How many times have you impatiently waited for your car's GPS to acquire enough satellites to tell you where you are and how to get where you want to be? Or, have you stood inside a building near a window and wished you could get some GPS location data so you could use an app to suggest somewhere nearby to eat? Or, have you turned off the GPS on your phone to preserve battery life? Well, according to this press release...

CSR Debuts Breakthrough SiRFstarIV Location-Aware Architecture

...those days may be numbered if your next GPS or GPS-enabled phone uses CSR's SiRFstarIV architecture. CSR's new architecture is described like this in the release: The essence of the SiRFstarIV breakthrough is its ability to continually maintain "better-than-hot-start" conditions in the GPS receiver for fast location fixes without having to be kept fully turned on all the time and draining precious battery power.

The SiRFstarIV is designed specifically for use in smartphones and other small consumer devices. It is only available in sample quantities now. So, it will probably be a while until we see it integrated into off-the-shelf products. But, when it is, it sounds like we will be able to make much better use of location aware devices and apps.

Via PCMag.com (Jamie Lendino): SiRF Unveils Next Generation GPS