Bluetooth GPS Warning - We want your comments!
Date: Saturday, October 04 @ 05:52:11 UTC
Topic:


As most are aware, Bluetooth GPS has been around for approaching a year now, the first to hit the market was the Emtac BT GPS, and a flurry of other GPS manufacutrers brought out Bluetooth editions. One thing that is increasingly concerning me is the lifespan of these devices. We know the lifespan of the batteries are around 400 charges. However, the TomTom Bluetooth GPS we had been using under review for 4 weeks died (no signal or BT light flashing), last week our original Emtac BT GPS died (no signal), and yesterday another Bluetooth GPS receiver we have had in review for around 3 weeks has also died.

This greatly concerns me! Although interestingly enough, the latest BT GPS we have had die, it appears it's only the internal patch antenna, plugging in an external patch antenna works. All of these are under a year old, all seem to be exhibiting similar problems, so why is this happening ? To tell you the truth, we don't know, but to me it would suggest that similar parts are being used in multiple GPS Receivers. I really don't want to scare anyone off purchasing Bluetooth GPS because they are still superb little devices and work extremely well, but if you plan on buying one and plan on using it for 2 years, you have got to seriously ask yourself, do you mind if it only lasts for no longer than 6-12 months ?

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Cont...

I know a lot of you who follow Pocket GPS World avidly have had problems with Bluetooth GPS, what I want to do is create a running forum thread that logs these problems. Strangely enough the last two BT GPS's that have died on us were all after a single charge. This makes you wonder whether the charging circuits are up to scratch on some of these BT GPS's. I don't want to paint all GPS manufacturers with the same brush, as I'm sure this is only a selection of manufacturers that will experience these problems, but lets face it, if we alone have had 3 different Bluetooth GPS Receivers fail on us, then that's quite a high failure rate!

If you have experienced problems with Bluetooth GPS Receivers failing can you please post the following in this thread:-

Manufacturer:
Length of Time used before faulty:
Fault: (eg blue light not working, amber light not working)
Occurrence: (did it happen after a charge, just when powered on or did it die in use ?)

Hopefully the more information we can collate on this, the closer we will get to the bottom of this problem.

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This article comes from Pocket GPS World - SatNavs | GPS | Speed Cameras
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