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Help GPS issues?

seepage said:
beards Its on 2.2 via kies. have only ever updated via kies.
It is now rooted and one click lag fix as well. which has fixed the lag.
It is quite annoying as I had my GPS working perfectly before froyo.
Click to expand...

Maybe its worth trying Doc's Froyo ROM over at XDA. Very fast rooted and customized ROM, available in both JPA and JPO flavors. I think people get best results with JPO.
If youre not scared of flashing custom unofficial ROMs, I recommend this one. Its very fast and good GPS
 
seepage said:
beards Its on 2.2 via kies. have only ever updated via kies.
It is now rooted and one click lag fix as well. which has fixed the lag.
It is quite annoying as I had my GPS working perfectly before froyo.
Click to expand...
How weird... that is the total opposite for me. I could not get any and I do mean any sats or fix on Eclair. Now with Froyo the GPS is superb.

Anyway... more to your issue ~ FasterFix shouldn't give you a blank screen.
Are you a member of xda-devs? If so I'd consider posting this info in the xda-devs topic I referred you to.

If this does not help have a look at 'Tracker Booster'. It's used to get the best possible GPS signal by keeping the GPS unit active in the background.
 
AlexanderA said:
Maybe its worth trying Doc's Froyo ROM over at XDA. Very fast rooted and customized ROM, available in both JPA and JPO flavors. I think people get best results with JPO.
If youre not scared of flashing custom unofficial ROMs, I recommend this one. Its very fast and good GPS
Click to expand...
Yes, agree... Having said that I used the samsungfirmware.com JPO ROM which is absolutely beautiful with GPS.
 
Someone told me there were hardware revisions, But who knows, has anyone tried any brand new handsets? is the phone coming shipped from Samsung with 2.2 now? i'm still waiting on my one.
 
Pleased you did the root & lagfix.
Click to expand...

Ohh yeah it is simply awsome and super easy! It's almost like getting a brand new phone :D

Well regarding the GPS
I tried Faster fix got the black screen, reinstalled busybox, still black screen restarted phone and voila' started up fine... Well I't did something... now I can see 6-7 sats but it still won't log on to any. One time it did for about 2 seconds and that was it... Sats are stil visible but it won't get a fix on any of them. :(

I'm thinking about Making a backup of stuff, and then doing a factory reset if that might help... (It can't get any worse) ;)
 
It just stays like this and doesn't fluctuate alot like before but it doesn't get a fix and thus can't determine a location.
 

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Guys,
There's another good software App for GPS locking. Try Tracker Booster.
It was recommended to me by someone at Samsung to try when I had all the issues on Eclair. I never did try it though as the following day I put Froyo on and it's been great since.
Lets face it, if one of my contacts recommended it, it may have some weight in doing the job.
 
cleanermonkey said:
Sats are stil visible but it won't get a fix on any of them. :(
Click to expand...

Hi

I have Froyo on a simfree UK SGS. I know exactly what you mean. I regularly travel abroad. Everytime when I arrive at a new country or return back to the UK, I have exactly the problem that you refer to.

I have found out how to get around this in my case but you'll not like the answer, because I don't like the remedy either!

What I do is change the screen setting timeout to >10minutes. Then using GPS Test, I leave the phone somewhere in view of the sky. Just like you say, the phone slowly picks up sats in view but doesn't lock on to them. Have had 9 at one stage in the intital startup in a new country for about a minute with every one of them >35 SNR and yet still no immediate lock! However, eventually (sometimes after 15mins) it will lock on to the satelittes. Next time you use the phone (provided it is roughly in the same location) it should lock on a lot quicker <2mins. You can then return the screen timeout to whereever it was before.

The key to this appears to be upping the screen time out. When I've left it in its normal 30 sec timeout, often GPS Status restarts again from fresh when reactivating the screen lock and never fully establishes the GPS sat lock on.

Give it a go and see whether this works for you.

If it does, does anyone know why it should take this long for a cold start in an area where the phone is not familiar? In my case it's a new country and presumably in 'cleanermonkey's case it might be because they have yet to allow the phone to run through it's initial fix finding phase. Once it's done this, the GPS works roughly how I would expect it to work. 'Jogtracker' has a little bit of wondering around when it's left on a chair outside for 15mins but no more than about 15 metres.

Hope this helps.
 
