poor i465 gps performance

[ketch]

I want to give my teenager a trackable cell phone. I bought a Boost Motorola i465 "Clutch" at Target to try out Accutracking. The sales person in target told me I can return it within 30 days if I'm not satisfied. So far I'm very impressed with Accutracking, after my previous bad experience which Verizon Family Locator. But the main problem seems to be with the i465 phone itself. It seems like GPS reception is very weak. I installed the Accutracking app and set it to run in the background.

I can't get a satellite fix with this phone in the big brick building where I work, which I suppose is not surprising. I drove home with it turned on in my pocket. When I got home, I checked my Accutracking history and it showed only one single fix on my entire 15 mile trip home. However, once at home, it was logging regularly every 5 minutes. So it seems to work in my house, but not in my car. I did notice, that the satellite signal strength, as shown on the Accutracking history, was consistently weak, only one or two bars, but never more than two bars, even when in my house.

I use a Garmin GPS frequently while in my car, and it doesn't have any problem, so why can't I get a satellite fix in my car with the i465? Does this model have inferior GPS reception compared to other cell phones, or is it just my particular phone that is defective? I bought this model because i was looking for something sufficiently "cool" for a teenager. Among the iDEN phones, there aren't a lot of choices. I see a lot of talk on the forum about i415 and i425 models. Wow, those are ugly phones. They'd never fly with my teenager. And I can't afford an Android phone. So I really hope I can get this to work with the Motorola "Clutch". I would return it to Target and get another one, if I thought it would work any better. I'd like to hear other peoples experiences with Accutracking with the i465. Otherwise, are there any capable phones that are both affordable and cool enough for a teenager to be seen with it?

[klk]

Just to follow up on my own post, after a month of "field testing", I have found that the i465 gets a good satellite signal when my teenager is outside, a fair signal when in a (wooden) house, and only intermittently fixes when in a car. So this is consistent with what I know about GPS's need to have a line of sight view to the satellites. I suppose that automobiles, being metal, are less transparent than a wooden house.

I was wondering if this is typical for all cell phones, since I don't have any basis for comparison. I observe that my Garmin windshield mounted GPS seems to work very well in my car, even when it's laying on the seat and not on the windshield, so I don't understand why a cell phone shouldn't be able to do the same.

Also, my teenager is not happy with the i465 phone, because of short battery life (a known problem with accutracking method which I understand), but also he complains that sometimes text messages cannot be sent or received. I have seen this complaint about Boost SMS services and delayed SMS message delivery on various forums, so I wonder if this is just a Nextel network problem, or if it is related to the accutracking software. My teenager reports that when the phone stops working, he has discovered that he can fix it by removing and reinserting the battery (effectively forcing a power cycle hard reset I suppose)

[ATSupport]

Other phones have similar GPS reception as the GPS antenna share the same design without extension.

The text messaging problem is likely related to AccuTracking: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1631

[No Name]

I have a I465 and I had issues with it at first. I found that while holding it in my hand, the GPS signal is very low, and accutracking only sees 2 - 4 sattelites. Oddly enough, if you set it down on your desk, it will get more sat signals. I also had it in the center glove box of my truck for an entire day, and as well as a blackberry storm running the app, with 10 second updates.

Blackberry was in the house, I465 was in the center consol. The I465 had quite a bit of GPS drift, about 125 feet. Many little dots all over the place on the tracking page. The Black berry had like 3 dots ( Most were reported to be in the same spot, with very little deviation, about 5 points that were more then 30 feet away from the rest.

I placed the I 465 on top of the center consol of the truck ( not enclosed, as I seen before when I opened up the center cosol that it had 4 sattelites locked on) When it was on TOP of the center consol, there was 7 or 8 satellite fix. Looking at the history, there is far less drifiting, on average about 30 feet. So I guess the reciever on the I465 is not as sensitive as on a black berry storm.

I can live with that, I'm not going to invest that kind of money for anotehr Blackberry to stick in an enclosure, and never see it again. ( Asset Tracking )