How the Russians make the Samsung Galaxy S 3 even better

Having integrated GPS on the mobile is so useful -- my first experience with it was on the Motorola A925 back in 2003 - it suddenly became possible to know where on the planet you were with a device you always had with you. Just brilliant. Sure GPS was available before then, but now it no longer needed a seperate device

The global GPS, or Global Positioning Satellite network wasn't the first network to provide accurate location based information to a system on the ground -- in fact in the US who gave birth to GPS, the early work dates back as far as 1960 with a whole series of projects culminating with the first launches of GPS satellites in 1989 to the point where there was a solid network in 1994.

In the early days the US military didn't want civilians to have accuracy better than 100m, reserving the most accurate data for themselves, but by 2000 this was stopped making GPS ever more accessible and accurate

Over the last 9 years location based services have become increasingly popular, and all modern smartphone handsets now carry GPS receiver. For me despite all the location specific apps like foursquare it has to be google maps that is the one I use the most. Lost? Need directions? Easy - just bring up google maps. Job done. Forget the paper (as long as you have a spare battery with you....) Just brilliant

Of course for those in cities, out in the woods, indoors sometimes the fix isn't that accurate (in fact often the identity of the nearby wifi access point, or cell transmitter data may be used instead) -- the more satellites your handset can "see" the better

And guess what? Now there's more. Not wanting to rely on the Americans, in similar timescales the Russians were working on Glonass - offering similar function to GPS, but of course under Russian Control. Initially this was the preserve of the military, and in fact although becoming fully operational and accurate around 1994 the network suffered with the economic challenges of post war russia, but by the new millenium renewed efforts were made by Russia to revive the program and by 2011 a full network was up and running,  with global coverage open to anyone with a suitable receiver.

Many manufacturers have started adding support for Glonass -- my first experience of it is with the Samsung Galaxy S 3. So this device can now use both networks together to provide an even more accurate than for example it's predecessor the S2. In day to day use it definately seems quicker and more accurate. No doubt this isn't just glonass, but other improvements in the receiver, but remember that when you click on "GPS" that's not really the whole story, and we can at least thank the Russians for making our modern smartphones such as the S3 just a little better :-)

This is a screenshot from the GPS Test application in Google Play -- note the additional Glonass satellites on the right hand side (white background)

Glonass satellites shown with Triangles - GPS satellites are circles