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All Things GPS

Mine is perfect.Locks in seconds indoors or on a cloudy day.
Before the DI18 update,my location was 100ft off.
I gather the update wasn't supposed to fix GPS, butnow its dead on with Google maps.
About 20 feet off in Sprint nav.I use almost every day.Haven't restarted phone in 2 weeks.
 
ShiftNo said:
Bomix: The only workaround I'm aware of is the cold start setting. Anything else that you use?
Click to expand...

Not sure what Cold starting is but what I do is toggle the GPS on.. wait a couple secs.. Toggle it off.. Toggle On again.. start Google maps.. use the locate me(whatever it's call..) then it's perfect after that.

It's a pain.. the EVO worked flawless.. but I don't use GPS every day.. so for me it's not a big deal.
 
icemanjs4 said:
How do you all check to see the accuracy of your GPS signal?
Click to expand...

To check the actual accuracy -- not the internal estimated accuracy which is uniformly buggy, reporting a bogus estimate 30.0 meters -- download and use the My Tracks app. Plot some actual tracks, both driving and walking. Even better to do this concurrently with a known good phone as well, and use My Tracks on that too. Then you can zoom in and see the tracks overlaid on the map and/or satellite photo in Google. Better yet, you can upload the tracks to Google and post a link here for peer review.

I have found the actual accuracy of the Epic to be pretty decent, comparable to that of my venerable G1.

The Epic's bugs are not in this accuracy level, but in the reliability of getting a satellite lock in the first place. No sense even running a My Tracks test until you have confirmed a good lock. Use the GPS Test app to verify this before recording the track.

It is in this area, locking behavior, that all Epics have an internal bug that is sensitive to time and usage patterns. You may or may not see that bug, or you may see the bug sometimes, depending on how you use your phone -- how often you use the GPS and how often you reboot the device. The Cold Start workaround is a good method to defeat this bug, which is caused by improper handling of time-sensitive GPS cache data. In my experience, the Cold Start workaround works more reliably with 3G data connection than with 4G.
 
Mine has worked 100% of the time, the only time it got confused was when I was going through an tunnel with another road above me.. but it got back on track within 1-2 seconds after exiting the tunnel. I've used it around 20 times in LA since I got the phone on release day.
 
That's impressive, cluckkillerb. I assume you haven't changed anything to get it working?

I wonder what gives. My GPS works okay at times, yet it's pretty bad other times. It's frustrating.
 
mojomojo said:
Mine is perfect.Locks in seconds indoors or on a cloudy day.
Before the DI18 update,my location was 100ft off.
Click to expand...
You are doing something to cycle the cache. And your indication it was off by 100' "before the update" is strange (incorrect) since the same 100' is present after the D118 update.
 
ShiftNo said:
That's impressive, cluckkillerb. I assume you haven't changed anything to get it working?
I wonder what gives. My GPS works okay at times, yet it's pretty bad other times. It's frustrating.
Click to expand...
Your GPS is typical. Everyone has the same bugs in their Epic GPS, it is a question of your usage habits. Also peopel who have not used smartpheons with proper GPS tend to be more forgiving of Epics GPS flaws.

What we know for sure is that on all epics the normal GPS cache flushing is broken, but that some activities can flush it.

You would be best off applying the simple cold start workaround which will eliminate your problem until Samsung completely reworks the GPS as it needs to.
 
I thought I should report on my curious expeiences with the epic 4g while on vacation. I currently live in Honolulu Hawaii and get poor GPS performance. It usually takes a long time to get a lock, like 10+ minutes. It does this whether I use cold start or not, and whether I use GPS Status app to update assistance data or not. It has been this way since I got the phone a month ago.

Recently I went to visit my uncle in San Francisco and brother in San Jose. While there I used my epic and I was surprised that I could get a lock within seconds. Occsionally I would get poor performance, but it was solved by using GPS Status to download assistance data. I'm starting to wonder if the location has something to do with the performance?

BTW, I found that GPS doesn't work when wifi is on. Do they share an antenna?
 
senserd said:
I thought I should report on my curious expeiences with the epic 4g while on vacation. I currently live in Honolulu Hawaii and get poor GPS performance. It usually takes a long time to get a lock, like 10+ minutes. It does this whether I use cold start or not, and whether I use GPS Status app to update assistance data or not. It has been this way since I got the phone a month ago.

Recently I went to visit my uncle in San Francisco and brother in San Jose. While there I used my epic and I was surprised that I could get a lock within seconds. Occsionally I would get poor performance, but it was solved by using GPS Status to download assistance data. I'm starting to wonder if the location has something to do with the performance?

BTW, I found that GPS doesn't work when wifi is on. Do they share an antenna?
Click to expand...

Your location probably has nothing to do with the satellites or the satellite receiver. The locking performance might have something to do with the cell networks used to refresh the aGPS cache. Are you using 4G or 3G? In my experience, a quick lock requires 4G to be off, forcing the network to 3G.

Another factor might be the order in which you do things, especially when using GPS Status. I have not been able to get the GPS Status update of the cache to work consistently for me.

