Windows Phone - OS and apps discussion

[inquisitor]

I will start this thread with my frist request:

Is there an app comparable to Chartcross' GPS Test for Android which shows in detail the signal level for each single GPS/GLONASS satellite received?

[Motel75]

AFAIK, no. There is an app called Bluetooth GPS, which does this - but only for external GPS devices. Ironically, GPS Test was written for Windows Mobile, but it hasn't been updated. This is, for me as a WP user, the most annoying "missing app" on Windows Phone.

[Motel75]

OTOH, one huge benefit of Windows Phone you might not have noticed yet is its offline maps capability. You can download any maps you want and store them on the phone to save data charges. The only drawback is that they are stored in phone memory, although there is a way around this, for Here Maps at least (http://www.wpcentral.com/how-move-of...-windows-phone).

Similarly, Bing Translator lets you store offline data for any languages you wish.

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by Motel75

AFAIK, no. There is an app called Bluetooth GPS, which does this - but only for external GPS devices. Ironically, GPS Test was written for Windows Mobile, but it hasn't been updated. This is, for me as a WP user, the most annoying "missing app" on Windows Phone.

Very likely the geolocation API of WP does not output NMEA sentences like Android does but instead only provides the calculated position + some attributes like accuracy.
Given the fact that my quick search did not reveal any documentation of the geolocation of WP while for Android you immediately find detailed official documentation as well as countless forum posts on how to access the API, it is no surprise that WP is struggling so hard to attract developers. Probably you have to register to MSDN to access documentation.
All I could find was a post from November 2012 where a user suggests:

a) Making NMEA/GPS-raw-Data accessible for developers in Windows Phone 7 and 8 via an API or similar.