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I bought my current smartphone half a year before Galileo services was officially released to public use (and it was probably manufactured half a year before that). It has GPS support only, and not even a very precise one (accuracy typical 8-12 m). The raw phone doesn't have anything but an on-off switch for GPS, no other status info.
I am not familiar with newer models, so I can't tell how you check yours.
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Edit - I misread your post and thought the question is about GPS receivers in general instead of smartphones specifically.
Not sure what is the source of your info, but considering that all professional grade GPS receivers (Trimble, Leica, Hemisphere, etc.) can receive all the navigation satellites out there, I very much doubt that there is such regulation or that it is enforced.
Mircea
modified 24-Jun-23 8:09am.
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My quote was from TechCrunch[^], reference [187] in English Wikipedia: Galileo (satellite navigation)[^]. The Wikipedia article discusses the issue to some extent.
Apparently, there was such a regulation until November 2018. As the TechCrunch article discusses, enforcement was almost impossible. E.g. although most smartphone manufacturers for the US of A market disabled software support in phones that had hardware support, an app might unlock it. I have seen no indication of any such regulation being in effect as of today.
There are numerous examples of hardware support for some technology, not made available to the user. This may be due to national regulations (such as for Galileo pre 2018), or pure marketing: The manufacturer wants to reserve some functions for premium products, or to force the customer to buy a new product at a later time.
One example: When DAB digital radio was introduced in Europe, there were only a small handful of DAB chip makers. All of them made chips supporting DRM, the digital radio standard for "the AM bands", now a major broadcasting technology in India. Lots of DAB radios used those DRM capable chips - but provided no button or menu option to select this band! If all (/most) DAB receivers had given access to DRM, DRM might have been a reality in Europe as well, after a series of successful trial transmissions. Radio manufacturers hoped for a DRM success, so that they a few years later could sell new receivers to the the market (maybe they would use the same chips, but omit a selector for DAB!). With no consumer receivers on the market, no broadcaster went for DRM.
I wouldn't at all be surprised if Galileo was used for market manipulation in a similar way, in principle being available, but only to a selected group willing to pay a premium price for it.
What I really is concerned about is not smartphones in particular, but how vulnerable the US society is to a hypothetical complete GPS failure, e.g. as a result of a sabotage/terror action. One part is the civil society. Another question: Has USAF fallen down to the level of including a foreign GNSS system as a backup, in case their own GPS becomes unusable? This is all speculation, so to try to find some more tangible information, I asked about smartphones.
Here Norway/Europe, we are close to a state where we would hardly notice if every single GPS satellite was shot down tonight. (My late winter/spring 2016 smartphone is like a museum artifact that doesn't count for this purpose.) I sort of suspect that the US of A society might be harder hit. I ask because I am not sure about that.
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trønderen wrote: Another question: Has USAF fallen down to the level of including a foreign GNSS system as a backup, in case their own GPS becomes unusable? This is all speculation, so to try to find some more tangible information, I asked about smartphones. Let me tell you a story from the early '90es, also the early GPS years:
The initial GPS system was designed with a feature called "selective availability" (SA) that could degrade the civilian signal to about 100m, if I recall correctly. When the first Gulf War started in '91 we were all expecting the SA to be turned on and wondering how we will cope with the reduced accuracy. It turned out that not only Air Force didn't turn SA on, they even did the utmost to have the ephemerides as accurate as possible. It turned out the US forces didn't have enough military grade GPS receivers that could be used to decode the military P-code and had to use commercial grade GPS receivers. It took however another 10 years or so until Clinton administration finally finally killed the SA "feature".
Obviously I don't know anything about the plans and the readiness state of US military, but past examples don't show them as being infallible planners.
What I can tell you that the vast majority of professional GPS units used in Canada for land and marine surveying are 2 (GPS and GLONASS) or more systems. Newer receivers that I've seen are 4-system units (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Baidu) with 30 or more channels. Some units go up to hundreds of receiver channels. Here, in Canada, having GLONASS is seen as a desirable feature as it operates better in high latitudes.
Given that no one makes products specifically for Canadian market, the same applies for US market.
Mircea
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Mircea Neacsu wrote: It took however another 10 years or so until Clinton administration finally finally killed the SA "feature". With the feature dead, does that mean that the civilian signal is as accurate as the military one? Not sure I understand what you said.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Yes, exactly. Probably someone figured out that if a missile goes boom 10 meters or 100 meters away, doesn’t make much of a difference. 😀
One added irony: Coast Guard, which is another branch of the military, placed beacons for something called “differential GPS” (DGPS) all along the US coast. That brings the accuracy down to sub-meter. Go figure!
Mircea
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No, there's still a difference in accuracy.
Civilian equipment can not access all frequencies transmitted by the satellites, the other frequencies are encrypted. and therefore does not have full compensation for ionospheric disturbances.
Quote: Since Selective Availability was turned off, the main operational difference between the civilian and military systems (SPS vs PPS) is the availability of a L2 for real time removal of the ionosphere.
The resulting difference is the the ability of your car GPS keeping you on the right street or a missile being sent through the correct window
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The only thing the FCC is good at is overstepping it's bounds.
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The only thing any FCC government is good at is overstepping it's bounds.
FTFY
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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The real reason behind this restriction was exactly GLONASS. A few years ago, russinas wanted to install their ground stations in the US. That's why these regulations have been created.
Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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I do not immediately see the link from premise to conclusion. (Yet you may be right.)
