Sony Ericsson: Adding GLONASS Improves Positioning Accuracy by up to 50%

Sony has added GLONASS support to its latest range of Android Smartphone and the Russian GNSS constellation is really improving the positioning accuracy as it can be seen on the picture here.

According to Magnus Persson, Positioning Specialist at Sony Ericsson, “Field tests in downtown San Francisco found that the positioning accuracy of adding GLONASS improved as much as 50%. The test were executed with the help of Qualcomm using two Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman smartphones, and 600 measurements were recorded and analyzed per device.“

Nowadays Sony Ericsson is offering a large range of smartphone supporting GLONASS. “The Xperia arc, Xperia arc S, Xperia ray, Xperia neo, Xperia neo v, Xperia pro, Xperia PLAY, Xperia active, Live with Walkman, Xperia mini and Xperia mini pro, along with the latest Xperia software are all capable of supporting GLONASS,“ said Sony Ericsson.

However using GLONASS increases battery consumption, so “to save power, the GLONASS receiver is only activated in problematic locations, such as in an urban environment with high rise buildings,“ wrote Persson.