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weak GPS signal problem?

Is anyone experiencing problem with their GPS signal? Mine would lose the GPS lock constantly. Thanks.

Working fine on my end. Out and back, my drive was 5 hours total.
Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk

No, no problems at all. And I used the GPS allot.
Sent from my LG-H918 using Tapatalk

Make sure yours is set to High accuracy. Mine was not after set up. I had to change.
Sent from my SM-T813 using Tapatalk

Even in high accuracy, I lose the gps signal frequently. Sigh

Do you have a case on your phone?
I just got my cases in and have noticed weaker gps performance since putting the phone in a case.

I've been having major GPS problems. Going for a run and expecting the phone to track my route and calculate my speed accurately shouldn't be too much to ask in late 2016. But my phone constantly loses the GPS signal (this was never a problem with my previous phone in the same location) and even when it doesn't, it can't figure out where I am. My run traces often show me two streets over in addition to thinking I'm jumping back and forth across a busy 5-lane road every 5 seconds or so. I run 6 miles and the phone thinks I've gone 8.25. Not useful for training for events.
Even if you don't want to use the phone to track exercise, there's another reason the bad GPS is annoying. It makes it impossible to take advantage of the feature allowing you to unlock the phone without using your fingerprint or pin based on your location. I have my phone set to be unlocked at home, but the phone apparently can't tell when I'm at home, making this setting completely useless.
As to GPS issues while driving, I haven't noticed them, but I've not used the phone for navigating either.
Would like to mention that while I have a case on it, it is quite light and doesn't seem like it should interfere so badly with the GPS. Will try checking the accuracy without the case and will update if this resolves the issues. Also, I have tried tinkering with the GPS accuracy settings but even selecting all the options to optimize accuracy has not worked for me.

The only thing you can do to test the case theory is to use the phone without that case. That said, it is possible you have a defective phone. I have read many articles about poor GPS being caused by a loose, internal connection. You might want to take your phone to a repair facility and have them check it out.
I have a US996 and, so far, GPS is nice.

how
wtharp2 said:
The only thing you can do to test the case theory is to use the phone without that case. That said, it is possible you have a defective phone. I have read many articles about poor GPS being caused by a loose, internal connection. You might want to take your phone to a repair facility and have them check it out.
I have a US996 and, so far, GPS is nice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how can you change it to high?

No issues on my end yet, I use it navigating on a daily basis (racking up Waze points basically) and walking around, can't think of maybe one time it lost GPS driving and that was only briefly.

Mine was misbehaving horribly. I tried using google maps to see if it was something to do with Navigon, (my normal gps app) and somehow it seems like just running maps fixed it. It has been working great with Navigon now.
Go figure.

GPS on my Sprint version has worked great in all 3 options since day 1
Sent from my LG V20 using XDA Labs

On my rooted VS995 software version VS99513A on notsostock kernel v1.2 the GPS seemed to never be able to locate my current location. When I used it before without root it picked up quickly. Am going to try nostock kernek v1.1 the updated version and see if I get a difference. Plus now am running magisk instead of supersu so will see if that makes a difference.

It's possible that the a-gps data is corrupt. I'm not sure how you'd go about clearing that. There must be a cache file associated with gps daemon.
Try installing this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eclipsim.gpsstatus2
And when GPS isn't working, run the app and see if it's receiving/decoding any satellites at all (bar lengths indicate strength, colour indicates successfully received all ephemeris data from satellite and therefore has lock - it can take a while without a-gps).
---------- Post added at 08:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:27 AM ----------
P.s. I found that taking the back off my phone improves Wi-Fi. Metal blocks radio signals.
If you have low or no signals in a specific location, try popping the back of the phone and seeing if the signals become useable.

