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Help HTC Desire Weather Widget showing wrong location

G

glee2000

Lurker
For a few days now my standard HTC Desire Weather widget has started displaying my location as the United Kingdom. I have checked that Auto Sync is enabled, deleted the widget and re-installed and also removed the battery and sim card but still shows United Kingdom.

Any ideas how to fix this or is it something to do with HTC. I am on the Orange network.

Thanks:)
 
Just to report I am seeing the same issue on my HTC Desire ( stock Froyo ), as is my girlfriend on her Desire S. Both are on T-Mo, mine is unbranded, hers is on a T-Mo contract.

Interestingly another friend on a Desire on T-Mo is not seeing the problem.

A quick check on Twitter sees a few folks with the same problem.

Nige
 
i have a desire s and have just posted this problem in the desire s section , same fault , i can add my city where iam " salford " but when i press current location i only see the UK , when i re-add the widget and it says select current location i presed " salford " and that doesnt change no matter where i go , re added the widget and selected current location and it still says UK !!!
 
Seems to be all over all sorts of Android forums, specifically with HTC devices across all networks.

Obviously something amiss with HTC servers somewhere.

Probably one of those "wait and see" type problems.:(

Nige
 
Same problem with my HTC Sensation. In Gateshead, my current location is shown as United Kingdom. If I cross the river into Newcastle, then current location correctly shows Newcastle. Back to Gateshead and problem returns. Got in touch with HTC support who advised me to do a factory reset. It didn't fix the problem.
 
Spoke to soon when I said it was only happening on WiFi. For me it now seems to be showing United Kingdom on both WiFi and data connection however it only seems to happen it certain locations.
 
Same behaviour here. Shows correct location briefly after a reboot then reverts to UK.

I wonder if the System Update I got this morning will fix this problem. I don't know because it won't install on a rooted phone, at least not on mine and at least one other.

Nige
 
The same issue raised it's ugly head just over a year ago. Weather widget would show location down to the village then for some reason it showed the nearest major city.
Similarly, only wi-fi connected Desires suffered. After a few days it was happening on network connections too.

I don't know when it was fixed as I then left the UK but it must have been at some point given it's just started happening again.

Fortunately, here in Thailand it is working correctly suffice to say it doesn't seem to be a global issue.
 
I *may* have a solution... I've had this on-and-off for some time now - This issue had been driving me nuts, but today I think I have got to the bottom of it.

I was in the situation where at work on Cellular, I'd get the widget saying United Kingdom for my location wheras at home it would give the correct town... until I switched to WiFi, when it would say United Kingdom. My wife's android (same network operator) always worked just fine in the same spot so that rules out operator issues as well as the mystical HTC servers. I'd done all sorts of reset short of a factory reset to try to get it to behave but it refused to do so.

What hit me was the significance of it falling apart on wifi at home. Earlier this year, there was a huge privacy furore about iOS and Android devices keeping tabs on users' locations (Android claimed not to keep a log as for iOS devices, but a *cache* for faster resolution).
Anyhoo, I thought this cache was at the centre of the issue so fired up a shell terminal on my rooted Desire and wiped it (I won't go into where it is, there's a much easier way).
After rebooting whilst on WiFi, I forced an update on weather and saw the correct location, yay. But within 10 minutes, it had gone back to saying United Kingdom again. Separately, while I was investigating the cache, I'd installed an app called "Location Cache", by remydemy. I had found that there were a couple of weird locations in my cache with very odd co-ordinates, even after my brutish attack. The app has the option of wiping the cache and advises you to first go into airplane mode before wiping the cache and rebooting. I did exactly that and since then the widget has behaved impeccably.

So, I think, if you have a rooted device, you should use that app to wipe the cache. If you don't have a rooted device, then you'll have to force the cache entries to expire by updating your location on wifi and on cellular in up to fifty different places. There are separate caches for each, and I remember reading that Android only keeps the last fifty places in the cache as a privacy mitigation. I *think* you can force an entry to be cached or refreshed by doing an update in the weather app itself or perhaps by using maps without GPS being active.

