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Comment by ashirviskas | Hacker News Reader

So my 2 year old Android device already had a feature that was only now implemented by Apple in their top of the line products. Neat.

Does anyone have personal experience of how dual-frequency improves GPS? As I'm not really using GPS a lot, I'm not sure I noticed a difference from my previous devices (I live in EU, so also no high rise skyscrapers here)

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I doesn't matter if your device had it for 99999 years and is therefore 'way cooler', what matters is how far along the GPS satellites are, and at this stage there isn't even one complete deployment, it's still being deployed.

You don't need every satellite to be broadcasting the L5 signal to benefit. In fact there's probably diminishing returns, you really only need to receive one L5 signal to do ionosphere correction

Ha, if only. No, a satellite broadcasting L5 only gives you ionospheric corrections for that satellite.

Otherwise what would be the point? WAAS already gives ionospheric corrections for a course grid. If you could just assume that the ionospheric delay was constant across the sky, you wouldn’t need L5 at all.

It doesn't matter how little you need if there are big gaps in availability. Granted, having prepared hardware and sometimes-coverage is great, but the buck has got to stop somewhere.

my 1999 honda civic has a feature that my Porsche 911 doesn't have. doesn't mean my Porsche 911 is a worse car

I wouldn't bother trying to reason on this.

I'm an Android developer, but use an iPhone. I've noticed some Android users really need their wins against Apple. It's almost like a Linux user trying to convince you how awesome and slicker the dev experience is, vs how bloated and slow your Macbook is: the point isn't to inform you, it's to reassure themselves.

I don't know which rock you're living under but Apple users do this way way more often to validate their purchase.

Ok.

Clearly it's a worse car WRT to that feature.

Besides the high price of iPhones, this metaphor doesn't go very far.

I think people are simply surprised that Apple is just now getting around to this, given that it's been a common feature in high end Android phones for quite a while now. OP did not say that Apple phones were worse, you inferred that.

adding in a "...only now implemented by Apple in their top of the line..." and a sarcastic "Neat." right after that sentence make it pretty clear what the poster was implying

That does not imply that on the whole Apple phones aren't good phones. Just that it's surprising they haven't implemented this bog standard feature.

I really don't care that you already had this feature.

Android has copy and paste before iOS but you wouldn’t want to brag about it just because. It didn’t work well at all till iOS came out with their implementation

I had a Symbian phone back then. It had copy and paste. Nothing to brag about because it was such a normal feature.

Great point, Android's swipe-able keyboard was VERY good before Apple copied it. Brag about that because it was good, not "just because."

yep, everytime Apple makes a feature actually useable, all the android people come out furious.

my guess is android people also use windows, and are used to constant blue screens, malware, and random crashes.

> my guess is android people also use windows, and are used to constant blue screens, malware, and random crashes.

Have you just woken up from a coma you fell into back in the 90s?

Yep, it's been days since 0days were exploited by malware in OSX. I still keep using it for some reason. Wish it would work with Android the way my linux boxes do! Even Win11 has some crapware that links it to my phone, sigh.

"Neat" but if it isn't even noticeable to you, the end user, then perhaps that's why Apple waited. After all, it would require die space, antenna and power.

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