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Comment by reportingsjr | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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