How bad is the Epic's GPS?

[caliskimmer]

Yeah, mine is great without doing the cold start trick, but with that, it could probably be better.

 

[Aero]

Mine has worked perfectly sense day one without any work-a-rounds. I've use google maps and turn by turn every couple days with no issues. Its a huge battery drain but I just leave GPS off unless I want to use it, and when I do use it, it finds me within a couple of seconds (outside of course) and I'm good to go.

Leaving GPS enabled, on pretty much has zero affect on battery. It is a myth that it is a battery drain.

If you are going to have some persistent program that uses GPS polling every 15 minutes, like foursquare, than it will, but if you are using that why then turn off GPS?

Quite a number of us have tested GPS battery use, and when enabled but not used there is no use by GPS of battery.

Yeah, mine is great without doing the cold start trick, but with that, it could probably be better.

As has been noted all the Epics have the cache bug, but its appearance and affect on you is dependent on user habits

 

[rando991]

I have used it with Sonocaddie and Skydroid golf GPS apps and compared it to my Dedicated Sonocaddie GPS and it is always within a yard or two.

 

[NSS]

hahaha this one made me laugh.

were you just using it for fun? im gonna try that after school tonight haha
although itll probably take me on the same boring route i always take

Well I used to kinda get lost on purpose lol. I took a wrong turn purposely turned out to be quicker route than the usual one I take.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[aclays]

I've used my epic for geocaching, and it gets me right where I want to go. Haven't used it for driving or anything, but so far my experience has been positive.

 

[caliskimmer]

Leaving GPS enabled, on pretty much has zero affect on battery. It is a myth that it is a battery drain.

If you are going to have some persistent program that uses GPS polling every 15 minutes, like foursquare, than it will, but if you are using that why then turn off GPS?

Quite a number of us have tested GPS battery use, and when enabled but not used there is no use by GPS of battery.

As has been noted all the Epics have the cache bug, but its appearance and affect on you is dependent on user habits

ah, thanks for the info.

 

[caliskimmer]

I've used my epic for geocaching, and it gets me right where I want to go. Haven't used it for driving or anything, but so far my experience has been positive.

Yeah, my gps is off by almost a 100ft. at the very worst, but it is still pretty decent. However, my Evo's gps is completely dead accurate. All in all, I don't think there really is a fatal problem though.

 

[boomerbubba]

Yeah, my gps is off by almost a 100ft. at the very worst, but it is still pretty decent. However, my Evo's gps is completely dead accurate. All in all, I don't think there really is a fatal problem though.

How are you measuring that accuracy on the Epic? I hope you are not paying attention to the 98ft estimated accuracy, because that estimate is itself a bug.

 

[coolqf]

It's very usable. I use to have the Palm Pre and find the EPIC 4G noticeably better. The short comings are:

- Indoors. I no longer try to get a GPS lock indoors. It seldom, if ever, works.
- It has about a 20ft margin or error. While driving on 99% of the roads this isn't a problem. In a very small block however, it might confuse where you are if you're going in circles, for example. Imagine yourself lost, so you go around the block...

Other than that, I like it. I have given away my GPS and use this as my default GPS. I travel outside of town a lot and feels comfortable using the EPIC 4G as my default GPS, as long as I bring the car charger.