Even more strangely, when I was using the Android G1 on Rogers, the GPS routinely placed me 3 blocks or more from where I was.

I wonder if the aGPS isn’t always benefitting from the cell towers?

I jailbreaked my iPhone the day I bought it so I’ve had MMS (Swirly), video recording (Cycorder), call filtering (mcleaner), skins/themes, and now turn-by-turn with xGPS. The stuff that has nothing to do with the hardware works fine. Because I’m not 14 I don’t really have much call for MMS’s but it seemed to work fine the few times I tried it. The call filtering stuff works splendidly. But Cycorder’s videos, while watchable, aren’t great. Mostly because the camera isn’t great.

And… xGPS does work. It just doesn’t work very well, because the GPS doesn’t work very well. I’ve rarely, if ever, seen accuracy better than +/- 50 meters with the no matter which app I was using and, with xGPS, that means that it often sees me on a side street or the opposite side of the street and freaks out.

I assume that Apple was well aware of these limitations and instead of permitting poor video recording and flaky turn-by-turn navigation they just didn’t make it an option. Unfortunately, since they also removed that option from 3rd party developers, they went a bit too far. I’d rather have crappy video and crappy turn-by-turn navigation than none at all… because while I do have a perfectly good GPS (Garmin GPSMap 60Cx) and a perfectly good little camera that also records videos, I’d rather not have to drag them out, turn them on, etc.

There is a limitation to how much tech anyone can jam into a given space and right now there’s just not enough space and resources available in a sub-$500 device. Maybe in a few years they’ll have gotten it to the point where they think it is good enough for it to be “official”. Until then, I and other jailbreakers will make do with what we’ve got.

In any case, if any GPS software has a monthly fee you can count me out.