Using GPS on phone whilst abroad

waterwatereverywhere

Hi,

Please excuse these very dim questions.

I have a Samsung Galaxy SII which has GPS on it and I use a map facility on the phone as a type of SatNav whilst I'm driving.

In my travels I see people abroad able to use GPS on their devices (phones, iPads etc) to find their way. As I often get lost I'd like to be able to make use of GPS whilst away.

If you are in, say, South East Asia, how do you operate GPS to find addresses, like hotels, landmarks etc? In the UK I just use the postcode.

Also how can I get the GPS only to work in this way whilst abroad, would I need a local SIM card with internet access?

I am on Three One Plan PAYG but always disable this whilst abroad because of the costs, just relying on wifi.

Any tips/advice .... enlightenment very gratefully received...!

Thx in advance.

JJ_Egan

It all depends upon what navigation app you are using .
Usual is to either download the maps as you move via mobile data / expensive or download the maps before you travel .

Nilrem

If the device has proper GPS it should from my understanding just be a case of selecting the proper map set and making sure it's downloaded onto the phone (you may have to pay for maps for the area you are going to, depending on your GPS app).

Basically you shouldn't need any connectivity to use GPS if the maps are downloaded and the device has full GPS receivers built in (in the same way a dedicated GPS device won't need any connection).

RumRat

I use Mapfactor Navigator (in the store) and it works by downloading the maps to the phone so only needs GPS connection when out and about.

S0litaire

Note: Their are 2 types of GPS that a phone uses
GPS (the one every one knows about)
and
aGPS

a GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System)
uses small amounts of data connection to get a fix, It sends the ID of your closest 3 (or more) Cell towers to a dedicated server held either on your Mobile providers network or a 3rd party server.
They use the accurate location information of those cell towers to do the number crunching to get your position and find the correct GPS satellite information for your current location, they then send that to your phone.

The phones in-build GPS then uses that rough position fix to get a better more accurate position.

This uses some internet data so it can depending on what internet data plan you're on) cost a few kb every time it goes for a aGPS fix.

macman

If you don't disable data when roaming abroad, expect your top-up to vanish very quickly...

wongataa

waterwatereverywhere wrote: »

Hi,

Please excuse these very dim questions.

I have a Samsung Galaxy SII which has GPS on it and I use a map facility on the phone as a type of SatNav whilst I'm driving.

In my travels I see people abroad able to use GPS on their devices (phones, iPads etc) to find their way. As I often get lost I'd like to be able to make use of GPS whilst away.

If you are in, say, South East Asia, how do you operate GPS to find addresses, like hotels, landmarks etc? In the UK I just use the postcode.

Also how can I get the GPS only to work in this way whilst abroad, would I need a local SIM card with internet access?

You need a navigation app that allows you do use offline maps that you can download before you go away. The you can navigate just as you do in the UK - by putting in the address of where you want to go. The GPS part of your phone works without data turned on - what you need to do if you are using your UK SIM abroad.

Note: Their are 2 types of GPS that a phone uses
GPS (the one every one knows about)
and
aGPS

a GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System)
uses small amounts of data connection to get a fix, It sends the ID of your closest 3 (or more) Cell towers to a dedicated server held either on your Mobile providers network or a 3rd party server.
They use the accurate location information of those cell towers to do the number crunching to get your position and find the correct GPS satellite information for your current location, they then send that to your phone.

The phones in-build GPS then uses that rough position fix to get a better more accurate position.

A-GPS does not give you a more accurate fix, it gives you a quicker location fix as the GPS system doesn't have to download the slowly broadcast orbital data used to work out your position from the satellites themselves. A-GPS provides this data over the phone's data connection which is quicker as well as giving you a rough position from cell tower triangulation..

S0litaire

wongataa wrote: »

...
...
A-GPS does not give you a more accurate fix, it gives you a quicker location fix as the GPS system doesn't have to download the slowly broadcast orbital data used to work out your position from the satellites themselves. A-GPS provides this data over the phone's data connection which is quicker as well as giving you a rough position from cell tower triangulation..

I meant the accurate location of the "Cell Towers" rather than an accurate GPS fix.
It uses that data to triangualte your rough position so it makes the phones in-built GPS chip job a lot easier to get an accurate fix.

securityguy

S0litaire wrote: »

I meant the accurate location of the "Cell Towers" rather than an accurate GPS fix.
It uses that data to triangualte your rough position so it makes the phones in-built GPS chip job a lot easier to get an accurate fix.

AGPS makes cold-starting a GPS receiver faster. If you have a GPS receiver which has lost its cached data, or which hasn't been turned on for a few years, it can take up to half an hour to get a fix: it has to wait for the almanac ("which satellites are there, and what is their status?") and ephemeris ("where are the satellites?") data to be downloaded, and it has to do some fairly complex juggling in order to recover a clock and know which satellites to look for. That's why even the cheapest GPS receivers have a battery to at least hold the data between restarts. AGPS (more precisely, "Mobile Station Based" AGPS) gets that data quickly over a data link, so converting a cold start into a warm start, where you know what satellites to look for and, once you've recovered a clock and the data stream, you immediately know which satellites you're using and can calculate a position.

Strictly, AGPS itself doesn't include cell-tower triangulation or WiFi triangulation, although usually phones do that as well. A warmstart where you know your location (ie, turn a GPS receiver off, wait six hours without moving it, turn it back on) is much faster than one where the GPS receiver has moved (turn it off, put it in your pocket, fly to New York, turn it on) so given phones normally have a rough idea of where they are, at least which country they're in, feeding that information into the first fix is very valuable.

billywhizz

Download navfree and the relevant maps to your phone.

Number 2 on this page
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/travel-tips

waterwatereverywhere

Hello

Just a a quick message to say many thanks to everyone for all the helpful and detailed replies.

I'm going through these now to try and understand it all.... (not very techie!)

In the meantime I'm downloading Navfree to give that a try. If there are any other free Android Apps like this which are similar or better which I could also try out I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

Thanks again.