi.

assisted gps is certainly not inferior to the real thing, nor is it
dependent on gsm or wifi.

assisted gps utilizes information from the cellular network when
available to assist in locating the device and obtaining a fix.
basically, the cell towers send enough information (ephemeris) for the
gps to quickly locate the satellites. outside of cell coverage areas,
it works as any gps would, possibly taking a minute or more to get a
lock.

assisted gps is not only common on mobile phones, but it also exists on
handheld gps devices. for example, gps units that use the sirf star
iii chipset, such as ones made by garmin and other companies, have
assisted gps.

it's an enhancement, and a very useful one.

In article <Xns9ABB6B41EADE8noonehomecom@208.49.80.253>, Larry
<noone@home.com> wrote:
>
> GPS DOESN'T WORK INDOORS!.....IT'S IMPOSSIBLE....

it's very possible. some of the better gps devices (e.g., with the
sirf star iii chipset) do work indoors. i have even obtained a fix
inside a steel framed department store with one.

David Moyer wrote:
> In article <Xns9ABB38F6A69BBbob@216.196.97.136>,
> The Bob <nospam@bob.com> wrote:
>
>> No- they don't use true GPS. It is Assisted GPS, which is inferior to the
>> real thing. Do your homework- the Apple Assisted GPS is network dependent
>> on either GSM or wifi.
>
> assisted just means it also has WPS, first cell phone to have it.
>
>>> apple has the better system, that's for sure... it's just you are
>>> jealous, that's all.
>> Better than who, fanboi?
>
> Garmin, TomTom, etc... those companies are now toast... at least in the
> consumer space.

You are *SUCH* a moron Oxford. You said that about Palm, and RIM when
the 1st iPhone came out.

The iPhone will *NEVER* have the accuracy, and routing capabilites of a
true GPS. There isn't enough romm in it for a properly accurate GPS
antenna or GPS chipset. It wont hold a candle to the SIRF III based GPSs.

Larry wrote:
> The Bob <nospam@bob.com> wrote in
> news:Xns9ABAB3B07C024bob@216.196.97.136:
>
>> Ron <ronclifford@peoplepc.com> amazed us all with the following in
>> news:bq3054h7sas48slso0k5o9an4af5p6lcnr@4ax.com:
>>
>>> http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
>> I see they won't be touting battery life as a big draw. They still
>> limit the phone in choice of audio and video formats. And it still
>> doen't have true GPS. Average camera at best with no video recording.
>> No card slot. And no western skiing for the iPhone user (maximum
>> operating altitude 10,000 ft.). Looks like a mediocre feature
>> offering at best.
>>
>>
>>
>> Also, how can the phone operate in a range of 32 to 95 degrees but not
>> operate in a range of -4 to 113 degrees? Must be more of the Apple
>> Rocket Science.
>>
>> But I'll bet the "user-configurable maximum volume limit" will be a
>> big selling point. After all, who ever heard of a volume control on a
>> cell phone?
>>
>
> I was also quite curious as to what "assisted GPS" means on a page that
> is supposed to be the technical specifications of the device. Two words
> is kinda vague. Either it really does have GPS or it doesn't. I thought
> that is why the plastic case, because the GPS antenna MUST be somewhere
> it can see the sky. The satellites are around 16,000 miles away and line
> of sight. Any reflections, like operating a GPS receiver in a building
> so the signal must bounce off something to get through the windows makes
> the GPS fix very inaccurate because it's an analog system running on
> timing and phase relationships between multiple signals. In a car, you'd
> have to provide iPhone some kind of dash mounting bracket so it could see
> UP into the sky, not with the car roof blocking the RF raining down on
> it.
>
> The temperature range is probably dependent on the LCD's capabilities,
> not the phone. Too hot, the display turns black as the crystals melt.
> Too cold and the crystals are so sluggish the display looks like slow
> motion and will actually "freeze" at some low temperature. But, I
> thought we'd gotten over most of that issue, especially in the cold.
> Maybe they're afraid of the hot glue holding the cables on inside the
> case melting.
>
> Has anyone had iphone troubles because they forgot and left it in a car
> in the hot sun? What did the display look like before it cooled back
> off?

I've kept mine in the clear map display area of the tank bag on my
motorcycle. It got quite hot... The iphone shuts itself down after about
45 minutes under the map display(much like the heat from a car under there).

In message <Xns9ABB6B41EADE8noonehomecom@208.49.80.253> Larry
<noone@home.com> wrote:

>David Moyer <meetme@world.com> wrote in news:meetme-C1C712.23394811062008
>@news.qwest.net:
>
>> and the 1.0 iPhone have the excellent WiFi positioning system via
>> Skyhook, and the 2.0 models have that and true GPS, so if you are
>> indoors or out, an iPhone will work... not so with most Cell Phone GPS
>> systems.
>>
>>
>
>Dream.........and the dream comes true..........
>Dream.........it's the thing to do..............
>(play the song while reading this)
>
>GPS DOESN'T WORK INDOORS!.....IT'S IMPOSSIBLE....

