4 replies to this topic

[nick911]

Hi
Im thinking of getting the T mobile compact iii  and wondered about the location that the phone has to be for a gps signal. At present i have an imate kjam with a bt gps unit, so the gps unit sits on the dash and the kjam fits near my radio 'out of site'. Will i have to mount the phone on the screen for every 'scumbag' to see or is the gps rx 'good enough' to be moved out of site, not in the glove box       .

Cheers

Nick

[Maxrom]

My MDA compact III does very well with its gps reception. I have it half way down the dash near my radio, which works very well, so I'd say no, you neednt have it high up in view of theiving cretins. The only caveat here is if you have a heated or athermic windscreen, but still, I dont think you'll have much trouble. GPS performance for me seems very good overall.

[nick911]

Maxrom

Many thanks for the reply,

cheers

nick

[rossjamesparker]

I have just come back from work in central London. I was playing with my GPS in the centre seat at the back of a bus. It worked fine, with green pick-ups on five satellites. These phones have good GPS reception.

[zippyioa]

I used to have an XDA2i with an external GPS reciever. In my Peugeot 206 (which had an athermic heat reflective windscreen) the only way I could get a signal was to have the reciever trailing through the car and away from the windscreen.

When I bought the XDA Orbit in January I was REALLY worried about the signal strength as its built in GPS reciever would not allow me to put it in the back of the car as I could not see the screen. I was very happy when I first booted up Tomtom on my shiny new Orbit. I was inside my house and within 20 seconds I had 2/3 full signal - indoors! This was better than I could have hoped for so I went outside to give it the heat reflective windscreen test.

When I put it on the dash of my Peugeot 206 rather than getting worse, the signal went up to full strength despite the heat reflective windscreen!

So don't worry about signal strength with this device.

As for other features it is far better than most on the market. Some people comment on the slower processor speed, but if you put a task manager on it and close down programs you are finished with (rather than letting them run in the background) you don't really experience any problems with overall speed.
Additionallly the increased battery life that you get from the slower processor speed more than makes up for any lag you get during use. Having experienced dead batteries after 4-5 hours use on other devices, it is MUCH better to have a device that works for longer (I usually get 8 hours of average use - GPS/calls/games/emails/book reading before mine needs recharging)

I have had MANY devices over the years and have never been happier with a device than I have been with my Orbit. Others available at the moment have a lack of built in features or are too big or have really poor battery life, but I think that the Orbit covers everything perfectly!

If you have nay questions, please feel free to ask me!

zippyioa