Help GPS showing incorrect locations

[hallstevenson]

Today, sitting at the dentist's office in Centerville, my Eris said I was in Mansfield (OH?). My wife's phone, the same Eris model, said she was in Lansing (MI ?). We were sitting next to each other....

 

[thetomlin2]

I had my first problem with the GPS, I was driving about 15 miles north of St Paul and it said I was somewhere in South Dakota. I turned the phone off and back on again and it worked fine.

 

[rbasl]

I finally called VZW tech support about this problem. The guy walked through all my settings and confirmed it was set up right and should not be acting this way. He was not personally familiar with the problem. (maybe he should read some forums - there are MANY other postings on this issue). He said the only other option was for them to replace it under warranty. Not a very attractive solution as far as I am concerned. I have a lot of time invested in tweaking settings, downloading apps (some paid), etc. and would rather not go through that again. The warranty is one year. I think I will wait a little while and see if another update comes out that fixes the problem.

 

[hallstevenson]

I posted in another area here related to this. One rep told me to swap the phone (since I'm in my 1st 30 days) for another (brand new) one. Rep yesterday disputed that "fix". In the end, he, VZW officially, and HTC say the solution is to pull the battery daily or every other day. He claims powering it off only puts it to sleep and doesn't do anything "reset" wise. I told him I'm not pulling the battery every day... Of course, I could do that for a few days and when the problem still occurs, and I'm convinced it will, then what will he say ?

 

[rbasl]

They said my issue was covered under warranty so I had 1 year to get a replacement (rather than under the 30 day satisfaction guarrantee).

 

[hallstevenson]

Phone has been working relatively good for the past 24 hours until I was in an area of building at work with steel walls and I was near the middle ... and lost all cellular signal. First, it lost "3G" signal and then it lost "1X/D". The weather app displayed "Cannot display data..." or something to that effect". When I walked to a different area and re-gained reception, I did something really fancy 'cause it (the phone) thinks it's in Ann Arbor MI !! Google Maps (with GPS *off*) agrees with Ann Arbor.

VZW tech support did give me HTC's support phone number... Maybe they'll have a clue or at least be aware of it.

 

[TheOmega]

I don

 

[hallstevenson]

Going to check that website for tower locations and I suspect I'm going to see the same as you, that is, the phone tells me I'm at the same location as a cell tower. I know from memory, or pretty close, where it tells for two locations.

Hmmm, didn't help... Based on the map, VZW has NO towers in the city of Dayton. Odds are they've sold them and lease now.

 

[TheOmega]

I'm sure VZW does not "own" all the towers they use. Only one of the two shown on that map in my area is reported as a VZW tower. I'm sure they lease or Piggy-back on many others.

My main point being my location is only identified as a current tower location (with the GPS off) no matter who is reported to "own" it.

 

[Calab]

...so, any updates on this issue?

I'm in Calgary, AB, Canada. I just noticed tonight that my HTC Weather widget is reporting my current location as "Calgary" but definately not MY Calgary. Weather between "Calgary" and "Current Location Calgary" is very different.

I'm assuming that it's showing me "Calgary, TX" or something similar, BUT I only see ONE Calgary when I go to add a new location.

Is there any way to see more details about where the widget thinks that the "current location" is?

 

[hallstevenson]

Update ? I gave up on HTC's widgets.... There's something broken with them. I'm using "Weather Widget" and it updates properly. It's not as "nice" as HTC's widget, I'll admit.

Oh yeah, this is a "GPS" thread ... HTC's widgets don't use GPS for location. I've experimented quite a bit to be sure of that.

 

[rbasl]

I stopped having the problem about a month ago. The only thing that I did that might have fixed it was do a long battery pull. When I first had the problem, I pulled the battery for about 30 seconds and reinstalled it. That didn't help. Shortly before the location problem stopped, I pulled the battery again then forgot about it for an hour. It seemed like it started improving right after that. Worth a try.

 

[L0stS0ul]

I posted this in another thread but just saw this one and thought I'd post it here too

I've had something similar happen. I'm here in Virginia yet it's telling me I'm in rural Georgia. I went so far as to downgrade to an older ROM and still had the problem. Upgraded back to the current release and it was still there. Using one of the GPS status applications I was able to see that I could only see 2-3 satellites and it was not getting a full connection to them. The more interesting thing is they were not in the correct locations. I was ready to head to the verizon store and the next morning it was back in the right location. I've since had the problem one more time this time on a trip from VA Beach to Washington DC. The GPS worked fine for the first 2 hours, then for about 20 minutes could not find us, then was fine for the rest of the trip.

I was able to come up with a hypothesis. I think that there is some link to the cell towers in the way our GPS works. I know that our eris's use aGPS which uses the cell network to help the internal GPS keep a fix. I'm guessing that there can be issues at the cell towers that can cause our GPS to think we're off in lala land for a while and then when the cell tower is updated again we're fixed.

It's the only thing I can think of. As we moved out of one cell region into another my gps started working again on that last trip.

 

[hallstevenson]

I was able to come up with a hypothesis. I think that there is some link to the cell towers in the way our GPS works. I know that our eris's use aGPS which uses the cell network to help the internal GPS keep a fix. I'm guessing that there can be issues at the cell towers that can cause our GPS to think we're off in lala land for a while and then when the cell tower is updated again we're fixed.

It's the only thing I can think of. As we moved out of one cell region into another my gps started working again on that last trip.

that's my idea to but to fix it would require VZW to acknowledge that. I even had a tech support schedule a conference call between myself, him, someone from VZW's "location" group, and HTC. The "location" people refused and said "pull the battery". That does work when the phone gets stuck with an incorrect location and when restarted, it reacquires the correct (current) location.

 

[L0stS0ul]

For me pulling the battery didn't fix it. As I said I actually downgraded my ROM to the first update to the eris and it was still off. Then did the OTA upgrade and it was still off. Pulled the battery and let it sit for a long while and it was still off. It always showed me in the same incorrect location. I was literally on my way in to the verizon store when I checked it again and it was working again. I also did the roaming updates during this time as well. Nothing was going to fix it that I could do.

That's why I think it was actually something wrong with the tower. Then actually seeing the exact same behavior with a tower that was out on my trip pretty much confirmed it for me that it's not my phone but verizons location service.

 

[jaybez13]

I had basically the same problem on Sprint network. Would always show me like 2 1/2 miles away in about the same location even though I didn't have any privacy settings directing it to mock or generalize my location. I went to settings/privacy and chose "Set your location" and I input my present location. It immediately updated to the address I input. I then Changed the settings back to "Detect your location" and it seems to have somehow calibrated the gps to know where I am. Not sure if this is going to be sustained but I'll cross my fingers. Hope this helps someone.