# Best Android Phone GPS Hardware



## forgiven_nick (Nov 7, 2006)

I see a lot of phones on the market currently, but am wondering which ones have the best GPS hardware. Some advertise "GPS-assist"s being superior, but I don't know which phones have which hardware and I have been out of the loop for some time on the latest GPS hardware. Thanks!


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

forgiven_nick said:


> I see a lot of phones on the market currently, but am wondering which ones have the best GPS hardware. Some advertise "GPS-assist"s being superior, but I don't know which phones have which hardware and I have been out of the loop for some time on the latest GPS hardware. Thanks!


The best GPS hardware for smartphones, IMO, is a bluetooth GPS puck with a proper high-quality GPS receiver.

the ones included within the phones are cheap, basic, and less accurate than a quality chip. the assist to the GPS only helps with speeding up position determination. It doesn't help improve accuracy because calculations based on cell towers are just inherently much much less accurate than the GPS signal itself. so if the phone has a GPS signal at all, it's going to be better than tower triangulation.


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## ziscwg (May 18, 2007)

GPS bluetooth puck? This could be useful for me. What do you recommend?


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

ziscwg said:


> GPS bluetooth puck? This could be useful for me. What do you recommend?


they're a relatively widely available device. it's just a self-powered external GPS receiver that sends its location to the device it's paired with. works with laptops, too.

I'm not sure what the best one is, but the widely-praised Sirf III chipset can be found on some of them.


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## ricky916 (Jun 7, 2011)

NateHawk said:


> The best GPS hardware for smartphones, IMO, is a bluetooth GPS puck with a proper high-quality GPS receiver.
> 
> the ones included within the phones are cheap, basic, and less accurate than a quality chip. the assist to the GPS only helps with speeding up position determination. It doesn't help improve accuracy because calculations based on cell towers are just inherently much much less accurate than the GPS signal itself. so if the phone has a GPS signal at all, it's going to be better than tower triangulation.


Not true my GPS in my HTC evo is dead on even shows which direction I'm aiming towards. Its probably not an expense chip but it works perfect.

Sent from my HTC EVO 4G


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## vans380 (Sep 11, 2005)

I can tell you what phone NOT to get, the Samsung Galaxy SII/Epic 4G Touch. While everything else about the phone is great, the GPS reception sucks. It constantly loses lock, pretty much useless when in the woods under tree cover. Looking into getting one of the aforementioned GPS pucks.


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