Okay Factory reset did absolutely nothing... exept wipe all my good stuff :-P

Think I'll get tracker booster and then try your 'tip' Firefox73... right after I lagfixed this baby again ;-)



Well you were right, I don't like the answer, but I like that you guys answered... gives me hope and something to try, instead of just sitting here staring at the night sky and knowing that out there somewhere is 6-10 sattelites just floating around not being used by me :p
 
firefox73 said:
Hi

I have Froyo on a simfree UK SGS. I know exactly what you mean. I regularly travel abroad. Everytime when I arrive at a new country or return back to the UK, I have exactly the problem that you refer to.

I have found out how to get around this in my case but you'll not like the answer, because I don't like the remedy either!

What I do is change the screen setting timeout to >10minutes. Then using GPS Test, I leave the phone somewhere in view of the sky. Just like you say, the phone slowly picks up sats in view but doesn't lock on to them. Have had 9 at one stage in the intital startup in a new country for about a minute with every one of them >35 SNR and yet still no immediate lock! However, eventually (sometimes after 15mins) it will lock on to the satelittes. Next time you use the phone (provided it is roughly in the same location) it should lock on a lot quicker <2mins. You can then return the screen timeout to whereever it was before.

The key to this appears to be upping the screen time out. When I've left it in its normal 30 sec timeout, often GPS Status restarts again from fresh when reactivating the screen lock and never fully establishes the GPS sat lock on.

Give it a go and see whether this works for you.

If it does, does anyone know why it should take this long for a cold start in an area where the phone is not familiar? In my case it's a new country and presumably in 'cleanermonkey's case it might be because they have yet to allow the phone to run through it's initial fix finding phase. Once it's done this, the GPS works roughly how I would expect it to work. 'Jogtracker' has a little bit of wondering around when it's left on a chair outside for 15mins but no more than about 15 metres.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Give Tracker Booster a go. I would be interested to hear your comments.
 
cleanermonkey said:
Okay Factory reset did absolutely nothing... exept wipe all my good stuff :-P

Think I'll get tracker booster and then try your 'tip' Firefox73... right after I lagfixed this baby again ;-)



Well you were right, I don't like the answer, but I like that you guys answered... gives me hope and something to try, instead of just sitting here staring at the night sky and knowing that out there somewhere is 6-10 sattelites just floating around not being used by me :p
Click to expand...
The thing is, you shouldn't have to resort to leaving the phone on that long just to get a satellite lock.
Here's the link for Tracker Booster.
 
Beards said:
Give Tracker Booster a go. I would be interested to hear your comments.
Click to expand...

Thanks Beards.

I'd been using TrackerBooster since 2.1.

I thought it had a margin improvement but this may be the placebo effect of me hoping that anything is better than nothing. It definitely does NOT appear to improve the lock on times but did seem to sedate the erratic behaviour of the GPS prior to Froyo.

With 2.2 though, the OS itself seems to have controlled the absurbed traces that I used to get, which makes TrackerBooster seem more redundant.

I do think that the GPS on this model either is a weaker unit than many other models or is still flawed by poor reception. When flying I cannot get a signal at all, whereas it sickens me to say, the iPhone 4 can. Equally some of the older Nokias seem to have good satelitte reception. Can't speak for all phones, just those from colleagues that I've compared the SGS with.
 
Beards said:
The thing is, you shouldn't have to resort to leaving the phone on that long just to get a satellite lock.
Here's the link for Tracker Booster.
Click to expand...

I totally agree.

I'm not techie with the phones GPS system but have a working knowledge of certain navigation systems. I believe (could be completely wrong) that the GPS needs to compare a satelitte signal with it's inbuilt almanac of known satelitte information when starting from a location far removed from it's last known position. Could it be that this downloading/comparing known data is simply particualarly slow when starting up cold on the SGS verses other GPSs. It seems to begin seeing satelittes within about 10 seconds, its just the locking on to them that annoyingly takes sooo long....
 
with tracker booster i got a much better result but still no where near my pre froyo results and it took it half a mile to find a lock
 
Hmm this is getting more and more wierd... Now the small GPS icon stays "active" even though I have closed all GPS related apps and turned off GPS in settings. And today when I got off the train I tried turning on my GPS and GPS status... it almost emediately saw 10, then 11 and lastly 12 sattelites and logged on to all of them... quickly I turned on Mytracks and the position it had me on was spot on... but the joy was too good to be true because as I moved down the street and into an appartment store (almost like a mall) it stayed back on the bridge where it had first located me... and the 12 sattelites "stayed" fixed even though I moved inside and the Long/lat didn't change at all :(

Very strange... and as I was going home I tried it again and this time No sattelites visible what so ever... even after 20 minutes. I'm getting very frustrated as the phone with the root/lagfix is sooo friggin sweet and smooth that this No GPS at all is driving me to tears.
Well in the "mall" I wen't to a phone store who directed me to another store on monday morning where they will have a technitian who could then try to fully reset it so I could start over with updating, rooting, lagfixing plopping apps and contacts on etc.

Does anybody know if I my self can do the re-setting so I wouldn't have to wait untill Monday and could get cracking tonight? AND if yes if I should un lagfix before the re-set?

If no. Should I unlagfix and unroot before turning the phone over to the "expert"?

Thanx in advance (and just generally for all your time and effort in getting this
 
cleanermonkey said:
Hmm this is getting more and more wierd... Now the small GPS icon stays "active" even though I have closed all GPS related apps and turned off GPS in settings. And today when I got off the train I tried turning on my GPS and GPS status... it almost emediately saw 10, then 11 and lastly 12 sattelites and logged on to all of them... quickly I turned on Mytracks and the position it had me on was spot on... but the joy was too good to be true because as I moved down the street and into an appartment store (almost like a mall) it stayed back on the bridge where it had first located me... and the 12 sattelites "stayed" fixed even though I moved inside and the Long/lat didn't change at all :(

Very strange... and as I was going home I tried it again and this time No sattelites visible what so ever... even after 20 minutes. I'm getting very frustrated as the phone with the root/lagfix is sooo friggin sweet and smooth that this No GPS at all is driving me to tears.
Well in the "mall" I wen't to a phone store who directed me to another store on monday morning where they will have a technitian who could then try to fully reset it so I could start over with updating, rooting, lagfixing plopping apps and contacts on etc.

Does anybody know if I my self can do the re-setting so I wouldn't have to wait untill Monday and could get cracking tonight? AND if yes if I should un lagfix before the re-set?

If no. Should I unlagfix and unroot before turning the phone over to the "expert"?

Thanx in advance (and just generally for all your time and effort in getting this
Click to expand...
 
firefox73 said:
Hi

I have Froyo on a simfree UK SGS. I know exactly what you mean. I regularly travel abroad. Everytime when I arrive at a new country or return back to the UK, I have exactly the problem that you refer to.

I have found out how to get around this in my case but you'll not like the answer, because I don't like the remedy either!

What I do is change the screen setting timeout to >10minutes. Then using GPS Test, I leave the phone somewhere in view of the sky. Just like you say, the phone slowly picks up sats in view but doesn't lock on to them. Have had 9 at one stage in the intital startup in a new country for about a minute with every one of them >35 SNR and yet still no immediate lock! However, eventually (sometimes after 15mins) it will lock on to the satelittes. Next time you use the phone (provided it is roughly in the same location) it should lock on a lot quicker <2mins. You can then return the screen timeout to whereever it was before.

The key to this appears to be upping the screen time out. When I've left it in its normal 30 sec timeout, often GPS Status restarts again from fresh when reactivating the screen lock and never fully establishes the GPS sat lock on.

Give it a go and see whether this works for you.

If it does, does anyone know why it should take this long for a cold start in an area where the phone is not familiar? In my case it's a new country and presumably in 'cleanermonkey's case it might be because they have yet to allow the phone to run through it's initial fix finding phase. Once it's done this, the GPS works roughly how I would expect it to work. 'Jogtracker' has a little bit of wondering around when it's left on a chair outside for 15mins but no more than about 15 metres.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...



You dont need to change the screen timeout setting.
In gps test the top option under settings is "keep screen on" so it stays on when the app is open but wont affect enything else.
 
My GPS is working again... It's not "fixed" but at least its working like before... which means it jumps around a bit but fairly fast to log on so... well better than not working at all. ;)

Don't know if it was all the mucking about trying out different apps running fixes, messing in the GPS testing but now it's working again so big smile from here...

This is what I did after my last post...
I tried alot of stuff even changing all the settings arround in the dialer method. In the end I ended up Factory resetting it and then before doing any thing else I ran the dialer *#*#3214789650#*#* then I deleted GPS data and ran the get position test for a looong time.
(I actually tried this twice as the first time it locked up and froze)
I turned off wifi support and only turned on GPS and When I opened maps it found my position and in GPS status app it saw and locked on to 7 sats. Well it is doing something better than before... it KEPPS a fix on some sattelites. Sometimes it would loose one or two but would pick up again/or new ones but it never dropped the signal completely like it did before :D

I allready tried the deleting and the get test before the resetting but to no avail... But maybe in all the mucking about I activated something, or the 2xfactory reset did the trick Im not sure.

I just want to thank you guys for all your time and help... it's really nice to have somewhere to turn when stuff like happens. :D
 
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