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Help Moto Droid GPS Problems

After my GPS conked out (mid rural trip!) I came to this forum and tried all the suggestions posted here, to no avail. Removed every app, pulled battery, tried all permutations of settings (particularly the Wi Fi), nada.

Went to the local Verizon store, got a new phone (I was under 30 days/no charge) and new phone is working so far. I reinstalled all apps except a task killer app that I thought might be entangled with the GPS instruction set.

I don't know how common a problem this is, but mightn't it get addressed better if people were aggressive about service (change phones if within 30 days, call carrier, ask for manager, etc. etc.)?
 
Mine stoppd working today and I fixed it. I read another post which said to download. Gps test by mike lockwood. I ran the test. Also Whithin the Gps test I cleared the ailing data. Rebooted the phone and gps was working.
Before the test I tried restoring and wiping my whole system and cache. This did not help.
So just run the test.
 
After reading these responses, I uninstalled Advanced Task Killer and so far the GPS seems to be working fine now. It's only been a few days so I'll post if there are any more problems.
 
Long time lurker - just registered to note that I had this same GPS problem, uninstalled my task manager, and have not had any problems since.
 
I had a similar problem for about 4 days, and finally did a hard reset (wipes user data) and started over. GPS is working great, and the phone's a lot faster than it was. I'm going to be a lot more careful about what apps I install.
 
try turning on the 'Power Control' widgit on your home screen. then use that to cycle the power off then back on for your GPS locator. Worked for me... and I didn't even have to reboot.
Good luck.
 
Had this same problem today and fixed it in my case, happy to share.

Had the Droid for about a month. No problem at all with the GPS, already used it on trips, played with it to work and around town. Worked perfect. Then today, I'm taking my daughter to a sleepover and I have a chat with my Droid and tell it where we are going (love voice rec BTW, amazing!). Navigation loaded up and all I got was "Searching for GPS..." Very similar problem to what you guys have been saying. Go to Google Maps and it shows me on the map, only accurate within 1800 meters (vicinity of a cell tower my guess). Then it really freaks me out and shows me in Central Mexico. I'm driving down the road and the blue arrow is showing me moving, only in the middle of the Mexican Wasteland 1000 miles south of the Mexican border. Kinda funny.

Well, I get to researching and find this thread and start to realize that something was causing the GPS to screw up. Followed some advice in here, uninstalled Advanced TK and that did nothing. Soft reboot, hard reboot, hard reboot after 15 minute battery pull, nothing worked.

Then I figured out the cause of the problem.

I have the Power Widget on one of my screens. I also installed a widget last night for Toggle GPS On/Off.

The two conflict with the other. If you turn GPS on and off using the Power Widget, then the Toggle Widget doesn't like it. Imagine having two light switches for one light at the top of the stairs, the other at the bottom. The light at the top of the stairs can be powered off and at the same time one of those switches will be in the on position.

At least that is the way I envision it.

I uninstalled the GPS Toggle On/Off and I'm back to normal, blue arrow driving down the round with an error of about 6 feet.

So, my advice is to look at the Power Widget, it is probably conflicting with something and fighting for control of the GPS.

UPDATE: Out and about running errands and the GPS got worse. This time GPS Status wouldn't even open. Hitting "My Location" in Maps caused a FC.

Uninstalled Advanced TK, did a 15 minute battery pull, reboot and the problem was fixed.
 
I was having the same problem about 2 weeks after my Droid was new. It worked fine at first.
:cool:
As suggested by some of the posts I unloaded some applications and removed the battery for 15 minutes. Seems to be ok now. Hope I don't have to do this every few weeks.
 
got this same problem today..tried turning on/off, uninstalling programs etc and nothing worked. i uninstalled the power widget, restarted and it seems to have fixed the problem.

sidenote: i still have adv task killer so that doesnt seem to be a problem for me.

so hopefully this fix is permanent.
 
just wanted to add my GPS worked great until a few weeks ago then nothing

I found this thread removed the battery let it sit for 15 min and I'm good to go
 
My Droid kept having worse and worse anomalies, then finally died completely this past weekend. I've got a warranty replacement that so far is working great.
 
Had same problem with GPS not connecting. After reading other posts, I removed Weatherbug and restarted Droid and it works great for now here in Nebraska
 
Yo guys... I just registered after fixing my GPS. My Droid X is pretty new. My GPS hasn't been working, I tried a bunch of stuff that was suggested (power off, battery out, force close programs). BUT what did it was like some people said.... I got rid of the Motorola GPS/WiFi/etc toggles and replaced it with the Android "Power Control" widget. Then I turned off the GPS, restarted the phone, turned On the GPS and then Magic! GPS has been perfect since!!! Hope this helps!
 
I have been testing a Droid starting from the US West coast all the way to Zhuhai China, Macao and Hong Kong over the past couple of weeks.

Fixes in Hong Kong are fast and accurate, if and only if the phone service is active. If it is turned off, fixes do not occur. Toggling phone service on and off, seems to disable getting fixes in lock step with the phone service being on/off.

