Can I use a WWAN card for JUST the GPS??

If you could wait a bit I could buy one that is available and then find out for you. I already pay for a Sprint aircard subscription but I'd have to get them to activate the new card. I'd also like to test out this GPS functionality myself. Shoot for $50 I'll bite. It'd be nice not to have to futz with a Bluetooth GPS receiver. Much cheaper than the $150 Dell wants for these things with a new system.

I really doubt that you could use the WWAN card just for the GPS features. I believe the cards uses triangulation to give you your location. Thus without subscribing for service it wouldn't work.

For example, my PDA, XV6800, uses triangulation but if I canceled my service and it couldn't access the data network I would no longer be able to use my GPS.

Yeah if the GPS can in fact work without service it would be worth it just as a GPS device.

I found two interesting quotes but they contradict one another

"Using a combination of GPS satellite signals and the cell towers themselves, gpsOne allows your location to be plotted with greater accuracy than traditional GPS systems in areas where satellite reception is problematic due to buildings or terrain."

"Standalone - Your handset has no connection to the network, and uses only the GPS satellite signals it can currently receive to try and establish a location."


This definitely seems like its going to be one of those topics where you have to test it to find out.

I had my laptop in pieces for a couple weeks, but I just realized that I have a 5720 in my system currently. I hadn't heard about any GPS features on it. I just went digging for an updated driver and found one in the D830 drivers but not the D820 drivers. I'm going to install it, I'll post back in a minute to see if it worked.

EDIT The newer driver did nothing on its own. No GPS functionality at all. HOWEVER, the problem isn't a firmware issue or anything of that sort. The problem is the geniuses at Dell had Novatel Wireless disable the GPS in the driver and this is EASILY fixed with a simple adjustment to a registry key.

Open Regedit and navigate to HKLM\Software\Novatel Wireless\NextGenCommon change the value of the GPSHWStatus DWORD from 0 to 1. Reboot your PC and run the broadband card software again. The card will disconnect and then reconnect along with the GPS.

Now this doesn't answer your question about weather or not it works without a Sprint plan, but it will help you in enabling the feature so you can figure it out on your own. WTF was Dell thinking advertising this feature and then purposefully disabling it.

I'm going to try out the GPS once my battery is charged up to see if it can get a fix on a satellite.

Just played with it a bit outdoors, you're going to have to be patient, it seems the card takes a while to get a fix on satellites. (My Cobra NavOne takes about five minutes to get an accurate fix if its been off for a while). As far as I can tell though the GPS doesn't use the Sprint connection at all as it works the same weather the card is connected or not. So if you do the reg hack (you might find a newer driver than the D830 one that doesn't need it) you should be able to use it as a standard GPS unit with most mapping software such as DeLorme or Microsoft.

What provider is your card for? The driver package depends on which CDMA provider your card is locked to. The driver I used is for a Sprint card.