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The speedup you are noticing is probably mostly due to assisted gps, where your phone gets a location using - partial gps information + wifi location + cell tower location all triangulated. Your eg early 2010 car gps unit didn't have any of the addition ways to speed up the location fix

Downloading the orbital parameters can be done via the internet rather than at the 50 bps that the satellites broadcast them at.

Also the challenge of old receivers was which Doppler shift frequency to listen on depending on if the target satellite is going towards or away. By knowing the rough location (from cell towers, known wifi AP’s etc), they can get an instant lock.

There are three things that lead to fast lock times for cell phones.

* Ephemeris and almanac data updated via the internet so the receiver doesn't have to wait for either and can immediately know what satellites to listen for and acquire.

* Precise clock via NTP so the receiver has a smaller solve space for its internal clock

* AGPS gives a very good position fix to further help with the initial clock and position solving

Apple has supported GNSS since the iPhone 8/X generation in 2017. This is about L5 GPS which I'm not sure how well this is supported in general ATM as its pretty new

GNSS is a generic term for satellite based positioning systems. It looks like you're referring to the iPhone adding Galileo support in the 8/X.

L5 support has been available in a number of devices for a couple of years now. Garmin was one of the first to use L5 in commercial devices, with their Fenix watches a while back.

The phone I'm currently using, the Pixel 6 Pro uses the L5 band. It's nice and I can definitely tell a difference, but it still struggles due to antenna size.

In my experience, for people doing significant outdoor stuff like backpacking, endurance running, etc, a positioning device from a solid company like Garmin is going to be a good bit better than an apple, Samsung, Google, etc device.

In my experience I find Apple tends not to add features that don’t meet a reliability or quality bar, which is why they’re usually not first movers on things like 4G or 5G.

I had an LG phone that was one of the first in 4G (at least on my carrier) and the thing ran so hot it was often painful to touch.

Nope, Apple is just late to the party here. Multi-frequency GPS has been completely reliable in competing devices for at least two generations.

The Apple Reality Distortion Field is clearly still strong.

It’s more a statement of how they operate IMO. I’ve watched them be extremely conservative over the years to see which ideas stick and wait until hardware has matured.

My HTC thunderbolt was one of the first “4G” phones, but was barely useable more than a few hours.

Yes, Apple has made some insane design constraints in the past (butterfly keyboards, the whole thin-ness thing), but their chip choices are usually pretty sound and grounded in reality.

*edit: I wanted to throw in how frustrating the lack of push email was for so long (and still kind of is), but I get it. From their standpoint, they control APNS & can use that for energy efficiency benefits to make a grandma-friendly device

I hear this claim a lot, especially by Apple brand enthusiasts, but is there really any data supporting this?

From my memory Apple is just often late to the party. Especially for 4G and LTE.

Garmin only recently introduced dual-frequency GNSS in some versions of their Fenix 7 watches, and have since added it to some cheaper models like the Forerunner 255. The first watch with L1+L5 was the Coros Vertix 2 from last year, so it's still quite new in watches.

Qualcomm has had it since the Snapdragon 855 though, so basically every flagship Android phone since 2019.

https://support.garmin.com/en-IE/marine/faq/9NWiPDU4gM0JWMfd...

I'm not sure what you're talking about. GNSS is just a generic term for a "global navigation satellite system."

Wow you're right, GPSTest on my 2019 Oneplus 7 shows L5 GPS satellites, in addition to L1 GPS, GLONASS, Michibiki, and dual-band Galileo.

Does the Android OS and apps like Google maps actually use multiple frequencies to get a position fix? I have friends with Samsung phones supporting dual frequency gps yet the GPS accuracy doesn't seem any better than single frequency devices.

It's transparent to the apps, it's included in all GPS (or technically GNSS) locations. GPSTest has a built in accuracy test mode where to can measure your phones location accuracy. Read more about that here: https://barbeau.medium.com/measuring-gnss-accuracy-on-androi...

I noticed a huge difference when I switched from my older phone to my current with dual frequency, and I usually log runs, walks, and bike rides so it's easy to compare the tracks. But maybe my old phone was just bad, my Garmin watch uses single frequency and it's usually quite good anyway. I've seen a few reviews of new Garmin watches and there dual frequency seems to make a small and not always noticeable difference.

They might not notice a huge difference depending on where they use location services. The real accuracy advantage of dual-frequency GPS only become apparent in degraded signal environments, such as next to tall buildings (multipath signal reflections) and under tree canopies. With a clear view of the sky, regular GPS is already quite accurate (especially if the device also supports other GNSS constellations).

How long ago was that? I never remember it taking more than a minute or so to get a good fix with GPS devices. I'm talking about Garmin devices.

I had a Garmin Forerunner (I can’t remember the number, 425 maybe?) circa 2007. IIRC it was one of the earliest on-wrist GPS devices Garmin did. Most of the time it would only take a minute. There would be occasions where it took much much longer. Increasingly so by the time I retired in 2018.

The first GPS device I used didn't have any built in maps, only a breadcrumb trail on a monochrome LCD display. It used AA batteries and it was before selective availability was turned off, so accuracy was quite poor compared to today. Late -90s, so around 25 years ago now. If I recall correctly it was a Garmin 38.

Garmin devices have supported downloading satellite ephemeris data from the Internet for several product generations. This greatly accelerates getting a GPS fix. Some models will also get an approximate location via Bluetooth from a paired cell phone.

Long fix times are still an issue today with cameras that lack connectivity.