Cell phone GPS - where's the data?

May 5, 2005 7:10 AM

My Sanyo 8200 is tracking my location - can I use this data?

I'm a Sprint customer. I have a Sanyo 8200 phone, and it has a feature on it called "Location Service", which basically means there's an embedded Global Positioning System chip necessary for utilizing the E911 services.

With this feature turned on, my phone is presumably broadcasting its location to Sprint (possibly others) to verify my location. My question is: Can I use this location data? Is there anyway that I can flip on my phone and find out my current longitude and and latitude? The data is there, I imagine, but can I access it?

The Sanyo 8200 manual [PDF] is a joke. All it tells me is that I can turn the feature on and off-- that's it.

posted by nitsuj to Technology (6 answers total)

See the previous post.

Here's what I said then:

Actually, Sprint does have something like this available now (ostensibly) for small businesses. It integrates with Microsoft MapPoint Location Server.

Available Here.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To use these providers with MapPoint Location Server, you must contact Sprint to add location to your existing service agreement and have your phones provisioned. You can contact Sprint at [e-mail].
posted by chota at 7:47 AM on May 5, 2005

Response by poster: Wow, that's embarrasing - another thread, less than a month old. I need to improve my AskMeFi searching abilities. Thanks for the heads up on that.
posted by nitsuj at 8:07 AM on May 5, 2005

Actually, you can't turn it off; all your phone can do is send a signal out that tells Sprint to stop tracking you. But they really don't because it's not the phone that's doing the tracking. It's the cell towers "tri"-angulating your position (although this can be done with only two towers) -- not a GPS system in your phone. They can override it (turn it back on) for E911 calls -- this is the result of some lawsuit a while back.

That's also why my previous link (MapPoint Server) can track ANY Sprint phone -- even the cheapo default Nokias.

Even though the phone can provide a "global positioning system" it's not the Global Positioning System most people think about (with the military satellites, etc).

nitsuj: it's alright, it's an interesting topic, and I learned something new. :)
posted by chota at 8:11 AM on May 5, 2005

Response by poster: Chota: Thanks.

I'm surprised that Sprint uses the term "Global Positioning System" on the Sanyo 8200 product page. It seems a bit misleading - especially if I was buying the phone expecting it to have true GPS abilities.

From the product page (about 3/4 the way down):

Features an embedded Global Positioning System (GPS) chip necessary for utilizing the E911 emergency location services, where available.
posted by nitsuj at 8:14 AM on May 5, 2005

Yeah, I was, too. I have a Hitachi G1000 that was touted to have "GPS capabilities."

I think it stems from the fact that the "brand-name" and "generic name" are both GPS.

Oh well.

Also, if you get this working, please let me know! I currently don't have the time/infrastructure to set up an Active Directory, get MapPoint server, call Sprint, etc.

Thanks!
posted by chota at 8:58 AM on May 5, 2005

Tower-based triangulation isn't precise enough for the new mandate, so many phones do now actually include Navstar receivers.

Blame Sanyo for writing firmware that sucks. The Motorola GPS-equipped phones will show your lat/long if you ask. I don't know about other brands.

One perk of being on a CDMA network is that the towers can "assist" with GPS fixes, essentially giving you DGPS functionality for free. Each tower has a receiver to provide its synchronization timebase.
posted by Myself at 12:33 PM on May 7, 2005