I'd be interested in finding out if anyone else finds the same. As I said, this minor issue had been driving me nuts for a while!
 
Thanks, joojanta.

I've got a rooted device, so I tried out the remydemy Location Cache app, but it reports no cache entries for either WiFi or Cell. However, I read some of the market comments and with another app, Location Cache Viewer, I can see there is content in my cache ( and it can play your tracks back to you in a spooky map animation ! )

Sadly this second app doesn't have the option to delete the cache, but reading its comments in market I found instructions on what files to delete ( or rename, just in case ).

I tried with File Expert with root permissions to browse to the location, but it just seems to lock up and I need to FC it.

Just deciding on whether it is worth forking out for Root Explorer, while I Google for alternative methods to delete this cache.

Cheers,

Nige
 
Update 2 :

Doh, this didn't work for me. After clearing the location cache, after a short while on the correct location, it reverted back to United Kingdom.

Something is feeding the location cache with bad Wifi information, it seems.

Back to the drawing board.

N
 
nwpsys said:
Update 2 :

Doh, this didn't work for me. After clearing the location cache, after a short while on the correct location, it reverted back to United Kingdom.

Something is feeding the location cache with bad Wifi information, it seems.

Back to the drawing board.

N
Click to expand...

Like I said, I saw exactly the same thing. Did you try going into Airplane mode then deleting the cache, then rebooting before coming out of Airplane mode?
 
I didn't previously, but I have now.


  • Airplane Mode - on
  • Clear Location Cache
  • Reboot
  • Airplane Mode - off
  • Resync in weather app
  • Still reports UK when wifi on

Been doing a lot of googling on this, and it may not actually have anything to do with the location cache on the device at all.

Google's cloud cache of SSIDs / MAC addresses is what is being queried, but what I don't understand is why in Google Maps with me indoors with no GPS lock, the handset positions me perfectly, but the HTC weather widget can't.

I wonder what the difference is ?


N
 
Mine did this a couple of weeks ago, but it seems to have resolved itself over the last few days. On runnymead aio 3.0.5. Not sure why - didn't do anything. The Rom has more locale 2 included for a faster GPS fix, so maybe this is helping? It's already set for uk on this.

Edit - it is an app called faster fix that is in the rom.
 
I have tried turning wifi off, and within a few minutes, it reverts to showing the city, rather than UK, so the problem seems to be caused by wifi, I will try leaving it off for a few hours to see if it's permanent.
 
Over the last two days I have been out and about in a couple of different locations not too far from where I live and have connected via wifi to two other networks, one on Virgin Media and one on Sky. In both cases my location was shown correctly.

I then came home and connected to my home network via wifi and lo and behold, it's back to showing United Kingdom again. MY GF's phone did exactly the same.

MY ISP is Plusnet if that makes a difference.
 
Well mine and my girlfriends have both reverted to correct location on Wifi, as have a couple of other contacts I have been in touch with.

I think it is just a matter of hanging on.

There is vaguely anecdotal evidence that you can speed up the process by going outdoors while still connected to your wifi and turning on GPS for a while. Assuming you have allowed collection of anonymous location data ( under Settings - Location - Use Wireless Network ), your device may ping the MAC address of your router and the GPS coords back to Google, which they use to populate their cloud-based location database. I read a post from a Google rep in a Google group about this, but there is no definitive response on this being a correct or current procedure.

I went through this, and a couple of days later my location was fixed, but this was almost certainly a coincidence :)

Nige
 
Seems to be an ongoing problem, but is it UK only? Both my & my wife's phones are showing the same symptoms and I have tried most non-root solutions described, with no effect - it still shows "United Kingdom (Current)".
My suspicion would be that it's a server problem rather than device, as it seems pretty widespread, but that's just a hunch - or is it the start of another maker "going thermonuclear"?
If there's a solution that stays put, I'd like to hear it!
 
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