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> As someone who's degree had a course in sattelite rangefinding So you are well versed in multipath reflection and why it makes unassisted GPS in urban environments with tall buildings close together almost completely unusable? > You don't need to get precision down to a lane on the road for purpose of navigation If you want to build an early 2000s Garmin competitor, sure. But people don't buy $1,500 pocket computer…
>So you are well versed in multipath reflection and why it makes unassisted GPS in urban environments with tall buildings close together almost completely unusable? Yes, a common problem even for static measurements. Yet it worked with 'dumb' gps navigations. Btw - it's not just a p roblem in urban evirorments, especially for phase measurements - you shouldn't do precise measurements near the trees. Just to illustrat…
Again, you don't know Maps product roadmap. Google is taking its "Next Billion Users" initiative very seriously internally. They might be looking at ways to offer navigation using only a Wifi/Bluetooth chip so they can make Android devices as cheaply as possible.
There is also the possibility that GPS may not be functional in areas Google wants to serve. The US Government blacked out GPS over multiple states during a test. China has satellites that can rip other countries satellites out of the sky. Russia intentionally crashed an old weather satellite into an Iridium satellite just as a weird flex.