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Owning a WB850F, my thoughts

Started Jun 9, 2012 | Discussions thread
Coldamus Senior Member • Posts: 2,281
Re: GPS lock time

peewit wrote:

Hi thielges

Thanks for the tip. I will certainly give it a try when circumstances allow. I was trying to use my travel zoom in a spontaneous way, where I was not thinking about photography all of the time. I certainly got the 45 seconds lock time sometimes however if there were trees or buildings in the vicinity it could take much longer or not work. My ageing iPhone 3GS would always get a GPS fix far faster and in poor situations such as being on a bus as it drives through a city of tall buildings.

My hope was that with the elapsed time since the WB650 came out, that the GPS sensor in the WB850F would have been improved to what seems to be the current standard on other devices. It was a let down to find the same slow response and lack of sensitivity.

The reason GPS in a phone is faster is because it can use A-GPS (assisted gps). Providing that in a camera would require a phone account for the camera and would incur charges. A-GPS downloads some of the data required for the initial fix from an assistance server on the telecommunication provider's network. More details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS

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