Sat nav?

[Anglia100e]

Do modern sat navs not have to see so much of the sky to pick up satellites as older models have to? My old Tom Tom had to almost sit in the windscreen to work and dropping it below the dash board rendered it useless. I was bought a new Garmin by my wife to go with the new Fiesta and it works while it's sat on it's base in the small storage bin in front of the gear stick! This is the pocket with the LEDs in which is part of the dash not the plastics around the gear stick. When it first worked I thought it was a fluke but today it took me over 70 miles and then back home again without losing a signal or making a mistake at all. Am I just lucky or have sat navs just got a lot better. It's not an expensive model and cost around £130 so it's nothing to do with costing £100s

By the way it fits into pocket as though it was designed for it

[Anglia100e]

Just noticed I am a poster so no longer a newbie

[jam_rs]

An old sat nav I had was very picky about getting signal, sometimes you had to be outside the car for it too pick up, then you could bring it in the car and it was ok. However my current garmin is fine wherever I put it. Even picks up signal inside the house sometimes.

[Alex59]

My TomTom Go works anywhere in the car

[alexsim2004]

They have advanced the GPS chipset technology in recent years, or it could be that the particular GPS chip in the Garmin is more prescise at picking the satellites up

[Graphite]

I think there is software that can calculate where the satellites should be which improves the location time for the devices...

[leachy]

Technology moves on and becomes cheaper meaning that current sat navs use technology that was impractical or too costly for previous models. Also, the CPUs like all other computing technology becomes faster & cheaper meaning that it can process more of the GPS info faster.

Probably also helps that they no longer dither the GPS transmissions to reduce accuracy.

[karl]

My TomTom even works in the glove box.
It doesn't physically have to have direct sight, I beleive it works the same as a mobile phone or radio.