Samsung Galaxy S and it's Incredible GPS (or lack thereof)

I've been a big fan of Runkeeper for a long time now, since I got hold of my Galaxy S, RK's become one of ways to keep myself motivated with running. Tired? Want to give up? Take a look at the RK activities I've been doing for the past year or so and immediately I tell myself "do so much already, why stop now?", same rationale I gave myself back when I almost stopped playing yo-yos completely a few years back. With RK I had a visual on my daily activities it kept me competing with myself to make sure that I maintain my routine regularly.

The thing with having RK on a phone that has terrible GPS though, is every time RK has an update that affects how the GPS functions, it takes a tolle on the app when running it off my phone. Since it's update in late July (RK Comment) I've had nothing but a string of complications with the app. Once the screen auto locks after 30 seconds, my GPS decides to go to sleep. Only way to keep it on was to change my power settings to turn off the screen every 10 minutes, which still meant that I had to touch the screen every 8-9 minutes to prevent it from turning off. Not good cause then it meant having to carry my phone and not slip it in my pocket.

Then came the latest update on 11th Sep, which fixed the gps shutdown problem. Thing now is it crashes midway through the run some times, or lags so bad that by the time you're done with your run it's still trying to calibrate the last 2km where it froze.

Today was no different when I found myself having to remap my run again cause it decided to bail at the last 1km.

My initial thoughts were to get a gps HRM like the one Al got but after some thought I decided if my concern was GPS with HRM being a second priority, it was not something worth investing into, especially when my GPS issues also cover other aspects such as my Satnav when I drive, and my location when I blog or post my whereabouts on whatsapp.

Been eyeing the SGS II for some time now but according to my finance sheet I made earlier this year, it seems like at the moment I'm almost spending out of my budget and almost eating into my savings plan. Not good, gotta hold it off. Plus with the iPhone 5 along the way, it might be good to wait and see what Apple has to offer that will have other manufacturers scampering back to their drawing table to try and fix in order to stay competitive to the "i" society.

The SGS's GPS issue has been rather annoying, not to the point where I want to condemn the phone, but there have been "I wished it's work properly" moments for me so I guess this blog entry's like a way of ranting it out.

To keep it on a positive note though, you know that scare regarding stalkers being able to grab GPS data off your photo and find your location, which is a huge concern especially in the States where pedophilia is a serious threat? No need to worry with you Galaxy S! You can comfortably take photos of your children in your own home without having to worry about having anyone really know where you are. =P