Not challenging, but enquiring. I am casually acquainted with an engineer who worked on "Assisted GPS" for mobiles, and I got a backgrounder on it. Some phones do indeed use "real" satellite-based GPS. The "Assisted" part is where the system uses triangulation to get a rough position and uses that to speed up acquisition.
Now, it's entirely possible that some operators (e.g. the ever-slimey Verizon) are doing something else. It wouldn't surprise me if Verizon even shut off existing real GPS on their customers' phones, but that doesn't mean that real GPS on mobiles doesn't exist.
Note to Vulture-Central: If we must have silly icons, can we have a propeller-beanie for nit-picking about technical content? :-)
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@Rick "Real GPS"
Not challenging, but enquiring. I am casually acquainted with an engineer who worked on "Assisted GPS" for mobiles, and I got a backgrounder on it. Some phones do indeed use "real" satellite-based GPS. The "Assisted" part is where the system uses triangulation to get a rough position and uses that to speed up acquisition.
Now, it's entirely possible that some operators (e.g. the ever-slimey Verizon) are doing something else. It wouldn't surprise me if Verizon even shut off existing real GPS on their customers' phones, but that doesn't mean that real GPS on mobiles doesn't exist.
Note to Vulture-Central: If we must have silly icons, can we have a propeller-beanie for nit-picking about technical content? :-)