Help 2 Same Galaxy S yet different GPS performance!

[goyal.sanchit]

Hello!

This is not really a problem but a strange thing I noticed. Me and my brother both have Samsung I9000 Galaxy S. Both the phones run exactly on the same firmware i.e. 2.3.3.

Yesterday we were going somewhere in the car and thus using Google maps. My phone was easily able to get a GPS lock while the other one never got the GPS lock even once during the whole time!!


Does that mean a faulty component? Also it suggest that there might be some phones with a faulty equipment and some with good equipment.

Regards

 

[RCinFLA]

There are numerous posts on the topic. It is possible there is a hardware defect in one unit but it is more likely the starting conditions are different between units.

GPS requires some pre-knowledge to know what satellites to look for. Assisted GPS should provide this info but it isn't alway provided by the cellphone network.

Getting satellite lock with no info on what satellites to look for can take a very long time. Install an app called GPS Test so you can see what satellites are starting to get aquired.

You should always try to get a lock before you start moving. Additional time offset shifts and Doppler frequency shifts complicate the satellite aquire process.

 

[goyal.sanchit]

Thanks. Thats a very informative post! The both phones had different networks so its possible that 1 network provided values and thus the phone got the GPS lock while other didnt get it.