In Zhuhia fixes were erratic, would sometimes take place if cell phone service was on, but get this: the fix was off by several hundred miles. The fix accuracy was abysmal, on the order of a 1000 feet or so. Satellites which were reported to be directly overhead and without obstructions would come and go as if they were phantoms.

The tests that I conducted were extensive and repeatable. I carried them out many, many times and got almost exactly the same results over and over. In other words predictable repeatability.

These tests imply certain things.
1. That cell phone service is necessary for getting a cold fix. That cell phone service does not guarantee reliable rough fixes, and such a "bad rough fix" is used, this erroneous position information somehow begets totally bogus satellite positions and fixes.
2. That satellite constellation almanac information is not being used properly or saved for future fixes.
3. The tactics being used by GPS enabled EPIRBS and PLB's to get cold fixes for machines that have been off for years and require a good fix within 20 seconds is not being used.
4. That whoever is responsible for this totally unsatisfactory situation should be put immediately to work fixing this.

The GPS control panel should allow users to do a cold start using user entered location and other means to reset the GPS when it gets into a loop where it can't get a fix.
 
download gps test but it seem no satellite, restored my phone to factory state, download gps test still no sight of sattllite.

The fix was to hold my phone from the face side with right hand and slap it on my left hand. Magically it started to work again. But if I hold my phone from the back slapping it the other way didn't break it. :) was going to go for waranty if doing that breaks it. :( but still works.

jli
 
I don't get it works and not work again. tired of it, my HTC Incredible works all the time. Always locks in few seconds, and it's usually around 2 meters dead on.

Is it motorola that drop the ball or verizon?

anybody rooted droid x and works better?
 
If anyone's still watching this thread, I just found a useful tidbit at Rogers HTC Magic no GPS signal! - CyanogenMod Forum

spyke555 recommends GPS Test (the application by Mike Lockwood on the Market). It has an option to "Clear Aiding Data", which is what spyke555 recommends. He also provides a nice set of GPS technical explanations.

I'd been receiving absolutely no satellites with my Droid X, but once I did the Clear Aiding Data action, the phone started getting the satellites.
 
Tried all the above suggestion and they didn't work, found a co-work with a samsung on the same network and his didn't work either. There has to be a hardware or software problem and someone needs to own up to it,either verizon or google, now i know they are going to point finger at each other because they always do which makes for unhappy consumers. SOMEONE PLEASE FIX THE PROBLEM BOTH COMPANY'S NEED TO LOOK INTO THE PROBLEM. once there a problem with the red button on the side of my X that was used to take pix which stopped working after a major update complained to a few people and i am sure a few other people complained and low and behold the problem was fixed on my phone in a few days. SO PLEASE VERIZON AND GOOGLE MAPS LOOK INTO THIS ISSUE AND MAKE YOUR CUSTOMERS HAPPY AGAIN.
 
I have a DROID X and I'm having the same issue. I live in Maryland, but right now my cellphone has me in Macon, GA, around 4053 Forsyth Road to be precise. I'm kind of worried about this. It was like this yesterday also, at the same place. Any ideas?

Corvid said:
Well, I live in Indiana and my Droid believes that I'm in California. When I use applications like CellFinder or even Google Maps, it shows that I'm in California. Even the weather applications and timezone show CA information. I've changed each thing individually to my actual location, but after a few minutes when the applications auto-update, it changes back to California. I don't know what the hell is going on. :confused:
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Thanks for the tip. I have been having issues with my GPS for a few weeks and didn't realize I had downloaded the Weatherbug app around the same time.

I just uninstalled the weatherbug app and my GPS started working again.

Thanks! Jeremy

keefer said:
I, like others, have just had their GPS mysteriously stop working all of a sudden. With my garmin on one leg and my droid on the other (wife was driving ;) ), the garmin was working fine and the droid pretty much not at all. GPS Status was showing 0/3 satellites.

Anyway, after much searching (and doing all the normal restart, take battery out, etc.), I saw one post suggesting to uninstall weatherbug and reboot. My GPS works perfectly again after that.

If you don't have weatherbug, then maybe some other GPS app is doing something wrong? All I know is that's worked for a few people so far. Good luck.
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this may sound weird but i fixed my gps. i am using the bh6x battery but not the bh6x cover i was using the cover that came with the phone just thought for the hell of it i would put the cover that came with the bh6x battery which it says to us with the bh6x battery and my gps came back. CRAZY!!! so for the hell of it i put the stock cover back on and the gps stopped working so if you are using a bh6x battery you better be using the bh6x cover that came with the battery.
 
I think my GPS issues were WeatherBug related also. I had trouble uninstalling- tried several times but screen would go black and a droid OS file would crash (sorry, I didn't note the name). On one of the last attempts, my phone just rebooted by itself. :mad:

The odd thing is that lately my phone has randomly rebooted several times. We'll see how things go after getting rid of WeatherButt...
 
I tried everything everyone mentioned above. I finally figured out what the problem was. I needed to re-calibrate the compass. Everything worked perfect after that...GPS worked and Navigation works.
 
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