It can, depending on the signal strength you manage to receive, and your
receiver's sensitivity. The signal is obviously degraded, but if you're
near a window, it may be sufficient.

I have a QStar BT-Q1000 that gets a decent signal indoors and can manage
to pin-point my location when I arrive in a hotel a thousand miles from
where it was last turned on (so it's definitely not just caching a
previous location)

Several of the reviews mention this behaviour as well:
http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?a...reviews&id=976 read
"In fact, I was able to receive a signal five feet from a window, inside
a brick building. The unit also logged while in a sealed backpack...
very convenient. "

When I use this GPS, I leave it in a compartment near the top of my
backpack.

>How can you triangulate from WiFi when you have NO IDEA WHERE THE WIFI
>BASE IS AND THE WIFI DOESN'T SUPPORT TRIANGULATION?.....Impossible.

My iPod Touch with Google Maps has this creepy habit of figuring out
where I am, it has nothing but wifi and IP address information to go on.

I've tested it on literally dozens of open wifi access points around
three different cities. The accuracy isn't comparable to turn by turn
GPS directions, but it's sufficient to find myself on a map.

>To triangulate the position of an RF transmitter, you need at LEAST TWO
>good LOPs (Lines of Position) from TWO separate, KNOWN locations with
>STEERABLE antennas Sellphone towers DON'T have.

They're actually called "cellphones".

As is shown by the iPod Touch (with no GPS and no cellphone support),
you actually don't need multiple points of reference to get a rough idea
of where you're located when relying on guessing your location based on
nearby wifi access points which have known locations. What surprises me
is the depth of information in the wifi location databases, but the
proof is in how well the service works.

For turn by turn directions, GPS is obviously better (I'd argue the only
option), but for finding my current location on a map close enough to
eyeball what is nearby or manually plan out a route, wifi-based location
is more then sufficient.

In message <Xns9ABB638CBFC31noonehomecom@208.49.80.253> Larry
<noone@home.com> wrote:

>The Bob <nospam@bob.com> wrote in news:Xns9ABAD2D32D646bob@
>216.196.97.136:
>
>> Modern cell phones have things like true GPS.
>>
>>
>
>I sorry, Bob, I disagree. Pick any GPS phone.

Okay, I pick the AT&T TILT.

>Click to Menu and bring
>up your GPS position.

I don't have anything called "menu", but I do have a couple GPS capable
applications.

>My ROKR Z6m is supposed to have GPS. There is a
>GPS position subroutine in the test section you can bring up with the
>secret code. It never shows anything. My V6 was the same way.

Perhaps you need to pick better phones. I not only get a lat/long, but
I can see the time, nearby satellites and their relative strengths.

Oh, and I can pull and log the NMEA data too, should I be sufficiently
bored.

>Notice that on ANY handheld GPS there is an RF transparent plastic panel
>about 2 X 3" above the display on the UPSIDE, when you're looking at it,
>of the unit.

Perhaps you can point it out for me as there physically isn't 2" above
the display on my device:
http://www.68phone.com/wp-content/up...c-att-tilt.jpg

>Nope...there's no antennas...so there can't be a GPS. I think it's a lie
>for the druggies and Feds. You CANNOT pinpoint the position of the phone
>as soon as you pass through the front door of the high rise building.
>That's just fantasy. The last good fix it got was just outside the door.
>That fix would be what the cops would see.

It might be fantasy, but my QStar manages to figure out where I am from
inside in a hotel, with the last fix being in another country.

I've also fired it up downtown inside an office building, ground level,
while killing time waiting to meet someone. Last known fix was across
town, and was initially returned, but after around two minutes it
managed to get close, although it had me across the street and down the
block slightly initially.

But like you say, fantasy, must have been the last known location.

David Moyer <meetme@world.com> amazed us all with the following in
news:meetme-C1C712.23394811062008@news.qwest.net:

> In article <Xns9ABAD2D32D646bob@216.196.97.136>,
> The Bob <nospam@bob.com> wrote:
>
>> > haven't you even seen the Keynote? until you do, you won't understand
>> > much about modern cell phones.
>> >
>>
>> Modern cell phones have things like true GPS.
>
> and the 1.0 iPhone have the excellent WiFi positioning system via
> Skyhook,

And how does that work for you in rural highways and interstates?


and the 2.0 models have that and true GPS,

No it won't- it will be a combination of wifi and tower trinagulation, not
true GPS. Apple doesn't even state that it will be true GPS.

so if you are
> indoors or out, an iPhone will work

My Blackberry (with true GPS) works just fine indorrs.

.... not so with most Cell Phone GPS
> systems.


No- not so with most American GPS cell phones. Most CDMA phones have true
GPS.

>
> apple has the better system, that's for sure...

How do you figure?

it's just you are
> jealous, that's all.
>

Jealous of what? A fnaboi tinker toy?