Also, if GLONASS ground stations were located in the US of A, wouldn't that, in a conflict situation, give the US of A quite an advantage, being able to prevent the personnel from doing necessary maintenance?
(I have tried to find more info about the Russians wanting Glonass ground stations in the US. The search is still unsuccessful. I am curious, so if you have a link or two, please present them!)
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The ground stations are the once that are giving pinpoint precision of the geo navigation. This will allow russians to precisely map the entire US. Which is not kosher given that the GPS is purposely distorting some coordinates to prevent this.
Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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It still doesn't make sense to me. Long before GPS, in this country (Norway) you could buy ordinary orienteering maps where every stone could be located with centimeter precision. 1:5000 orienteering maps were generally available "everywhere" even in the 1970s, and if you go to the city administration to get a map the lot of your house, you'll get a 1:1000 scale map. You don't need to build a Glonass ground station for that.
Also: GPS is not giving coordinates as such; it is providing (very!) precisely timed signal. The receiver determines its position by comparing the timing of at least three different signals. A satellite could distort the coordinates by fouling up the timing of its signals, but then every receiver would read a distorted position, regardless of his coordinates. You cannot foul up the timing for only a few selected coordinates.
I very much doubt that the Russians did not have a quite precise map of the entire US long before Glonass was put into operation. They've had a space program since Sputnik 1, and properly placing Glonass satellites in space is not a task done with steel wire and duct tape. They do have quite sophisticated technology, whether we like it or not. There is no reason to believe that they need a handful of ground stations in the US of A to learn where it it is located . Not today, and not when GLONASS was established.
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To the best of my knowledge maps are intentionally not precise when it comes to strategic locations (including Cities). And few meters off is quite enough to throw off targeting systems based on coordinates (or your car GPS locator). This could be corrected using satellites, but the russian qeo-imaging/Synthetic-aperture satellites are garbage - IIRC with resolution as low as 400 meters. So, they need those stations to pinpoint certain buildings\objects and for dynamic targeting.
Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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Not 100% about Beidu, but Glonass wouldn't even remotely work in the USA to begin with. They have problems even covering the whole of the former USSR or any significant part of Western Europe.
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at first using some top GPS status app, only saw the China one?
then tried GPSTest gave me US of A one.
then 5 minutes later, showed China
and 5 minutes more, as about to write up that on google phone 6, only USA and China, and then European one started
relieved, thought was in some dabger bubble
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With the satellites moving at quite high speed across the sky, them coming and going is expected. Signal strength varies from second to second with varying conditions in the upper atmosphere (ionosphere). If you are indoors, signals are usually significantly weaker, and may change e.g. when a person walks across the floor above you.
Picking up BeiDou only (for a short period of time) may be somewhat surprising, but may be a combination of random events and e.g. that the GNSS tuner in your smartphone may be slightly more sensitive to the BeiDou frequencies than the GPS ones, or that the ionosphere affected the frequencies differently. Or that your phone, when you turn the GNSS logic on, looks for satellites in a given order, BeiDou before GPS before Galileo.
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Well, my new PC sure looks pretty, but it doesn't do anything. I've tried about 67 times to install Windows 11 and nothing works. It took a while to work out the compatibility issues, but the BIOS configuration was right a few days ago. Now it will boot into the Win11 Setup program, but it won't get past the point where it's at the 4 - 5% spot of "Preparing files for installation." It crashes with the error: "0x80070570" which happens to mean anything Microsoft wants it to mean. I thought it might be a defective DVD media, but after more than 20 attempts to get that to work, I tried the download approach to make a bootable USB Drive. That causes the same error, at the same point in the setup process. I'm at wit's end with this POS.
I've assembled a lot of PC's in the past 30 years, for myself and for others. I've never experienced a single glitch, as everything has always gone perfectly smoothly. But I've never used an ASUS motherboard. I will never do so again.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Have you tried this?
SetupDiag - Windows Deployment | Microsoft Learn[^]
I haven't, but it might help diagnose. After that, you are down to MS Tech Support I guess.
They were pretty good last time I needed them.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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The last time I was able to get through to Microsoft Support, it was because I couldn't get disk 13 of 13 for Windows 95 to finish loading. Three hours later the tech agreed to send me a replacement. Last night I managed to get through to them, but their server failure routed me to the Office support desk. He was very kind and helpful, but out of his depth, so he sent me instructions on how to initiate a chat next week. I had to laugh; if it ain't broke, it ain't Microsoft. Even their internal systems don't work.
Will Rogers never met me.
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I feel for you I really do. It's the old thing "I have done this a thousand times, what am I getting wrong, its the industry satandard". This week I have been playing with a Servo motor trying to build it to a test platform for a subassembly. Monday to Wednesday nothing wouldn't start reliably and did a full 380 turn, Thursday and ultra sound machine failed all hand on deck to fix it. Friday back to Servo check the data-sheet for thousand time, notice three gramatical errors and two spelling mistakes, think 'might as well' swap over the data out and data in lines dang thing starts working. Do the and .
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Dancing and drinking is definitely on my agenda - thanks for the tip. I'm walking away from this nightmare for the weekend and will deal with it another day.
Will Rogers never met me.
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I suggest booting a Linux live CD/USB stick and doing some analysis on the hardware.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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Not a bad idea! Coincidentally, I just downloaded an Ubuntu distro and have been toying with installing it on one or the other of my machines.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Might be able to mount the Windows drive (if it got that far) and access the installer logs.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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