What you need to know
- Qualcomm and Trimble have announced a new collaboration to improve location data accuracy on smartphones.
- As part of the new partnership, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 888 chipsets will be integrated with Trimble’s correction service.
- Location services on Snapdragon-powered smartphones will soon have meter-level accuracy.
Exact location tracking via a smartphone’s navigation or ridesharing app can be unreliable at times. Fortunately, Qualcomm intends to address this quandary through a new partnership with Trimble, a correction service provider.
Qualcomm announced that it has teamed up with Trimble to bring its RTX technology to premium chipsets, including the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 888 mobile platforms. This means many of the best Android phones will be able to measure location data within one meter in the future.
Trimble’s RTX GNSS correction services platform will allow smartphone makers, service providers, and app developers to provide more accurate location data to mobile users.
“Precise positioning, where accuracies are down to a meter or less, is a necessary capability in next-gen premium Android phones, providing better mapping, more accurate navigation and new exciting services to consumers,” said Francesco Grilli, vice president of product management at Qualcomm.
Trimble claims that its platform will improve location accuracy by five times compared to current services available today.
Qualcomm gives a variety of use cases for this level of improvement. It will enable features such as car navigation with lane-level guidance, for example. When using real-time navigation apps, it will provide drivers with greater map details and more accurate directions.
Another benefit is more accurate positioning for ridesharing apps. With improved location data accuracy, drivers will be able to pick up their passengers more easily.
The Trimble RTX platform is coming to Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 888-powered smartphones in the second quarter of 2022. This means the Samsung Galaxy S22 series, the OnePlus 10 Pro, and Xiaomi 12 series, among others, will get better at location tracking soon.
