Qualcomm Identifies First GPS+Glonass Smartphone

Qualcomm chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs said earlier this month the San Diego wireless giant has developed technology that enables smartphones to use either GPS or Russia’s Glonass satellite location capabilities. Today, Qualcomm says the first GPS+Glonass-capable phone is the MTS 945, available from Russian mobile operator and retailer MTS. It’s an Android-based phone made by China’s ZTE with Qualcomm’s MSM7x30 chipset. While the smartphone offers the benefit of using as many as 55 satellites to calculate global position for navigation or location-based apps just about anywhere in the world, the MTS 945 appears to be targeting Russia’s mid-market users.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.