The GPS on your device just receive signal. It does not transmit the signal back to the satellite. Both google map & garmin/mapking will require pickup signal from Satellite to know where you are on the surface of earth. & these satellite orbit around the globe transmitting their position grid (we're just exploiting it). Thus the more sats you pick up, the more accurate it will be. It's just like your radio. You receive signal from tower station. The more tower signal transmitting, the more coverage you get. A-GPS is another great innovation, where by it can communicate with radio towers to pin point location faster than GPS. Yes GPS from Sat will take some time to lock on. Hope that helps.

p.s you need a map. As signal position only indicates in numerical form. you need to turn the position into the map thus, maps will require to reference to the coordinate from gps.

This post has been edited by Vervain: Sep 29 2009, 11:45 PM

did anyone tried swype? looks fast on typing