[ImportSport]

VZnav is up and working for the 8130 but none of my other apps seem to be able to grab the GPS info in the phone.

Am I doing something wrong or did Verzion lock down the GPS so only they can use it?

[penguin3107]

The internal GPS on the 8130 is locked so that only VZ Navigator can make use of it.

[ImportSport]

Is this something that people have found a work around for on previous devices or is it still too early to know?

FWIW I did read the 8830 thread about GPS. Just not sure how much overlap there is between the information.

Thanks!

[JRSCCivic98]

Originally Posted by ImportSport

FWIW I did read the 8830 thread about GPS. Just not sure how much overlap there is between the information.

Thanks!

It's a direct overlap. Let me break it down so you get an even better idea.

8703e -> VZW Disabled GPS
8830 -> VZW Disabled GPS
8130 -> VZW Disabled GPS
Future release of 8330 -> VZW Disabled GPS and WiFi (most likely)

Blackberry and ALL other phones -> VZW Disabled or limited Bluetooth profiles.

Oh yeah, one last thing. If you're interested in helping the consumers please call VZW and complain that you cannot use your GPS with other apps. The power is in our hands... the more the marrier.

[John Clark]

Just get a Bluetooth GPS puck and forget about it. Personally, I'd pay $100 for a GPS puck before I purchased VZNavigator, but that's just me.

[JRSCCivic98]

I agree, but damn I hate to carry another thing, even if it's on my keychain. I guess for me it's the whole "knowing that the phone has GPS natively inside yet I'm having to use an external device to do the same thing" that bothers me.

[ImportSport]

Has anyone tried to engineer a way around this? I'm not afraid to do some soldering or creative coding if it is a means to an end.

That said I'll gladly submit a complaint to Verizon regarding this.

t's a direct overlap. Let me break it down so you get an even better idea.

8703e -> VZW Disabled GPS
8830 -> VZW Disabled GPS
8130 -> VZW Disabled GPS
Future release of 8330 -> VZW Disabled GPS and WiFi (most likely)

Blackberry and ALL other phones -> VZW Disabled or limited Bluetooth profiles.

That puts things into perspective, thanks.

[JRSCCivic98]

There's no soldering involved. It's all software driven (as in firmware), but no success yet.

[roverradio]

$150 for anyone who creates a hack (via PayPal). PM me.

[Firefishe2]

Originally Posted by John Clark

Just get a Bluetooth GPS puck and forget about it. Personally, I'd pay $100 for a GPS puck before I purchased VZNavigator, but that's just me.

VZ Navigator probably won't completely open the JSR-179 API in use on VZW's implementation of the 8830.

Since you're apparently with T-Mobile, this doesn't really affect you. It does, however, affect all of us with the USA's largest CDMA carrier, and, unlike the GSM carriers with open development policies (more or less), we CDMA people with VZW have to deal with an ultra-conservative, big-brother-watching-out-for-little-brother type of mentality.

I swear that VZW's attitude about security and having to have each and every LBS/GPS packet sent through and encrypted out of the handset before it goes out over the data aether, is, to me, pure nonsense! It's hard as heck to isolate a GPS data stream from a particular handset, and BB can be encrypted via VPN, anyway.

Most of us with the 8830 and VZW just want to be able to use our third party apps. But you've probably heard all this before, so I shall desist at this time.

Thanks for reading.

Warm regards,
Firefishe

[Firefishe2]

Originally Posted by JRSCCivic98

There's no soldering involved. It's all software driven (as in firmware), but no success yet.

Hey Civic, I know this might be a stretch, but as long as we're brainstorming, here is a suggestion.

The form factor of GPS chipsets is already pretty tiny, but is going to get even smaller. I have heard of a GPS receiver system on a SIM card, so, I wonder if someone might just build one that would use the 8830's SIM slot as a power source, derive a data stream off the GSM SIM data bus, and transmit JSR-179 API data (or NMEA data) to the apps in active memory.

SIM Card GPS Receiver. Hmmmm. ;0)

Best regards,
Firefishe

[penguin3107]

Originally Posted by roverradio

$150 for anyone who creates a hack (via PayPal). PM me.

You must be new here.

[JRSCCivic98]

Originally Posted by Firefishe2

Hey Civic, I know this might be a stretch, but as long as we're brainstorming, here is a suggestion.

The form factor of GPS chipsets is already pretty tiny, but is going to get even smaller. I have heard of a GPS receiver system on a SIM card, so, I wonder if someone might just build one that would use the 8830's SIM slot as a power source, derive a data stream off the GSM SIM data bus, and transmit JSR-179 API data (or NMEA data) to the apps in active memory.

SIM Card GPS Receiver. Hmmmm. ;0)

Best regards,
Firefishe

That would require the BB OS to fully support the card interaction, which I will say, that it won't. Hell, a BB can't even interact with the new WiFi cards that are really SD or MicroSD cards. Why, because the OS doesn't support it. Yet, check this out.... all the MS OS based phones support this without any issues. Pretty lame, don't you think. Each day I get closer and closer to wanting to move from this BB BS to an MSMobile phone. All my email acxxxxs I use support ActiveSync so that won't be a problem at all. As a matter of fact, with ActiveSync I even get ALL of my Inbox contents (subfolders included) and have full realtime sync back and forth. The BB under BIS doesn't do this, so why should I pay RIM to have BES when even then the email coming in won't even support HTML or RTF like the MSMobile ones support?