I have had my N810 for a few days now. Initially, I was very disappointed about the GPS, very slow locating satellites and locking onto them. But I have changed my mind now.

The problem is the location of the antenna on our N810. It's on the top edge of the N810 next to min/max windows buttons. When I hold my N810 vertically, so the zoom buttons facing the sky, I can have my N810 lock-on to the satellites in less than 15 seconds (clear sky), that's about the same as my Garmin GPS. Once the GPS has located the satellites, you can then turn the display to face you, so you can read the screen. The N810 seems to be able to maintain the satellites fairly well after the initial lock-on, even indoor.

The worst position for the GPS antenna is to place the N810 on the table with the LCD facing the sky. This way, it will take forever to locate the satellites.

The difference between the N810 and my Gamin Nuvi is that the Nuvi has a built-in swivelable antenna which help to locate the satellite in any position/angle.

hmm, so maybe my issue with the lockon time with my bluetooth gps and N800 was related to bad placement of the gps (front window of a car)...

Are you sure about this ?

Not so much the location of the antenna, as the reliable 15 seconds lock time.

Sure you simply did not get a hot fix after having just recennly disconnected ?

I have it mounted vertical in the car and it can still sometimes take several minutes to get a lock. Though excellent at keeping the lock once it has it. It is 15 seconds sometimes.

One concern I have is how it will behave on a hiking trip I'm planning. Don't want to keep the thing on all the time, since battery life is an issue. But I also don't want to wait around for several minutes to figure out which way to go each time I start the app.

Zuber

Wish this was the magic answer to our GPS problems, but in the case of my N810, rearranging how it's positioned didn't change my lock on time at all. Even if the Nokia doubled the time it took to aquire Sats compared to my Nuvi, I'd consider the wayfinder software because of the all in one functionality, but for me the GPS lock on has been a hit and a miss, so if Nokia would have actually spent some quality time in checking that they have a viable GPS product and not a gimmick on the side GPS selling tactic, more people would consider buying the wayfinder software. I got to use it on the 7 day trial and found it functional, which is sometimes all I need in a GPS receiver without needing all the bells and whistles. Unfortunately, the lock on time which sometimes never happens is a deal breaker for me and if there was a way to pressure wayfinder to tell Nokia to get its act together, they'd benefit from receiving more N810 sales from owners.

Wish your suggestion would have worked, unfortunately it didn't for me!!

Not sure if this is helpful to you, I have found that I can get a lock relatively quickly if the vehicle is facing south when I initialize the Map program, or if I am standing outside facing south. I do get lock times in about 15-30 seconds. It can take minutes if the car does not have a good view of the southern sky. Not sure why it works, just an observation I made while playing around. Once it is locked, I have had no problems losing lock, even driving thru town with all building or in forested areas.

The position of the GPS antenna is absolutely critical to the speed of acquiring the very weak satellite signals. This is why all the in-car GPS's have their antenna positioned on the roof of the car where you have a clear view of the sky. When you have a dashboard mounting GPS, the antenna can only see half of the sky (with weakened signal by the windshield) the other half blocked by the steel roof.

Clearly, by moving the antenna as far forward under the windshield as possible will have a better coverage of the sky. But the antenna is integrated into the N810, mounting it too far away from the driver will make the N810 less accessible. With no external antenna connector to allow the placement of the antenna away from the main unit, there isn't much can be done.

Nokia has included a dashboard mounting kit with the N810, and yet, not allowing external GPS antenna to be connected to it is an oversight. Similar parallelism can be drawn with the integrated web cam that has no application to use it. A communication break down between the marketing and technical guys.

This makes sense, and points out another advantage of the N800. If you buy a separate GPS unit, you put it where reception looks best, and keep the N800 where it's most convenient for you. When I was on a cruise ship off Mexico, I put my GPS unit right up against the window glass, and I could check the position (and speed) of the ship from my bed. Try that with an N810.

Btw, my GPS add-on cost about $60.

I use a BT GPS receiver that came with TomTom for the Palm TX. It uses the Sirf 3 chip which has a quick lock-on time.
My car has an athermic glass windscreen which blocks the GPS signals quite badly so I put the BT unit on the rear shelf of the car. When I'm walking in a city, I put the BT unit in a pocket on my back pack. This solves the lock on time problem.
On the other hand, I find once the internal 810 GPS chip has locked on, it hold on just as well as the BT unit.
What I like about the external unit is that you can leave it locked on but just fire up Wayfinder when you need it.