Almost every new Android phone (from 2016 or later), whether it has a processor from Qualcomm, Mediatek, Samsung or Kirin, can find satellite signals from BOTH GPS and Beidou.
Do a survey. What was the first navigation device that kids used? Believe the vast majority of childrens shoes answer is car navigation, right? 10 years ago, there was no such thing on the car, and no one dared to travel across the province.
So, whats next? Thats right, mobile phones are next. Xiaobian first contact navigation mobile phone or WindowsMobile system dopoda, and then changed to symbian system N78, although the star search signal is not as stable as the car navigation, but also finally can be used.
Since the iPhone and Android phones became ubiquitous, smartphones have pushed in-car navigation back to grandmas house. The reason is simple: mobile navigation shows real-time traffic, avoids traffic jams, and makes it easy to type in/find destinations. However, while we enjoy the convenience of mobile navigation, have you ever thought about a question: navigation is GPS?
Lets start with the navigation family
The full name of GPS is "GlobalPositioningSystem", which is a set of positioning system made by the americans. The 28 GPS satellites (four spare ones) are distributed on six orbital planes with 60 degrees of intersections, about 20,000 km above the ground, and the accuracy of which is open to civilian use is about 10 meters.
As GPS is the earliest and most popular positioning system, it is easy for people to think of GPS when it comes to positioning and navigation. In fact, there are other GPS systems around the world.
For example, Russias GLONASS, the European Unions Galileo and Chinas OWN BDS satellite navigation system.
Currently, GLONASS has 24 satellites in operation, 3 in maintenance, 3 in standby, and 1 in test. Galileo consists of 30 satellites, 27 working and 3 backup. BDS plans to build a global satellite navigation system by 2020, consisting of three geostationary and 27 non-geostationary satellites.
The principle of mobile navigation is to achieve the positioning and tracking function by receiving signals from at least four satellites, so as to realize coordinates X, Y, Z and clock difference Vto of the receiver. So, in theory, as long as the phone can receive four satellites, whether they are from GPS or Beidou, it can complete the navigation task.
Therefore, when we experience the convenience of navigation, it is not necessarily the credit of GPS.
Lets talk about Beidou
There are many questions on the Internet about whether mobile phones support beidou navigation, and various partners are also very fierce discussions. Here, xiaobian is simple for you to clarify it.
Whether a mobile phone can use Beidou navigation depends on both hardware and software.
The hardware level is whether the positioning chip supports the Beidou positioning system. The good news is that since Beidou has already covered China and the asia-pacific region, and the official promotion, manufacturers of positioning chips in recent years have all supported GPS and Beidou, as well as GLONASS and Galileo, achieving full hardware compatibility.
At the software level, baidu Map, Autonavi, wechat, Mobike, oFo and other apps in China also need to obtain location by mobile phone positioning chip when applying for location permission, and then realize a series of operations such as positioning, path planning and navigation through the algorithm of the APP. At least the apps launched by domestic companies are definitely supporting and optimizing Beidou. As for some foreign English apps, not necessarily.
At present, the iPhone should be one of the acknowledged smartphones that do not support Beidou.
And now many domestic mobile phones in the actual positioning or navigation are several large positioning systems at the same time, which is why the drift of navigation software is significantly reduced, one of the reasons for more accurate positioning.
You can go to the detailed parameter page of a mobile phone on the official website. Most of them have marked support for GPS, Beidou and other navigation systems in the positioning column.
However, when we open the navigation APP, we cannot intervene or operate as users, because we know which satellite data and algorithm are used to determine the location. The currently available satellite signals can only be detected by AndroiTSGPSTest and other software, among which the five-star red flag represents the Beidou satellite.
As far as I know, almost all new Android phones (from 2016 or later), whether the processor is From Qualcomm, Mediatek, Samsung or Kirin, can find satellite signals from GPS and Beidou simultaneously.
As ordinary users, in fact, mobile phone positioning navigation in the end using which satellite is not important, we should pay attention to the results, as long as fast positioning, signal stability, no drift on the OK.
Of course, we also hope that in the future, there will be navigation apps that can open the option of manual selection of navigation system. We can specify only GPS or only Beidou positioning for this navigation, so that we can test which navigation system is the most accurate and fast.
