GS3 GPS

One of my colleagues asked me today about the GPS on the GS3. It’s something I hadn’t yet tried, so vowed to give it a go on the way home.

I know there were a number of people who had issues with the GPS on the original Galaxy S, and a few had mentioned similar problems with the GS2. I never had any problem with my GS2, but I was only ever using the GPS function for basic driving and walking navigation, and for the Samsung Hope relay app.

Normally I would use my phone instead of a sat nav, however, with my rubbish sense of direction, I often find myself in situations where I quickly have to pull over and try to navigate my way to my destination. However, with the GS2 I found that locating satellites sometimes took quite a while before I could start moving again. This was quite annoying, especially if I got lost when trying to get to somewhere at a specific time (for me, this does happen quite often). So, for the purpose of testing the GS3, I thought I’d first set a route to take me home from work.

The first thing I noticed was that the GPS locks a lot quicker than on the GS2.  I locked onto the GPS satellites while in my car, in the bottom floor of a 2 story carpark in about 30 seconds, which is quite impressive for a first use. Using GPS Test, I was able to see that the handset had locked onto 13 satellites, with an accuracy of 24.2 feet! Pretty impressive! Further navigation attempts locked onto satellites in about 10 seconds, which is handy if you need to get directions quickly. 

In terms of navigation, I particularly like that there is an option for alternative routes – this may be present with the ICS update for GS2, but I never got round to updating mine (I preferred the handset with Gingerbread). This can be shown in the picture below.

For voice guided navigation, the nice lady who tells me where to go sounds a bit muffly compared to the crisp directions on the GS2, which is slightly disappointing. I think this is due to the speaker being positioned at the top of the handset, as the Galaxy Note and GS2 had similar crisp voice navigation from their speakers at the bottom of the device. This is quite annoying.

I also tried the walking directions, which were equally accurate, but had the same muffly voice. Again, the GPS locked on fairly quickly – about 10 seconds – and the directions were extremely accurate.

I know I haven’t tested the GPS extensively yet, but it will get a good outing over the next 

few weeks, and if anything arises, I’ll be sure to let you know. So far, all seems good, apart from the muffly voice navigation.