My interesting GPS experience this morning.

[zerocalories]

I re-flashed my Captivate last night to start fresh and new. I didn't get a chance to test the GPS till this morning, but when I did I found something interesting.

Using the out of the box firmware google maps would not lock on at all. I went into the GPS menus and ran the GPS test. After about a minute..nothing. I then changed to the supl.googl.com address and rebooted. Not sure if that helped, but back into the GPS menus and the test I was able to lock onto 9 satellites after about a minute. I had about 10 metes of accuracy and it was keeping up with my speed pretty well.

Now one of the strange issues.. I exited the gps menu and went into Google Maps.. NOTHING. Again took another minute and had my blue dot. It showed about 10m of accuracy most of my trip. I drove about 20 miles and it tracked fairly well, maybe a little behind when crossing roads.

Another issue I saw was that my phone's screen went blank. I unlocked it and google maps was still runing. BUT.. i lost my GPS and had to reaquire a signal. This time it took way longer than a minute to lock on. After that I gave up.

I'm sure others have experienced this issues or if not can repeat them.

Thx.

 

[dantheman2]

I experienced the same thing. Google Maps (the app simply called Maps) does not initialize the gps to get a lock. It uses the gps *if it is available*. To make the lock happen, use another program. Google Navigation works well for this. ONce you get that lock, start Maps. Then Maps works. Rebooting the phone tends to reinitialize the gps to get a lock too.

I think there are two issues with the gps:

1. The gps is not as sensitive as other phones (or appears to be). If this is a hardware limitation, we are screwed somewhat.

2. Many programs that work on other phones to use gps don't work on the captivate to initiate the gps signal. This is a software or firmware issue.


Dan