What does work for me, providing a quick refresh and lock, is the following steps in order:

  1. Keep Cold Start on.
  2. Go outside.
  3. Turn off WiFi and 4G from the notifications bar.
  4. Open GPS Test, which turns on the GPS (and gets the cache refresh because I am in Cold Start)
  5. Wait a very few seconds for the multi-satellite lock.
  6. Turn 4G back on.
  7. Open whatever GPS-enabled app I want to use (Google Maps, Navigation, My Tracks, etc.)
 
I have the same finidings as Boomer, and actually discussed this with the developer of GPS status. The GPS status interal forced cache update does not work at all with many Android phoens, and I beleive it is not at all forcing a cache update with Epic. Peopel seeing it IMHO are false positiving.

As far as your experience in Hawaii you are not presenting a lot of data as to your settings. Wifi could definitely affect things, as could 4g and airaves (even those of your neighbors).
 
QUick question my GPS seems to work, however when I turn it on via notification top pull down it does not have an audible click when I touch the icon like the wi-fi or the 4g icons do. Does anyone else experience this? Thanks
 
boomerbubba said:
Your location probably has nothing to do with the satellites or the satellite receiver. The locking performance might have something to do with the cell networks used to refresh the aGPS cache. Are you using 4G or 3G? In my experience, a quick lock requires 4G to be off, forcing the network to 3G.

Another factor might be the order in which you do things, especially when using GPS Status. I have not been able to get the GPS Status update of the cache to work consistently for me.

What does work for me, providing a quick refresh and lock, is the following steps in order:

  1. Keep Cold Start on.
  2. Go outside.
  3. Turn off WiFi and 4G from the notifications bar.
  4. Open GPS Test, which turns on the GPS (and gets the cache refresh because I am in Cold Start)
  5. Wait a very few seconds for the multi-satellite lock.
  6. Turn 4G back on.
  7. Open whatever GPS-enabled app I want to use (Google Maps, Navigation, My Tracks, etc.)
Click to expand...

Hey thanks for the tip. I had tried running GPS with cold start/hot start and toggling 4g on/off, but never at the same time! I tested it yesterday and today to make sure. The cold start+4g off worked for me. It is curious that hot start worked while in San Jose but not in Hawaii.

As for the question about my settings:
In Hawaii I previously had
wifi on
4g on
bluetooth off
hot start

I would run GPS test, and it would frequently get 6-10 satellites in view but 0 in use unless I let it run for a long time (like 10+ minutes). I had tried toggling wifi and 4g on and off in all 4 combinations. I also tried switching from hot start to cold start (but not cold start with wifi and 4g radios off).

When in San Jose I had
wifi on
4g off (SJ has no wimax)
bluetooth off
hot start

While there I found that I would get a lock immediately as long as wifi was off and the aGPS data was not old.
 
senserd said:
While there I found that I would get a lock immediately as long as wifi was off and the aGPS data was not old.
Click to expand...
There are a lot of variables that can cause the aGPS data to be properly refreshed, some known (phone reset, cold start enabled) some unknown. We just know it doesnt do it consistently. So your experience maybe the result of your airplane mode, or of the Epic properly realizing you were in a very different geographical region, or another variable
Please do let us know how you do back home in Hawaii over time with cold stat enabled.
 
Can someone turn on and off your GPS via the icon and see if they have the audible system click or not. Thanks alot I hope im not starting to have a prob with this phone
 
bryanberlin said:
Can someone turn on and off your GPS via the icon and see if they have the audible system click or not. Thanks alot I hope im not starting to have a prob with this phone
Click to expand...

I also get no audible click. This really is not a GPS problem, but a problem with the Epic user interface, possibly TouchWiz.
 
There is one small piece of good news, the first tangible evidence that Samsung might actually do something about the GPS bugs by bundling a fix with the Froyo release in the pipeline.

Developers with access to a leaked official beta, based on Froyo, report that the bogus 30-meter-accuracy bug seems to be gone, or at least the estimated accuracy is different. No word yet on whether the more serious satellite-locking bug is fixed. I would want controlled testing on that one anyway before I would believe it to be resolved.

I am not inviting anyone to turn this GPS thread into a Froyo thread.:eek:
 
For the most part my Epic's GPS works fine. Today it wasn't working right so I quickly went into CacheMate and deleted the phones cache. It took no more then a few seconds and then when I restarted maps it picked me up right away.
 
Toast95135 said:
For the most part my Epic's GPS works fine. Today it wasn't working right so I quickly went into CacheMate and deleted the phones cache. It took no more then a few seconds and then when I restarted maps it picked me up right away.
Click to expand...
Toast, thanks. Interesting. are you rooted? for a lot of cache clear program to work root is needed.
 
senserd said:
When in San Jose I had
wifi on
4g off (SJ has no wimax)
bluetooth off
hot start

While there I found that I would get a lock immediately as long as wifi was off and the aGPS data was not old.
Click to expand...

San Jose does have wimax just not officially... I get a good 4G signal at my house and in the neighborhood I get full bars.
 
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