FruitFoners can't read....GIF at 11

There were 56 waiting in line, some since 9PM last night, vying for the 60
FruitFones ATT had at the North Charleston main store when it opened at 8
this morning. I counted them as I arrived to photograph them.

Most I interviewed were there to get a FruitFone with a GPS in it, about
70%. This is why the header to this post is they can't read. "Assisted
GPS" ISN'T a GPS installed inside the phone, from looking at the high
resolution hardware pictures posted to ifixit.com's website last night.
GPS receivers have a receiver, processor chipset and antenna...missing on
3G FruitFone's PC board.

Some said thanks. Others got mad that I had the audacity to question
"God's will", vis-a-vis Apple. Others were shocked when I told them former
FruitFoners were trying to trade their FruitFones and $50 for a place in
line posted to the net last night. A young black girl in her Air Force
uniform thought that was a great idea and had 5 old FruitFones in perfect
condition offered to her, even though she was at the back of the line. She
got the one with the nicest leather case and its owner will give her the
rest of it after she gets off work this afternoon. She then left him her
space in line, to the dismay of the ones behind her. She got there at 0530
this morning and got her FruitFone at 0720 for $75, without activation.

Well, I gotta go to work. It was interesting to talk to real FruitFoners
in line this morning. I told the boys at Waffle House they shoulda had a
truck loaded with breakfast and coffee at the line this morning. Some of
those folks looked awful hungry after a night in the parking lot.

Your reporter in Charleston, SC, for alt.cellular.attws....

Well Larry for a cell phone without a GPS it does just about as well
as a MIO, TomTom or Garmin in tracking your location in real time.

Why is that Larry? You said it doesn't have a GPS chip. Apple says it
does BTW.

If you are right Larry then Apple has pulled off a big advance of
providing accurate GPS locations without any need for a dedicated
chip, all others are now doomed. What is a little weird is I took the
thing into the toilet deep in the interior of my house and turned the
maps function on again, within a few seconds it accurately showed the
distance from my car out by the mailbox where I had dropped a pin and
my new position. How did that sucker figure it out when I had no view
of the sky except through an open door to a hallway and a distant view
of a window? I got the little blue glowing orb which is an indicator
of the GPS and its accuracy for any given second.

Now I noticed that it sometimes lags a few feet behind the google map
while driving at high speed but below 45 MPH it seems dead on and when
you slow for a turn it is always dead on.

I like turning on the hybrid view and zooming way in to see the
detailed close up satellite view as I drive. That is more fun then my
stand alone GPS units! Someone is going to wreck or get killed with
one of these phones in the next few days as this is to much fun tp pay
close attention to other traffic.



On Jul 11, 10:13*am, Larry <no...@home.com> wrote:
> There were 56 waiting in line, some since 9PM last night, vying for the 60
> FruitFones ATT had at the North Charleston main store when it opened at 8
> this morning. *I counted them as I arrived to photograph them.
>
> Most I interviewed were there to get a FruitFone with a GPS in it, about
> 70%. *This is why the header to this post is they can't read. *"Assisted
> GPS" ISN'T a GPS installed inside the phone, from looking at the high
> resolution hardware pictures posted to ifixit.com's website last night. *
> GPS receivers have a receiver, processor chipset and antenna...missing on
> 3G FruitFone's PC board.
>
> Some said thanks. *Others got mad that I had the audacity to question
> "God's will", vis-a-vis Apple. *Others were shocked when I told them former
> FruitFoners were trying to trade their FruitFones and $50 for a place in
> line posted to the net last night. *A young black girl in her Air Force
> uniform thought that was a great idea and had 5 old FruitFones in perfect
> condition offered to her, even though she was at the back of the line. *She
> got the one with the nicest leather case and its owner will give her the
> rest of it after she gets off work this afternoon. *She then left him her
> space in line, to the dismay of the ones behind her. *She got there at 0530
> this morning and got her FruitFone at 0720 for $75, without activation.
>
> Well, I gotta go to work. *It was interesting to talk to real FruitFoners
> in line this morning. *I told the boys at Waffle House they shoulda hada
> truck loaded with breakfast and coffee at the line this morning. *Some of
> those folks looked awful hungry after a night in the parking lot.
>
> Your reporter in Charleston, SC, for alt.cellular.attws....

At 11 Jul 2008 09:38:49 -0700 4phun wrote:
> Well Larry for a cell phone without a GPS it does just about as well
> as a MIO, TomTom or Garmin in tracking your location in real time.

Really? I wasn't aware that MIO, Tom Tom or Garmin units "lag a few feet
behind the map while driving at high speed... "

4phun <vic.healey@gmail.com> wrote in news:4099de52-4da8-4155-80a1-
fee50ec7b527@k30g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

> Why is that Larry? You said it doesn't have a GPS chip. Apple says it
> does BTW.
>
>

I'm asking anyone to point out, on the high resolution picture of the 3G
FruitFone board, the GPS receiver and its associated GPS processor
chips.....

