Windows Phone Thoughts: SiRF's Up(dated their GPS firmware)

A few months ago, I wrote an article about geocaching. This is a fun sport that you can do with a GPS unit and Pocket PC. Until now, there were really two "flavors" of GPS - ST mode, which was great for higher speeds (such as car travel), and XT mode, which was best suited for slower speeds and situations where GPS signals were few and far between. To be more effective with fewer signals, XT mode uses a kind of averaging to work out where the receiver was - a more robust triangulation if you will.

A few GPS hardware companies released units that could utilize both modes, but they required that a switch be flipped, which essentially restarted the GPS unit from a "cold start". A cold start can take a few minutes to get a satellite lock, so while it was handy, it wasn't necessarily ideal. It also couldn't handle very high speeds, making it essentially useless for car navigation.

GPSPassion reports that SiRF has now made an update to their firmware that essentially brings XT mode almost parallel to ST in terms of speed. SiRF calls the upgraded mode "XTrac V2", and "it has nearly all the dynamics of the ST mode with a minimal delay that will no longer confuse navigation software with a high level of sensitivity that will come in handy for use in poor conditions such as urban canyons, heavy foliage or simply if you wear your GPS receiver at your belt." The new mode is "much better [at] "sticking" to the road than Xtrac v1 and improved sensitivity of about 20% (Xtrac v1 was about 30%) over the ST mode."

This is exciting because it may negate the need to make that hardware switch from ST to XT mode - it seems that "XTrac2" mode may be sufficient for all conditions. Be sure to check out the article - gpspassion has posted screenshots showing the effectiveness of the new mode in comparison to the old. :cool: