OK, Google: Maps, Map Maker, and All Those 6 Bond Streets

Now, with Google and online maps at our fingertips, what was once normal can be seen as uncivilized — like asking someone for directions to a house, restaurant or office, when they can easily be found on Google Maps.

—Nick Bilton, “Disruptions: Digital Era Redefining Etiquette”, Bits blog, New York Times, March 10, 2013

This post is dedicated to you, Nick.

In September 2012, when Apple rolled out the iPhone 5 and abandoned Google Maps for its disastrously not-ready-for-primetime homegrown map system, New York Times consumer tech columnist David Pogue blogged about “What Makes Google’s Maps So Good”.  In his post he revealed something I hadn’t known: Google Maps receives error reports “by the thousands” from human users via Google Map Maker.

Pogue described Map Maker as “a Web site that is live in 200 countries (and just started in the United States) that lets average citizens make corrections to Google’s maps as they find them.”  Excited to learn that Google Maps had the same kind of cool end user editability that Jimmy Wales had given Wikipedia, I headed right over to Google Map Maker to correct Maps’ misplaced address for the Tendai Buddhist Institute on Route 295 in East Chatham, New York.

Zen and the Art of Geolocation Maintenance

You see, the previous summer my wife and I were visited at our weekend house in East Chatham by a young Asian man on a motorcycle who was searching in vain for the Institute.  We were a bit stumped about why he’d roared up our driveway for directions, since our house, obscured by a vast stand of Norwegian furs, is completely invisible from the road.  But when I checked Google Maps on my LG Optimus V his reasoning was clear: Google had located the Buddhist retreat practically in our front yard.

In reality, though, it was (and is) a good half mile down the road.

Of course, when I used Map Maker to submit the correct address for the Tendai Buddhist Institute my expectations were low.  If Map Maker received error reports “by the thousands” from human users, how long would it take before mine was vetted, let alone accepted?  But within hours of submitting the change I received an email confirming its approval:

I was stunned.  True, it did take a few weeks for the correction to be pushed out to my—and everyone else’s—phone via a Google Maps update.  But it’s only natural for Google to bundle its Map Maker corrections and distribute them en masse at irregular intervals.

“Do You Know Where Bond Street Is?”

Then, months later, came another, far deeper Google Maps mystery.  That of 6 Bond Street, New York, NY.

It’s early evening on the last day of February and I’m walking my two dogs when a thirtysomething guy, his smartphone pulled out and Google Maps on display, asks me if I know where Bond Street is.  I’ve lived in Manhattan for over 20 years and in SoHo for nearly as long and Bond Street rings a bell for me, but I’m embarrassed to admit I can’t place it.

But hey: if thirtysomething guy has Google Maps on his phone, why can’t he place it?

It turns out he’s already visited the designated location, which is only about 50 yards from where we’re standing at the corner of Bleecker Street and Minetta Lane.  Google Maps insists it’s just uptown on Sixth Avenue.  I walk my dogs in this neighborhood all the time and I’m sure I’ve never seen a Bond Street around here.

Redundantly, I pull out my LG Optimus V and look at Google Maps myself.  Here’s what it showed me a day or two later when I took time to do a screen capture:

Google Maps’ default location for 6 Bond Street, New York, NY as displayed on my LG Optimus V. The red arrow shows where thirtysomething guy was standing when he asked me if I knew where Bond Street was.

My phone serves up the same nonexistent location his does.  I can see it isn’t right and tell him so.

This impoverished help prompts thirtysomething guy to thank me profusely, which only makes me more embarrassed that I’ve failed at what I regard as a New Yorker’s prime directive—to supply decent directions to tourists and other bewildered visitors to my neighborhood and environs.

Thirtysomething guy, however, is unruffled by Google’s misdirection and, waving his phone before me, fires up another app on his smartphone—“Have you seen this?” he asks me with a big grin—to ping a car service to pick him up.

He’s happy and I, the New Yorker who doesn’t know where Bond Street is—and, thanks to Google Maps, still doesn’t know where it is—find myself back on my dog walk, brooding about finding the real address and using Google Map Maker to fix it forever.

One Simple Address, Two Wrong Locations

Back at the apartment, I launch Google Maps on my desktop PC and search on “6 Bond St., New York, NY”.   It serves up the same nonexistent location thirtysomething guy and I got standing in front of American Apparel at Bleecker and Minetta:

Google Maps shows 6 Bond Street located in the middle of an apartment bloc on 6th Avenue.  Again, the red arrow shows where I ran into thirtysomething guy.  Google Maps' Did you mean: suggestion in the upper left nav—circled in red—makes clear Maps has an alternate address for 6 Bond Street in a different Zip code.

OK, Google: Did you mean: suggests you’ve got an alternate location for 6 Bond Street in Zip code 10013.  I click on the link to see where it is:

Google Maps’ Did you mean: alternate location for 6 Bond Street in Zip code 10013 puts it next to a Maserati of Manhattan dealership.  No actual Bond Street can be seen anywhere in the vicinity.

Good lord.  This one is farther downtown, below Canal Street in Tribeca, once again apparently on Sixth Avenue.  But as with the other location, there’s no thoroughfare marked Bond Street anywhere near the red A pushpin.  Google Maps displays two wrong locations for one simple address.

Doubting my sanity, I get a second opinion from the Amerigo Vespucci of browser map tools: MapQuest.   Where does it place 6 Bond St., New York, NY?

Sensibly, MapQuest displays 6 Bond Street on Bond Street.  (And without suggesting an alternate location.)  Once again, the red arrow shows where I ran into thirtysomething guy.  Turns out the real Bond Street was only about 10 blocks away from where we met—a 10-minute walk.

Thank God!  MapQuest displays a 6 Bond Street that’s actually on Bond Street.  Thirtysomething guy’s mystery address is a mere 10 blocks east of our fateful meeting spot—10 minutes on foot.  And mercifully, MapQuest doesn’t suggest alternate locations, either.  In the search for 6 Bond Street, MapQuest’s data is better than Google Maps’ data.

Time to head to Google Map Maker to fix this bizarre mess.

These Aren’t the Bond Streets You’re Looking For

Strangely, when I arrive at Google Map Maker I find that it displays 4 locations for 6 Bond Street—none of them the incorrect one near Minetta Lane that baffled thirtysomething guy and me.  However, it does show the Tribeca location next to Maserati of Manhattan.  So I opt to delete it first.

However, Google Map Maker wants a reason for the deletion and I find the choices a little confusing:

Am I deleting this 6 Bond Street because this Feature does not exist or because A duplicate of this feature exists?  Or are all these Bond Streets some kind of spam/abuse?

I go with A duplicate of this feature exists.  Later, after some equally befuddling correspondence with a member of The Google Mapmaker Team, this location is indeed deleted.

Unfortunately, that still leaves Google Map Maker showing a few 6 Bond Street locations that, unaccountably, don’t include the wrong one (just uptown along Sixth Avenue) that vexed thirtysomething guy and me:

After deleting 6 Bond Street next to Maserati of Manhattan  I see that Google Map Maker still brings up 3 locations—including the correct one—that Google Maps doesn’t bother showing me on my PC.  As before, the red arrow shows where I ran into thirtysomething guy.

Still, location A is clearly the correct one (with a proviso I’ll get to in a moment)—and yet it doesn’t seem to be even a Did you mean: option in Google Maps.  Then there’s location B, way over on the western edge of Manhattan, near the Hudson river—another place nowhere near a visible Bond Street.  But location C incenses me, because it’s situated in my own neighborhood, a mere 5 minute walk from my apartment, in a spot where I know there is no Bond Street.

It’s the location I decide to eradicate next:

Take a look at this Google Map Maker screen I captured in the midst of submitting this second correction.  First, there’s the preposterous location A pushpin for 6 Bond Street in the middle of a copse of trees that define the tiny Playground of the Americas (run by the NYC Parks Department) at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and West Houston Street.  Incredulous, I visit the location and take a picture myself:

Google Map Maker’s location C for 6 Bond Street, New York, NY turns out to be the Playground of the Americas on Sixth Avenue.  I visited the Playground on March 1, 2013 to take this snapshot, so the trees, of course, are leafless.

Then there are the culprits who apparently decided to contribute this particular 6 Bond Street to Map Maker: Google Automated Miscellaneous B… and Anonymous 4179.  (What were they thinking … assuming they’re actually “theys” and they actually “think”?)

After this deletion, however, I run into another difficulty.  While attempting to remove the next wrong location I get a pop-up dialog box telling me “This action will remove changes already in progress.  Do you want to continue?”  I’m not sure why Google Map Maker is warning me this way—is a Map Maker visitor permitted only one correction per session?  Does Map Maker not participate in Google’s one-account-logs-in-everywhere system?  Did I fail to log in properly because I’ve got more than one Gmail address?  I'm spooked and decide not to continue.

Dear Google Map Maker: About All Those 6 Bond Streets...

Later, I decide to write a lengthy feedback note to Google Map Maker laying out this dizzying multiplicity of 6 Bonds Streets.  I mention thirtysomething guy, the original bogus Google Map location for 6 Bond Street (which Google Map Maker doesn’t display!), the confusing pop-up dialog box warning me I'll lose changes already in progress—basically everything you’ve read so far.  I sum it up in a message I send March 6:

• When searching for the address on my Android phone Google Maps displays an incorrect default location, with the push pin showing a point along Sixth Avenue just below Minetta Lane.  (I’ve walked to this location and studied it.  I can find no trace of a Bond St.)
• It also shows the “Did you mean:” line at the top of the map, suggesting there is an alternate location for this address; however, in conducting this search repeatedly I’ve found that Google Maps seems to vary between showing 2 alternate locations for 6 Bond St. (both incorrect), and 3 alternate locations (one of which *is* correct).
• Google Maps’ correct address for 6 Bond St., unlike all the others, actually depicts Bond St. on the map, but the Zip code attached to it is incorrect.  (It indicates that 6 Bond St. is in Zip code 10011, when in fact all of Bond St., which runs only a couple of crosstown blocks, is located within Zip code 10012.  See here: http://www.maptechnica.com/zip/10012.)

About that last bullet: Yes, even when Google Map Maker displayed the correct address for 6 Bond Street it still managed to apply the incorrect Zip code:

As the MapTechnica Zip code map I link to above makes clear:

All of Bond Street in New York City is located in Zip code 10012.

My Yeoman Efforts Pay Off

But today, thanks (I hope) to my yeoman behind-the-scenes efforts, searching on “6 Bond Street, New York, NY” brings up the correct address, in the correct Zip code, as the default:

Sure, you’ll notice there are still two other Did you mean: alternate locations—including a new one clear over in the East Village:

But I just discovered something wonderful in the lower righthand corner of the Google Maps screen: you can click through to Google Map Maker from any bogus location like this one:

Nice!  Think I'll head over there right now.

And Nick: the next time someone violates your sense of etiquette by asking for directions while holding a smartphone displaying Google Maps, calm yourself by repeating this mantra: Number 6 Bond Street, Number 6 Bond Street, Number 6 Bond Street.

Epilogue (1/27/2015): The warp velocity of Internet time seems to apply to Google Maps as much as to anything else on the web.  Since I published this post I can report the following: 1) The Tendai Buddhist Institutes’s Google Maps location has reverted to the same deeply inaccurate position it held when that young Asian man cycled up our driveway to ask about it during the summer of 2012.  I notified Google of the error a few days ago but have little confidence it will ever be correctly designated on Google Maps; 2) searching for 6 Bond Street, New York in Google Maps does indeed bring up the proper address—and without even one idiotic Did you mean: alternate locations; 3) Google has done away with the Edit in Google Map Maker option it used to display in the bottom righthand corner of any Google Maps map display; I'm guessing the company got far more edits, productive and unproductive, than Google’s skeletal team of Map Maker humans could possibly vet.

Virgin Mobile to Throttle Unlimited Service

All good things must come to an end.

When I bought my Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V at Radio Shack last February, I was excited to be getting a genuine android phone as part of a package that promised to give me 300 voice minutes plus unlimited text and web for a mere $25 a month.

Then, of course, Virgin Mobile decided this package was a bit too generous and changed its price to $35 a month.  (Luckily, fingers crossed, I'm still grandfathered in at the $25 rate.)

But yesterday I received a text message from VMFreeMsg:

Your Beyond Talk Plan is about to change. Starting 3/23/12, data speeds may be reduced once you hit 2.5GB. For more info, click http://msg4u.us/th2

And today came the email. The heart of it read:

To make sure we can keep offering our Beyond Talk Plans at such great prices, we're putting a data speed reduction in place for anyone who uses over 2.5GB of data in a month.

How will it work?
Starting March 23, 2012, if you use over 2.5GB of data in a month on your Beyond Talk Plan:

• Data speeds may be reduced to 256Kbps or below for the rest of your month. During this time, you may experience slower page loads and file downloads and lags in streaming media.
• If data speeds are reduced, they will return to normal as soon as your next plan month starts.
• If you'd rather not wait for your new month to start, you can restart your plan immediately through My Account.

Then Virgin Mobile offered me assurances that based on my activity for December it didn't appear the 2.5GB cap would affect me.  And it was quick to reassure me just how much 2.5GB really was:

If you continue to use the same amount of data as you did in your last plan month, you should not see your data speeds reduced. Just to give you an idea, in order to hit 2.5GB, it's about 400,000 Mobile Internet page views, about 90,000(!) emails (without attachments), 91 hours of streaming music
or 20 hours of video clips*.

Uh oh.  An asterisk.  I looked at the bottom of the email for an explanation:

*Data usage per activity is based on an average. Bandwidth varies by website, video, email and other Internet application.

(Yes, I thought.  I believe I'm familiar with the variability of bandwidth, thank you.)

I wondered whether Virgin Mobile had changed the promotional copy on their website to reflect this shiny new limitation, so I went over to their USA store for a look:

Nope.  Nothing there.  How about inside?  After clicking on the Plan Details tab I scanned the page and spotted this:

OK, there was a red flag: "Unlimited does not mean unreasonable use."  (Something told me this disclaimer predates the upcoming 2.5GB cap, but I could be wrong.)

Anything else?  I visited the promotional page for my phone, the LG Optimus V, and looked around.  Nothing jumped out at me, so I clicked on Plan Details for the phone and was sent back to the page where I started, which featured the Plan Details tab and several others.  I clicked on the FAQs tab and saw this:

Now we were getting somewhere.  Those last three questions hit the mark.

Virgin Mobile answered the first question, When and how will data speed reduction affect my Beyond Talk Plan?, this way:

Starting March 23rd, 2012, if you use over 2.5GB of data in a month, your data speeds may be reduced to 256 kbps or below for the rest of that monthly plan cycle. During this time, you may experience slower page loads and file downloads, and lags in streaming media. Data speeds will return to normal as soon as your next plan month starts. If you'd rather not wait for your new month to start, you can restart your plan immediately through My Account.

It answered the next question, How will I know if I hit 2.5GB?, this way:

When you reach that threshold, and your data speeds are reduced for the rest of your plan month, you will receive a text message notifying you of this change. If you are susceptible to data speed reduction, you can check how much data you've used at any time during the month by logging into My Account, and checking Data & Web history.

And that third question, How much data is 2.5GB?, it answered the same way it had that same question in the email Virgin Mobile sent me this morning.  (About those 400,000 Mobile Internet page views, 90,000 emails without attachments, 91 hours of streaming music or 20 hours of video clips.  Mercifully or ironically -- take your pick -- my LG Optimus V's mediocre battery life serves as a built-in brake on this kind of heavy data consumption.)

So to sum up, these details weren't exactly unavailable at the Virgin Mobile website ... but VM wasn't exactly broadcasting them, either.

I admit I'm not really breaking news.  Android Central reported this planned change back on January 18.  And according to them, Virgin Mobile wanted to start throttling data last year but delayed their decision.

Lastly, I suppose the most important question for Virgin Mobile's android phone users is how to measure data usage to avoid getting that fateful text message from VM telling you you've hit the 2.5GB wall.  Logging into your VM account every week to check would be tedious; I don't consider it realistic advice.

Offhand my only suggestion is to try an android app from Android Market called Call Meter NG.  It's pretty useful and lets you measure your usage for Calls, SMS, and Data (2G/3G/4G).  Here's a screen shot showing my usage so far this month:

The app is flexible enough that it lets you set the beginning of your plan month, so it needn't start on the 1st.  (You'll note that mine starts on the 6th of every month.)

But I'm not entirely sure how to interpret the Data (2G/3G/4G) usage.  It looks as if I've used just over 1GB so far (867.05MB In + 170.48MB Out), but frankly I don't know if that includes or excludes SMS data. UPDATE: the numbers to the right of the | separator show lifetime usage; the numbers to the left of the | separator show usage since the beginning of the billing period -- in this case 1/6/2012.  If you know, please comment and enlighten me and the LG Optimus V community.  Thank you.

UPDATE: Just discovered another interesting app that keeps track of your data usage and will actually notify you when you're about to reach a preset cap.  It's called Onavo.  I just installed it and it looks pretty nice -- its setup lets you enter your monthly cap (VM users, please note that the cap field defaults to GB but can be changed to MB, which you'll need to do to enter 2.5GB as 2500MB) and will notify you when you've reached a % of the total you can select yourself.  (The default is 75%.)  It also watches your apps as you use your phone and can tell you which ones are the biggest data hogs.  So far so good.

Top 4 Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V Pleasures

Since I began my love-hate relationship with my Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V on this blog with my Top 5 Annoyances, I thought I’d give equal time to a few pleasures.

These niceties probably aren’t unique to the LG Optimus V—they likely apply to most if not all android phones. (NOTE: I recently discovered that the Super Tool Box Hotspot functionality I describe below appears not to work on a similar LG Optimus phone sold directly from Sprint running Android 2.3.3.  My Optimus V is running Android 2.2.1.)  But since the Optimus V is an android phone, they’re still relevant if not unique:

1. Great phone/audio player integration I’ve only had one experience when my phone rang while I was listening to a podcast, but it was delightful to discover that the audio paused when the phone ring cut in, it stayed paused while I talked on the phone, and then resumed automatically the moment I hung up. Very civilized.
2. You can send text messages to landline phones!  I discovered this capability by accident when my wife called me from our home landline while I was listening to a friend’s band—The Fancy Shapes—play at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village.  I’d long known about the option to deflect an incoming call with a generic text message: the LG Optimus V often presents a list of such “Sorry, can’t talk” text options by the time I’ve pulled the phone from my pocket.  This time I reflexively chose the first one on the list (“I am unable to answer the phone at the moment.”) without noticing that the call had originated from a landline, and when I recognized the number I assumed the message would bounce into the void.
   
   
   Wrong!  Later I inspected a series of text messages I received from Virgin Mobile, all triggered by my original generic text reply.  The first informed me:

   Your message was successfully delivered to someone at [my landline number].  Thanks for using Text to Landline!

   That’s right.  Virgin Mobile had converted the text message to a robo call and served it up to the landline.  But the next message was equally surprising:

   You’ve received a reply to your Text to Landline message from [my landline number].  Call 17815776804 to listen now.  Normal airtime charges apply.

   Note, too, that the 781 number is hyperlinked to the phone’s dialer, so all you need do is touch it to initiate the call and retrieve the voice message.
   
   
   Finally, Virgin Mobile texted me a suggestion:

   Record your name for intro of Text to Landline message.  Call 1-781-577-6890 from your Virgin Mobile phone to make your recording.  Std. Airtime rates apply.

   Well, thank you, Virgin Mobile.  I can only wonder how many poor benighted souls like me have no idea you offer a service called Text to Landline that makes it easy to manage landline calls you can’t (or don’t really want to) answer.
3. It’s easy (using Gmail on your PC) to turn an email containing the date, time, and place for a scheduled meeting into a Google Calendar entry on your phone I’ve found that when someone sends me a message with all the details for, say, a lunch date, Gmail will show something like this on the right side of the message:
   
   
   
   
   Just click this section and voilà!—you’ll go straight to Google Calendar and your lunch date will be added (then synched on your phone) for the date and time the message outlined. Cool.
   
4. If you're running Android 2.2.1 it's easy to turn the phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot—no rooting necessary I owe my discovery of this sweet little capability to Rock That LG Optimus V & Rock That Moto T—a site dedicated to promoting Virgin Mobile’s top android phones. However, it's important to note that since late Summer 2011 Virgin Mobile has been selling the LG Optimus V with Android 2.2.2 installed and has apparently taken steps to prevent the phone from taking advantage of the hotspot functionality built into the apps I discuss below.  For those of you running Android 2.2.2 your only alternative—short of rooting the phone—appears to be to use a tethering app like Easy Tether.  Such apps at least allow you to get a laptop PC on the Internet with your Optimus via its USB cable when a 3G signal is available but Wi-Fi isn't (I've also read elsewhere that all of these remote access strategies likely violate Virgin Mobile's terms of service, so follow my suggestions at your peril):

• Launch Android Market and pick up Super Tool Box. (Rock That recommends this app, and it’s the one I'm using. Don’t be confused if Android Market calls it Super aTool Box-cache battery—it’s still the app you want. Rock That also says that Quick Settings works, but I’m using Super Tool Box and it does the job.)
  
• Once you’ve installed Super Tool Box, before launching it return to your home screen and hit the physical window button at the bottom left of your LG Optimus V:

• When the window appears, select Settings:
  
  
  
  
  
• From your Settings menu, select Wireless & Networks:
  
  
  
  
  
• From your Wireless & Network Settings, uncheck Wi-Fi (if it’s already unchecked, you’re good to go):
  
  
  
  
  
• Now you’re ready to launch Super Tool Box and turn on your Wi-Fi Hotspot. Begin by selecting Super Tool Box’s Settings menu:
  
  
  
  
  
• From the Settings menu, make sure Mobile data shows Connected. (If it shows Unconnected, go back to your homescreen, push the physical Window button, hit Settings, and turn off your phone’s Wi-Fi as directed above. NOTE: turning off Wi-Fi from this Settings page in Super Tool Box will not allow you to enable your hotspot.):
  
  
  
  
• Finally, turn on the Wi-Fi hotspot switch (once it’s on, you'll see the blue hotspot icon appear in the upper lefthand corner):
  
  
  

Your Wi-Fi hotspot is on and ready for traffic, but bear in mind it’s also open. So if security is important to you, Super Tool Box does allow you to enable WPA2 PSK to make sure those who want to share your phone’s network have actually been invited.

One last thing: bear in mind that as long as your LG Optimus V is acting as a hotspot you can’t actually use the phone’s own Wi-Fi to get on the Internet. However, as long as you’ve got 3G service—and if you don’t your Wi-Fi hotspot won’t be very hot—you can use it to surf the web or check your email.

Lastly, to check to see which version of Android you're running press your Optimus V's physical window key in the lower lefthand corner of the phone.  From the window that pops up press Settings, and from the Settings menu scroll down to the bottom and select About Phone.  From the About Phone menu scroll down until you find Android Version.

Does Android GPS Need Cell Service to Work?

Google Maps appears to use cell towers to locate a user indoors when the LG Optimus V's GPS can't find a satellite signal. But what if you're out of doors and a satellite signal's all you've got?

To follow up on my last post, Top 5 Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V Annoyances, I’ve uncovered interesting intelligence contradicting my Annoyance #4, GPS System Needs Cell Service to Function.

After searching on Android Market for GPS apps I found one, BackCountry Navigator, that’s designed for hiking in remote places where cell service is typically unavailable. BackCountry Navigator’s developer, Nathan Mellor, blogged last spring about the ability of his app to work far from cell or WiFi signals. He notes:

Android Apps can get a location with the help of cell towers.

If you look at the location settings of an Android phone, you will often see two different kinds of locations mentioned. One is called the network location. This is found using cell towers or wifi hot spots. It is only a rough location.

The other is the GPS satellite location which is what you need for navigation. Android phones, like many smartphones, also use Assisted GPS (aGPS). This allows them to compute satellite position using the network and get the location faster.

The Android GPS can also get a location without cell towers. 

It is common to think that a cell phone can't get a location without cell service. In fact, if you ask the average employee of your cell service provider if you can use the phone's GPS without cell service, they will say no. It is often beyond their comprehension that anyone would want to, plus they want to sell you software that uses an expensive data plan.

An Android phone has a real GPS chip in it, which can get the location from GPS satellites.

But as you’d imagine, his comment that Assisted GPS using cell towers or WiFi hot spots lets smartphones “compute satellite position using the network and get the location faster” means that when cell towers or WiFi hot spots aren’t around pinpointing your location takes a little longer. Mellor goes on to say:

Getting a first location in the backcountry (a first fix) requires patience.
If you've used your Android GPS in urban areas, you may have to adjust to how long it takes to get your location the first time in the backcountry. Instead of ten seconds, it might be 1-5 minutes. It won't have the benefit of aGPS to get the satellite locations faster. Don't worry. The next time you start your GPS, it will probably take less than ten seconds.

So it would seem that’s why any smartphone, android or not, uses aGPS instead of plain GPS: to pinpoint your location in seconds instead of minutes.

Which means Virgin Mobile’s LG Optimus V actually doesn’t need cell service for its GPS system to work.  However, it does need an app, like BackCountry Navigator, that functions happily when cell signals are nowhere to be found.

Unfortunately, that also means an app that doesn’t use android's default Google Maps the way Google Navigation does. Google Maps clearly relies on cell service to locate users quickly and, when none is available, fails to resolve your position on your phone’s display ... as I discovered when I took my LG Optimus V to the wilds of western Maryland.

But BackCountry Navigator, while it doesn’t use Google Maps, is hardly a suitable alternative for car travel.  It's designed to use topographical maps from MyTopo.com or the U.S. Geological Survey -- useful for hiking over exotic terrain but hardly useful for driving.  (And since hikers don't need turn-by-turn spoken directions, it seems obvious BackCountry Navigator doesn't deliver those, either.)

I found an alternative, Sygic, whose Android Market product page boasts that its maps "are stored on the phone for offline use." I'd hoped that claim meant it would work without cell service, but, alas, I couldn't get Sygic to run on my Optimus V. And it may not have mattered, because before you can use Sygic you've got to download its maps -- and that turns out to be time-consuming.  For instance, if, like me, you're primarily interested in traveling in North America Sygic asks you to download maps state by state. I limited my selection to Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, but together they added up to 749 MB and took me more than 10 minutes to get onto the phone via home WiFi. And, of course, Sygic's à la carte map requirements mean you've got to remember to download additional maps before you can drive through states Sygic doesn't already know about. Pretty cumbersome.

Has anyone landed on a solution to this irksome problem? Is there another app that does what Sygic promises without the onerous map download requirements?

The easiest answer would be for Google to include an option allowing Google Maps to locate users using only their android phone's GPS chip. It occurs to me, though, that Google Maps also needs cell service to stream Google Maps details (some of which may be commercial, such as restaurant, store, or hotel locations) to your phone on the fly, so it can sidestep Sygic's heavy-duty offline map storage requirements.

If that's the case there may never be a solution for Virgin Mobile android phone users -- at least as long as we're using the LG Optimus V's less than perfect radio antenna on Sprint's less than ubiquitous network.

Top 5 Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V Annoyances

Equal Time: To be fair to Virgin Mobile and LG I’ve also added my Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V Top 4 Pleasures.  Check them out ... or go straight to the bad news below.

Astonishingly, if you visit Virgin Mobile’s USA website you’ll find the LG Optimus V phone I bought last winter gets a user rating of 4.6 stars out of 5. I’m not sure I’d give the phone 3 stars and I certainly wouldn’t go to 4; 5 is out of the question.

And what about those glowing reviews?  If you click on the (1,414 Reviews) link above you're taken to a page that qualifies the love a bit:

The fine print, circled in red above, reads "Comments taken from customer survey. Customers may have received minimal compensation to participate in the survey." But more to the point, it doesn't appear to be possible to read these 1,414 reviews; click on the //See What People Are Saying link and you're taken to another page that displays only a sampling of testimonials, and those aren't about the LG Optimus V ... they're about Virgin Mobile's attractively priced android phone plans. Just as annoying, it doesn't seem possible for me to add my own review of the phone.

With these facts in mind, let's get back to my Annoyances.

Why doesn't the phone rate 3 stars, let alone 4 or 5?  In the tradition of O’Reilly Media’s Annoyances Series (except in this case I, unlike O’Reilly’s authors, have no useful solutions or workarounds for these frustrating glitches), here are the top 5 furshlugginer annoyances I’ve been up against with this phone:

1. Subpar Battery Life            The LG Optimus V is my first smartphone—so it’s my first phone with a touchscreen and apps—and I knew walking around using an LED display all day long would take a toll on the power supply.  Sure enough, if I use the phone actively throughout the day the battery will last no more than 9 or 10 hours.  If I keep it quiet in my pocket and take or make the occasional call I may get 12.  (And yes, I have the phone configured to shut off the display after 15 seconds of nonuse—the default setting.  I also tend to turn off Wi-Fi if I’m out and about.)  10/5/11 Update: On 10/3 & 10/4 I used the phone minimally and the battery lasted for 1 day, 11 hours, 42 minutes, at which point the battery level was still at 14% (and the battery icon had turned from green to a thin slice of yellow, meaning it was time to plug it in).  So: battery life can be impressive when the phone gets very little use.  (On the other hand, using the phone to play music or podcasts can be hard on the battery, especially when using the phone's weak internal speaker. Ambient noise outside usually requires turning the sound all the way up, which likely doesn't help.)
2. Unexpected Crashes            Mercifully these don’t happen often, but in the 5 months or so I’ve had this phone I’ve experienced half a dozen hangs where suddenly I could do nothing with it.  My first apparent crash happened barely a month into my subscription; finding I couldn’t get the display to turn back on by pressing any button I plugged the phone into a wall outlet and everything returned to normal.  Since then I’ve had a few encounters where the only way to revive the phone was to take off the back and remove the battery.  (Pressing the power button for 30 seconds to a minute had no effect.)  Not fun.
3. Subpar Antenna            Recently I spent a few days in the wilds of western Maryland near the West Virginia border and found my Optimus was worthless for either voice calls or data transmission or reception.  I was prepared to blame Virgin Mobile’s owner, Sprint, for its scanty rural cell tower infrastructure, but I encountered a couple of Sprint subscribers who could use their phone—including one who had a Sprint Wi-Fi hotspot device that worked just fine.  So I’ll blame my Optimus instead.
4. GPS System Needs Cell Service to Function            During this same trip to western Maryland (see Annoyance #3 above)—when my Optimus was worthless as either a phone or a data device—I made another discovery: the phone’s GPS system can receive satellite signals to its heart’s content but it can’t resolve them into an actual map location without help from earthly cell towers.  I’m not a telecom nerd and I have no idea whether this is an android problem in general or a cheap android phone problem in particular, but I’m satisfied the LG Optimus V needs cell service to enable its built-in GPS system to function properly.  Until my phone returned from the Maryland wilderness and began displaying 3G or 1x cell service my Google Navigation app would happily display its distinctive blue location arrow against a fuzzy white background that refused to resolve a single street, road, highway, lake, river, or anything else topographical.  Utterly maddening.
5. Powerup Annoyances            More than once I’ve fired up my Optimus at the beginning of the day and noticed that some of the application icons on my main screen display as generic android icons and not as the distinctive icons their developers devised for them.  In this state, which may last for a minute or so, if I try to launch any of these generic-icon apps my phone will inform me they haven’t been installed.  (My suspicion is that I've moved these apps to my SD card and the phone takes longer to find them.)  If I wait a bit the distinctive icons usually replace the generic ones and everything returns to normal.  However, I once had the phone inform me that several apps I’d actually installed (and never uninstalled) were no longer there—I had to reinstall them.  Very perplexing.  10/26/11 update: last week I experienced the phone-still-telling-me-apps-I'd-installed-weren't-installed annoyance well beyond startup, so I decided to draw a page from the PC-user's handbook and reboot.  That did the trick, so in this one instance, at least, I do have a workaround to suggest.  When in doubt, reboot. 

BONUS Annoyance!: Inadequate onboard storage          It took me quite a while to figure this annoyance out -- mainly because it's a bit counterintuitive.  Check out this screen capture from Super Tool Box's Memory/Cpu information screen:

As you can see from the icon in the upper lefthand corner (the one that resembles a tiny hard drive with an exclamation point next to it), when I captured this screen the other day I was facing a low memory condition.  When these glitches first started to crop up and I had access to this Memory/Cpu information screen I couldn't figure out the source of the problem.  After all, the green-and-yellow pie chart at the upper left tells me that more than half of my memory -- 267 MB of 424 MB total -- is free.  So why am I low?

Not long after my first low-memory condition I discussed it on the phone with a friend who happens to be a computer scientist and he surmised that the bar graph in the middle, labeled Phone, held the key.  (You'll notice this graph is an ominous pink sliver, while the other two are cheerful yellow and green slabs.) He suggested the LG Optimus V had 179 MB of on-board storage and it was this kind of available storage -- not SD Card storage or regular green memory -- that determined whether the phone entered a low memory condition.

All my experience with the Optimus V bears him out.  Available memory means nothing; available on-board storage means everything.  The tipping point appears to be 18 MB; drop below that and you'll enter a low memory condition.

But here's the kicker: once you've entered a low memory condition your Optimus V will refuse to perform basic data tasks like sending or receiving text or email messages.  How's that for motivation to start cleaning out rarely used apps that soak up precious on-board storage?  (I literally couldn't mail this screen capture to myself until I deleted two apps that got me back above 18 MB of available on-board storage.)

Nearly as annoying is that attempting to solve a low memory condition by moving apps to the microSD card doesn't work, either.  First, not all apps can be moved to the SD card.  Second, my Optimus V shipped with apps that not only can't be moved -- they can't be deleted, either.  Twidroyd, Poynt, and Virgin Mobile's own apps -- Live, Downloads, and My Account -- might as well be etched in silicon.  They're there for the duration, unless I opt to root the phone and void my warranty.  And in any case I've found that even if I've got an app or two that I've forgotten to move to the SD card and I do so, it seems to have no effect on a low memory condition.  Deleting one or two bloated ones seems to be the best way to go.  (4/27/12 UPDATE: Got a low memory condition today and decided -- instead of deleting an app or two -- to reboot my phone.  Weirdly, rebooting worked!  So before you agonize over which of your installed apps to axe, turn your phone off and turn it back on again.  It may just do the trick.)

I find I can generally install about two dozen apps on the phone before I enter a low memory condition.  Your mileage will vary, of course, depending on the size of the apps you install -- and they vary quite a bit.  My B&N Nook reading app takes up a whopping 12.12 MB; Wifi Analyzer a mere 372 KB.

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Because the Optimus is my first smartphone, android or otherwise, I have nothing to compare it to—so these experiences may be typical for smartphone owners.  Or they may be the inevitable result of going Virgin Mobile, paying a flat $150 for the phone, and going on an enticingly cheap $25/month plan with 300 voice minutes and unlimited text, web, and email.  (Alas, Virgin Mobile has generated so many subscribers for its android services in 2011 it’s upped the price for this bargain-basement plan to $35/month; I’m still grandfathered in at $25 but am waiting for the other shoe to drop.  My lower rate can’t last forever.)

Do you have an LG Optimus V from Virgin Mobile or one of Virgin’s other android phones?  If so, tell me if your experiences jive with mine—or if they’ve been stellar.  Either way I’d love to know.