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Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

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Re: Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

#41

Post by jordanthoms »

forapurpose wrote: post #35
colinwilson wrote: post #5

As an avid hiker and runner I'm more excited to see what this will do for things like Garmin smart watches. I run through downtown Boston a few times a week and the accuracy is very bad at times making you look like you run much farther than you do.

> accuracy is very bad at times What makes anyone confident in the accuracy of wearable tracking devices? I haven't seen it verified and I wouldn't assume it: Accuracy is expensive, generally speaking, and few consumers will pay for it or even question it - how often have you heard someone mention it? Or, for example, have you wondered how accurate your simple bathroom scale is? I looked into it a little, wanting to…

I'm not sure what the value of a more accurate scale would be for a bathroom scale - your weight varies by far more than 100g just based on what you've eaten and how much water you've retained.

Re: Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

#42

Post by mikeyouse »

tomlock wrote: post #36
mikeyouse wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change your advertising ID any time you want -- and almost none of their revenue comes from ad sales. In 2016, $190B of their $215B in sales was definitively not from ad sales, and the $25B services category that would include ad sales also includes the percentage of sales from the App Store, Apple Pay, Apple Care, iCloud.. etc. Ad sales are immaterial to their business model.

Apple makes revenue from ad sales - Apple is therefore also an advertising company. They're the lesser of two evils. Still an evil, though.

> Apple makes revenue from ad sales

Is that even true? They pulled the plug on mobile ad sales a year or two ago (http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/18/after-abandoning-i...), where else would they make advertising revenue?

And in any case, a company who makes 99.9% of their revenue off of non-ad sales is definitely would never be categorized as an advertising company. My grocery store is paid to put crest at eye-level, that doesn't make them an advertising company...

Re: Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

#43

Post by gnicholas »

tomlock wrote: post #14

I may just be a super-cynical ad-tech exile, but I see this as a path to getting shown more ridiculously well-targeted ads based on the places and stores I've been in. Beacons haven't taken off and I'm glad they haven't. I'd really prefer a GPS in my phone with a similar granularity to the one I have now. Google's notifications that I should review places I've been are creepy enough.

There's already much finer granularity in stores, thanks to wifi-based tracking (even if you don't join the network [1]), so this ship has sailed.

Refining GPS accuracy only modestly improves the ability to track what stores you are near. Wifi-assisted GPS tracking that exists today probably tells advertisers everything they need to know already.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper...

Re: Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

#44

Post by Animats »

15cm GPS accuracy has been available commercially since about 2002. Trimble and Novatel both sold units. But you had to get a subscription to a service which had a network of ground stations measuring propagation errors through the atmosphere. The correction signals came in from a geosync satellite. You also had to be able to see about five satellites.

Re: Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

#45

Post by MertsA »

deckar01 wrote: post #10
gruez wrote: post #4

>will give the next generation of smartphones 30-centimeter accuracy instead of today’s 5-meters Didn't the US scramble the civilian signals specifically so it wouldn't be too accurate? And they're just okay with civilians having access to ultra accurate GPS receivers?

Things have changed since the 90s. > In May 2000, at the direction of President Bill Clinton, the U.S. government ended its use of Selective Availability in order to make GPS more responsive to civil and commercial users worldwide. > The United States has no intent to ever use Selective Availability again. The military has better precision, only because they buy better hardware. Similar hardware is used in commercial…

>The military has better precision, only because they buy better hardware.

That's not true. Military receivers can use the Y Code which is encrypted for military use only. There are some really fancy civilian receivers out there that can leverage Y code to a limited extent without knowing the encryption key but full accuracy is only possible on a military receiver that can decrypt and use the Y code.

Re: Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

#46

Post by MertsA »

gruez wrote: post #11
sgk284 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's usually restrictions that kick in at certain altitudes and/or hardware restrictions if you're going over a certain speed. Depending on the source of signals used, the military can also just change the precision for civilian bands. But in times of peace / low threat levels, there's not a particular need to do so.

But that's client side right? What's preventing someone from implementing a GPS receiver using a SDR that doesn't have those restrictions?

Good luck. You're right but implementing a GPS receiver using a SDR is quite a feat. It's sort of been done but not in a way that would make it practical to use for e.g. a hypothetical terrorist cruise missile.

Re: Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

#48

Post by tomlock »

mikeyouse wrote: post #42
tomlock wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes revenue from ad sales - Apple is therefore also an advertising company. They're the lesser of two evils. Still an evil, though.

> Apple makes revenue from ad sales Is that even true? They pulled the plug on mobile ad sales a year or two ago ( http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/18/after-abandoning-i... ), where else would they make advertising revenue? And in any case, a company who makes 99.9% of their revenue off of non-ad sales is definitely would never be categorized as an advertising company. My grocery store is paid to put crest at e…

You're right, I wouldn't say your grocery store is an advertising company because they put Crest at eye level - I'd say they're an advertising company because they likely sell your loyalty card data to 3rd parties for $$$. Adtech is eating everyone's data.

IDFA is still going strong on Apple phones and is likely to continue into iOS 11.

Re: Super-Accurate GPS Chips Coming to Smartphones in 2018

#50

Post by MertsA »

Animats wrote: post #44

15cm GPS accuracy has been available commercially since about 2002. Trimble and Novatel both sold units. But you had to get a subscription to a service which had a network of ground stations measuring propagation errors through the atmosphere. The correction signals came in from a geosync satellite. You also had to be able to see about five satellites.

More specifically you can use differential GPS for stuff like surveying with a reference receiver at a known location. Depending on how far away you are from the reference station you can get even better than 15 cm accuracy and just have a few inches of error.
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