21 June 2007

Upcoming N95 firmware to enables AGPS?!?

Here is the another firmware related news. Ricky @ Symbian Guru got his hands on the unreleased Nokia N95 firmware and post some information and screens.

It seems that new firmware (12.0.013 / 19.6.2007) doesn't brings huge improvements, at least in terms of the free RAM what is expectable after all but from other hand there is a huge improvement in GPS part, the addition of the AGPS feature will allows much faster locking the satellites and stronger fixes all round.

Assisted GPS, or A-GPS, is a technology that uses an assistance server to cut down the time needed to determine a location using GPS. It is useful in urban areas, when the user is located in "urban canyons", under heavy tree cover, or even indoors. It is becoming more common and it's commonly associated with Location Based Services (LBS) over cellular networks.

A stand-alone GPS receiver (a) must search for satellite signals and decode the satellite navigation messages before computing its position - tasks which require strong signals and additional processing time.

*click to enlarge

A cellular telephone network can assist a GPS receiver (b) by providing an initial approximate position of the receiver and the decoded satellite ephemeris and clock information. The receiver can therefore utilize weaker signals and also more quickly determine its position.

Assisted-GPS requires a worldwide tracking network for obtaining the navigation messages of all satellites and data processing hubs along with a server which feeds data to a Serving Mobile Location Center (SMLC) or Mobile Position Center (MPC) operated by a network service provider. Data is sent to individual cell phones using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the Short Messaging Service (SMS).