Recently, a new software update was made available for the Transformer Prime, which alleges to fix the GPS location problem affecting some units. We decided to put the ASUS Transformer Prime head to head with the Sony Tablet S & the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
We tested both in our office right in front of a large Window and a large open area down town Taipei and it was a bit of a grey day. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 performed the best right out of the gate getting up to 11 sattelite connections, the Sony Tablet S struggled to get 3 connections in our office. If you want to triangulate positions you need to get atleast three connections, outdoors the Tablet S was able to gather 8 or 9 connections. The ASUS Transformer Prime took a long time to initialize, actually we had nearly given up on it even connecting at all, it took nearly 4 minutes to even get a signal but when it did, it blew both tablets out of the water with connectivity as the Prime saw up to 13 connections!
If you want to make make sure that you’ve got the GPS driver update, which should be version 6.9.13. it’s able to establish connections to 11 different GPS satellites, though, the signal strength appears to be low
The question that we’re asking our selves is how many people really care about GPS on a 10 inch device, I get 7 inches where you could easily use it in the car but 10 inches isn’t really a portable GPS.
If you want to check out our video showing off the GPS Signal Test of the ASUS Transformer Prime going head to head with the Sony Tablet S & the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 here it is:
