In response to numerous complaints about the lousy (non-existent) GPS performance on the Transformer Prime, Asus had these GPS Extension Kits (or GPS dongles as most people call them) made and sent out to registered owners.
A month after I registered for mine, it finally arrived. It uses the dock connector and latches on pretty securely. Looks a little odd, but I don’t think it’s overly intrusive. In any case, it proved to be pretty effective at improving GPS performance. I don’t know if it completely replaces the existing GPS antenna or just augments it.
Without the GPS dongle, my Transformer Prime might find a couple of GPS satellites, but would never lock on to any of them, even when I was out in the open.
With the GPS dongle, it only took a few seconds to find a bunch of satellites and get a GPS lock.
Turning wifi off decreased the position accuracy a couple of meters, from 8m to 10m, but still pretty reasonable. Probably would be better if I wasn’t sitting in the shadow of my house at the time.
Haven’t used it long enough to know how much impact there will be on battery life but I’m sure I’ll find out over the next few days.
Since it attaches to the dock connector, it obviously can’t be used with the keyboard dock and needs to be removed to plug in for charging. I consider these pretty minor inconveniences since I don’t have the keyboard dock yet. Not really sure how much I’ll even need to use the GPS on my Prime, but if it’s there it might as well be usable.