We cannot find them. GPS uses specific chipsets, there are several
manufacturers. GPS is NOT A PIECE OF MAC APP CODE.

List the GPS chipset parts on that board and I'll just stop....It's very
simple....

Here is a picture of the best one made:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...71003_3764.jpg
The planar panels on each end are the phased array antenna system.
This is a complete, 20-channel, WAAS-compensated GPS receiver and it's
the coolest one made. It drains the battery something just AWFUL at 62
mw of power and it has a simply incredible -159 dbm receiver sensitivity
to pick up the very faint signals from the birds 16,800 miles away in
polar orbits...up to 20 at a time!

-159 dbm is a power level of .000000000000000125 milliwatts! On the
sunny side of the planet, sun-created noise radiating off a parking lot
is about 1000 times this level in broadband noise at the GPS UHF
frequency band. It is simply an amazing piece of engineering.

http://live.ifixit.com/images/QuqS4a...rOod-large.jpg
Here's the antenna PC board the gold plated spring contact on the main
board touches for a sellphone antenna....on the bottom, the worst place
under your hand....idiots.

http://live.ifixit.com/images/m2VNZs...pkSC-large.jpg
Hmm....I just found something new on the OTHER side of this board....a
coaxial connector with pads going to it on the BATTERY side. Look at
this picture. I may have to eat crow...not the first time.....(c;

In the upper part of this picture, you see a round female gold-plated
connector that is tapered so that it mates with "something". Under it
there are PC traces coming out in parallel (these may be "stripline"
impedance matching sections if there is an internal ground plane inside
the board, in the middle. Striplines are very old technology but the
best we ever had.

These two black lines come over to what LOOKS like a white parts number
sticker of some sort. I tried to find that number and it traces to
nothing....not a GPS receiver Google ever heard about...or even an IC
number anywhere on the net. There's a little row of tiny surface mount
parts above this white "sticker", which MAY be an IC under it...surface
mount. The black lines from the round cone coax connector, which may be
a connector for your GPS receiver go under the big shield cover on the
left....where there may be more circuits not yet pictured on the net.

This could very well be the connection for a planar GPS antenna in the
new plastic back...which would make it have a bulge in it like the Nokia
N810 has. The N810 uses the fantastic chipset at the top of this
message, same as my external BT GPS receiver and all other Nokia GPS
products...including their phones.

Now, using this picture:
http://live.ifixit.com/images/2a.jpg
notice, using the gold-plated antenna contact in the last picture, the
last picture is looking at the BACK of the board in this picture. I
wonder why ifixit didn't complete the disassembly they started and
remove teh shield cover from the BACK of the main board so we could look
at what is mounted on the back?! I assumed they knew what they were
doing, being hardware geeks, but, now I'm not sure they found but HALF
the new FruitFone's circuit chipsets! There has got to be other chips
mounted on the OTHER side of the board from the 2a picture here.....

Until we can see that side of the board with the brown shield cover
removed, we can't really tell what's on that side....

I'll bite....I think I just found the GPS antenna input for a GPS
chipset UNDER that shield cover on the back of the FruitFone....added on
as an afterthought, probably.

I was running on the assumption the chips on ifixit were the ONLY chips
on the board....I doubt they know this isn't all of them......well,
yet...(c;

4phun <vic.healey@gmail.com> wrote in news:4099de52-4da8-4155-80a1-
fee50ec7b527@k30g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

> Why is that Larry? You said it doesn't have a GPS chip. Apple says it
> does BTW.
>
>

THE CLOT THICKENS!

They DID pull the bottom shield off it and I didn't see any components
on it so just went by it late last night....

Go here!
http://live.ifixit.com/images/3jYKHy...G4Br-large.jpg
This is the BOTTOM of the board...see our white label on the lower right
corner with the gold contact?

Now, go to the UPPER LEFT corner of the board...opposite our white
label!

There's yet ANOTHER coaxial connector! THIS one is hooked to two small
little white components, directly! The 6-pin flatpack I'm guessing to
be the front end RF amp and mixer of the GPS receiver. The bigger chip
next to it, would be the first IF amplifier as it has two traces to the
6-pin flatpack's output. The bigger white chip then feeds the oddball,
not-listed-anywhere-by-anyone LBEE1WRLFC-255 IC that there is no listing
for on Google, either.

OK, this is most probably its GPS receiver I passed over because of all
the hoopla over the OTHER side the data geeks are analyzing.

I apologize for the error, I've found its oddball, unknown GPS receiver
chipset noone has ever heard about....but someone, somewhere in China
has produced....?? go figure. The big grey chip feeds the processor
through the traces and through-board traces below it....who knows what
data...??

