GPS will be accurate within one foot in some phones next year

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By Jacob Kastrenakes@jake_k  Sep 25, 2017, 2:32pm EDT

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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales/The Verge

Smartphones’ GPS systems are going to start getting a lot more accurate. According to IEEE Spectrum, Broadcom is starting to make a mass-market GPS chip that can pinpoint a device’s accuracy to within 30 centimeters, or just under one foot. That’s compared to today’s GPS solutions, which typically have a range of three to five meters, or up to 16 feet away.

That relatively large error range is what can make it so hard for your phone to tell if you’re on a highway or an offramp, or if you’ve made a turn or continued forward. This new generation of GPS chips is supposed to solve those problems, and Broadcom reportedly told IEEE Spectrum that its new chips will start appearing in some smartphones next year — though it declined to say which ones.

MORE ACCURACY IN CITIES, TOO

The improved accuracy is thanks to a newer GPS satellite broadcast that gives your phone additional information it can use to refine your position. Broadcom tells IEEE Spectrum that there are now 30 satellites that support the new standard next year the “right moment to launch.”

In particular, the new GPS tech is supposed to be a big help in cities, because it can avoid issues that come up due to signals getting reflected off of big buildings. GPS is often less accurate in dense urban locations, so people living in cities may see the biggest benefits from this new generation of chips.

It’s not clear quite how quickly this new GPS tech is going to spread, though. Even though Broadcom says its chips will end up in some phones next year, those likely won’t be incredibly popular devices like the iPhone. Qualcomm is the biggest name in GPS chips, according to ABI Research. And since Qualcomm supplies modems for most major phones — the iPhone included (for now, at least) — this feature isn’t likely to roll out widely next year. Chances are, we’ll have to wait for Qualcomm to build its own version.