How does gps work? requirements?

[sleeplessfreek]

I am planning to use my galaxy S instead my standalone GPS. However, i do not have a data plan. How do the GPS apps on the galaxy work? Will it be possible without the transfer of data?

[pjoseph]

You will need a data plan to download the map data. You can try and find offline maps and load them up before your trip but I have not found any decent free ones that can be used with the GPS.

[zxcvmbone]

It may be possible to use a GPS phone as you would use a USB GPS dongle, in NMEA mode. *All* GPS chipsets support NMEA, its the least common denominator on GPS.

Typically the port speed with an NMEA GPS dongle defaults to 4800 baud:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NMEA_0183


To use any GPS PND as a sorce of NMEA data, you'll need an app that can connect the GPS to a serial port, either over the cable or via Bluetooth. It's probably possible to turn this capability on as I'd expect it would be necessary to do so to service the units.

Here's a tutorial on how to use NMEA dongle or similar on Linux to allow Google Earth to show your current location on a map. Note, this is using a separate computer. Google Earth on a phone should be able to do something similar with maps its cached, say, when you are using Bluetooth or wifi at home for your network connectivity. (assuming thats possible)

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/inde...t-1083710.html