This side of the board with two RF connectors on it, must point towards
the new plastic bubble that has replaced the RF-unfriendly aluminum back
on v 1.0. Buried in that plastic must be the panel antennas....under
your hand pointing towards the ground as you hold it.....??? Stupid!
REALLY STUPID! The antenna's pointing AWAY from the birds!

You guys with FruitFones, when you find an area where the GPS starts
moving you queerly around on the map, try holding the phone above your
heads (outdoors, not inside the metal car roof of course, with the
display pointing DOWN towards you and the ground! I bet the GPS signal
goes way up and the queer movement stops....

In article <Xns9AD8D74CD951Cnoonehomecom@208.49.80.253>,
Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:

> > Why is that Larry? You said it doesn't have a GPS chip. Apple says it
> > does BTW.
> >
>
> I'm asking anyone to point out, on the high resolution picture of the 3G
> FruitFone board, the GPS receiver and its associated GPS processor
> chips.....
>
> We cannot find them. GPS uses specific chipsets, there are several
> manufacturers. GPS is NOT A PIECE OF MAC APP CODE.

that's probably because Apple designed many of the specific iphone
chips... they have a long history of building their own IC's, so for
something as simple as GPS, they would have simply engineered it in
themselves.

> List the GPS chipset parts on that board and I'll just stop....It's very
> simple....
>
> Here is a picture of the best one made:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...71003_3764.jpg

oh, my god... look at the traces on that! something from the 1990's or
worse...

i'm simply laughing too hard respond to the rest...

good god, larry... you are waaaay out of the loop when it comes to
modern cell phone electronics.

Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote in news:g58ik6$adb$3
@aioe.org:

> Really? I wasn't aware that MIO, Tom Tom or Garmin units "lag a few feet
> behind the map while driving at high speed... "
>
>

Actually they all do GPS only updates ONCE each second, putting the fix
you see at high speed a ways behind your actual position. The delay is
caused by the intense calculating of phase differences against timing
differences between the up to 12-20 birds over your horizon the GPS chipset
is locked onto. The position presented is the position you WERE at when
the calculation started....many milliseconds ago.

Jet fighters have inertial guidance that corrects this delay in software
when it compares the GPS signal position calculated with the inertial
guidance solution from the computer and terrain mapping mere mortals like
us are not privy to...(c;

The lag is proportional to speed, so when you stop at a light, after only
one second, your position is as accurate as your GPS is capable of
calculating, about 3 ft with WAAS compensation.

Notice how, as you're cruising along the interstate, the fix jumps at one
second intervals....That's GPS... The $10,000 superyacht GPS performs
exactly the same way....(c;

4phun <vic.healey@gmail.com> wrote in news:4099de52-4da8-4155-80a1-
fee50ec7b527@k30g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

> Why is that Larry? You said it doesn't have a GPS chip. Apple says it
> does BTW.
>
>

Look at teh plastic back:
http://live.ifixit.com/images/OQmYpG...uPoA-large.jpg

Look along the upper left edge and you'll see the matching RF connector
that plugs into the hole of the GPS receiver next to one of the screw holes
that holds it tight against the back through the board mounting
screws...the brass lined screw holes.

The GPS antenna is under that plastic bubble marked with a circled WC-2 all
along that edge to over by the brown folded circuit board to the right of
WC-2.

So, as you're holding the phone in the vertical viewing position with the
docking connector pointed down, looking at the screen with your hand
wrapped around it, The GPS antenna would be along the right side back edge
(under your finger tips holding it with your left hand. To maximize GPS
reception get your fingers off the back panel's rightside edge and hold the
phone in your left hand by its left edge and you'll probably get bigger
signals from the birds....(c;

Sure would like to find out more information on that LBEE chip. The
internet engines find nothing with that number on it.....

Google is usually very good at finding even house numbers of ICs with a
thousand websites trying to sell them to you.....With this number, nada...

Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:

> internet engines find nothing with that number on it.....
>
> Google is usually very good at finding even house numbers of ICs with a
> thousand websites trying to sell them to you.....With this number, nada...

again, apple has always done a lot of custom work, so common chip
numbers will rarely pull much up. you are dealing with an engineering
firm, not a simple "carrier" like verizon or att, or just a "metoo"
company like nokia.

In article <g58ik6$adb$3@aioe.org>,
Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote:
> Really? I wasn't aware that MIO, Tom Tom or Garmin units "lag a few feet
> behind the map while driving at high speed... "

Speaking of TomTom, it does something kind of annoying at times: if the
GPS puts you at a position that it thinks unlikely, it will display you
as being somewhere it thinks more sensible.

I took my TomTom on a cross country train trip, and if there was a road
parallel to tracks within about 50 yards of the tracks, it would often
put me in the middle of that road, rather than on the train tracks.
When the road diverged sufficiently from the tracks, it would then jump
my position to the tracks.

There doesn't seem to be any way to tell it that you want it to show the
GPS position, even if there isn't a road on the map at that position.

--
--Tim Smith