Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver review
The Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver is very small, almost the size of a matchbox, with a rechargeable lithium ion battery. A full battery charge lasts approximately 6 hours.
When you open the box you’ll find a leather pouch for your receiver and a car charger, with a bonus: a Y (splitter) cable that recharges the GPS receiver and an adapter to charge your iPAQ!
The accuracy according to the specs is 10m, RMS, 25m CEP without SA. Velocity: 0.1 m/sec without SA and time 1 microsecond synchronized to GPS time. The antenna is built in but there’s a plug for an external antenna. The unit has 12 Channels all-in-view tracking, and the maximum dynamic conditions are altitude < 18,000 m, velocity < 515 m/sec and acceleration < 4 g.
The unit has three LEDs: a yellow one to indicate low battery, a green one to indicate fix (blinking) and a blue one to indicate Bluetooth activity.
I was surprised with the time to get a fix. The Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver got its first fix in less than two minutes! After this, I could turn it off and on again and a fix in around 30 seconds. I’m not very technical on GPS things, but I like these times!
The Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver comes in two flavours: the Receiver only package (product code GP0804-405) and the Nav Kit (product code GP0805-406). The difference is that MyNavigator CD Rom comes with the Nav Kit. The MyNavigator software for Pocket PC is available in American and British versions. It includes things like destinations, points of interest, speed alert, recording and GPS Info.
According to Socket website, this is a standard NMEA GPS unit, so it should work fine with softwares like Destinator, Mapopolis and Pharos.
First surprise: no need to pair the Bluetooth devices. I just had to change my TDK Bluetooth configuration to allow any device to connect, and after my first serial connection I was up and running. That was very promissing. But, still, not very mobile. I’m not carrying my desktop computer around.
First I had to add the Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver to the iPAQ H3970 Bluetooth Manager list. That was easy in took me less than 20 seconds, just the time to search for new devices. Then, armed with my Pocket PC and with the Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver I was ready to go out and explore.
In summary I am very impressed with the Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver. It’s a small product, you can easily attach to the dashboard, or have it on a bike trip. The leather pouch is great for tramping. And being a Bluetooth device you can leave the cables behind.