vB Easy Archive - S730 in-hand

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S730 in-hand
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Posted by: scottyscotty

Happen to be in Amsterdam for a week right now. Called a Netherlands HTC dealer - pdashop - and asked about S730 availability. "We have it in our store in Rotterdam right now, do you want me to put one on reserve for you?"

So a few hours later I trained right over and picked it up. Have been playing with it for 2 days now - still exploring & installing apps but so far so good!

scotty

Posted by: Hmoll

Does the productions unit have a usable GPS?

Posted by: scottyscotty

Re usable GPS: Yes, and no.

GPSTest finds the GPS on COM4 right away. When I let it run for a while, at various baud rates, sometimes it finds & shows 1 or 2 satellites. But all at low power, and it never gets a fix, and the satellites pop on & off without any consistency. Tried all baud rates, and tried all other COM ports. Everything points back to COM4, and 4800-19200 seems to get the same/best - but inconclusive - results.

Now... It's completely possible GPSTest is finding some other info on that COM port and it's getting garbage data from a non-GPS stream - so for now I have to say NO, not usable. Will keep playing with that tho. If anyone has any other ideas/tricks to try to get the GPS functionality to respond, or turn on, lemme know and I'll give it a shot.

Other than GPS...

Battery life is - I suppose expectedly - terrible when using leaving WiFi turned on for even short durations. Using it only to retrieve email should be ok since there's a good power saver mode for that. But I'm sure glad I bought a 2nd/spare battery at the same time that I bought the phone.

WiFi is zippy and the phone can keep up nicely as far as screen updates, etc. Was a bit worried about that based on past experiences with phones with slower processors, etc - but no problems there.

Better stop now before I end up writing a huge review. Just wanted to drop a few key notes for now, especially re GPS - which I really really want to be able to use like the rest of you do.

scotty

Posted by: superiorgadgets

Quote:

Originally Posted by scottyscotty

Re usable GPS: Yes, and no.

GPSTest finds the GPS on COM4 right away. When I let it run for a while, at various baud rates, sometimes it finds & shows 1 or 2 satellites. But all at low power, and it never gets a fix, and the satellites pop on & off without any consistency. Tried all baud rates, and tried all other COM ports. Everything points back to COM4, and 4800-19200 seems to get the same/best - but inconclusive - results.

Now... It's completely possible GPSTest is finding some other info on that COM port and it's getting garbage data from a non-GPS stream - so for now I have to say NO, not usable. Will keep playing with that tho. If anyone has any other ideas/tricks to try to get the GPS functionality to respond, or turn on, lemme know and I'll give it a shot.

....

scotty

try to set GPSTEST on COM 9 and Baud 57600 and try again>
Also, try to install Google Maps and fire them up with settings above.

We used sample unit with this setup and worked flawlessly.

Also, can you please let me know if you have tried to use and GPS software, like TomTom or Route66, which has automatic detection?

We are getting our shipment only on Monday

, so as much info as possible before would be very beneficial

..

Also, would you please check for me the bands for 3G on your unit?

Thanking you in advance.

Regards,
Paul

Posted by: scottyscotty

Sorry for the long delay - was completely off the grid for a while.

You probably already know this, but COM9@57600 is not working. If you figured out the right settings, please post. Google Maps installed and it's not having any better luck than GPSTest on any COM at any rate.

scottyscotty

Posted by: big_redfox

I heard 3G is not compatible for US frequency. Is that still the case?

thanks,

Posted by: cbreze

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hmoll

Does the productions unit have a usable GPS?

I'm in the U.S. and my S730 was shipped here from the U.K. It did not come with GPS installed. Still playing with it and haven't tried google maps yet. I like the device alot except for the default to xt9 bug. I have to keep resetting it to abc mode as it defaults back to it everytime and right in the middle of typing something. It's a slick device imho and this bug will probably be fixed with a future update. My dash was the same way.