mmar3087 said:
Is anyone experiencing problem with their GPS signal? Mine would lose the GPS lock constantly. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry to bring up an old thread. I just bought a used LG V20 (at&t version, H910) on Craigslist the other day, and have had GPS issues that made me highly annoyed like I bought a lemon phone, and was getting ready to call LG Support, and pay a lot of money for repairs.
Happily, I did discover a trivial solution that I haven't really seen, so I thought I'd share it.
After I purchased the phone, I factory reset it. It seemed like the device would be able to triangulate a position, but it would be unreliable, move around, and the accuracy would be highly variable. (observed in Google Maps and Waze). These symptoms seem to be consistent with other people's experiences. The useful and highly recommended "GPS Status" and "GPS Test" apps, that normally show visible satellites were showing ZERO satellites. As suggested in various places, I used "GPS Status" to re-download the A-GPS databases, set "sensor filtering" to medium. Still, zero satellites, but a semi-functional GPS, which is confusing. I found the hidden menu code for the H910 (*#546368#*910#), and SAAT->"Manual Test"->"GPS/BT/Wifi test" and ran the hardware-level GPS diagnostics. I was getting signals of 0.0 db for GPS and GLO satellites, kind of suggesting the GPS hardware was faulty, and made me even less optimistic/more annoyed.
I was basically convinced GPS on my phone was kaput, and would need to be serviced, until I discovered ........
Rebooting the phone solved all of the GPS problems, and made GPS and GNO satellites visible and now GPS is 100% functional. It seems that since I initially factory reset the phone and did my normal installation, I never did a simple reboot. Since I haven't seen that kind of obvious solution on any of the forums, I thought it would be useful to report. I'm cautiously optimistic that was my only problem ......
good luck
=mxasf=

Bought a used one and having problems: it'll fix on several satellites but it's usually unable to acquire the specific location (latitude and longitude). Depending on the program, it will say "waiting for GPS fix" in osmtracker or "looking for GPS location" within 'GPS Status' (the app).
When it does get a 'Lock' (a specific location), its accuracy is 200-300m off. :/
I tried some of the other common tips and tricks:
I've downloaded new A-GPS data (using the 'GPS Status' app); tried using the GPS without my case on; doing a simple reboot, none of them work.
After more searching, I found this guide: https://imgur.com/a/VxeaU which recommends to place copper tape on the GPS antennas of your phone.

i have 2 V20's.. the one i bought back for myself is 12/2016 and another one is another batch 3/2017 for my wife..
What i'll found is the earlier one ( 12/2016 ) have the following issue :
- overheat
- kaput gps
- screen burn
While the one i bought for my wife ( 3/2017 ) doesn't even have the following issue above.. Furthermore, the screen also different.. my wife V20's tend to have a more saturated color, brighter screen and doesn't overheat as much as mine..
My conclusion is, only those with earlier batch of production have all this defect.. and to those who own it ( including me ).. i guess, we're unlucky!
i'll use my wife V20's as gps since mine V20 is good for nothing when GPS is a needs.... if she's not around, i'm totally doomed !
-----
if you guys wonder, there was no different in camera.... unlike G6 ( pheww~ )
both my and my wife V20's produce the same images quality..

mxasf said:
Rebooting the phone solved all of the GPS problems, and made GPS and GNO satellites visible and now GPS is 100% functional. It seems that since I initially factory reset the phone and did my normal installation, I never did a simple reboot. Since I haven't seen that kind of obvious solution on any of the forums, I thought it would be useful to report. I'm cautiously optimistic that was my only problem ......
good luck
=mxasf=
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's an old common fix

skorasaurus said:
Bought a used one and having problems: it'll fix on several satellites but it's usually unable to acquire the specific location (latitude and longitude). Depending on the program, it will say "waiting for GPS fix" in osmtracker or "looking for GPS location" within 'GPS Status' (the app).
When it does get a 'Lock' (a specific location), its accuracy is 200-300m off. :/
I tried some of the other common tips and tricks:
I've downloaded new A-GPS data (using the 'GPS Status' app); tried using the GPS without my case on; doing a simple reboot, none of them work.
After more searching, I found this guide: https://imgur.com/a/VxeaU which recommends to place copper tape on the GPS antennas of your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I followed that guide (credit https://www.reddit.com/r/lgv20/comments/7fx2gz/becareful_buying_the_top_plastic_bezel_of_the_v20/)
and bought copper tape (https://www.amazon.com/Copper-Conductive-Adhesive-1inch-12yards/dp/B018RDZ3HG) off amazon.
For me and my VS995; there were metal contacts (see picture 1 of the imgur album) and the metal contacts were silver, not gold.
Nonetheless, I put some copper tape only on the first contact as shown in picture 1 and my signal improved dramatically. The lowest accuracy that I can get (lower is better) now is about 8m and it has been hovering around 15m; and still takes a few seconds to
This is compared to my s5, where I could get an accuracy as low as 4-5m and usually hovers around 8-10m and could obtain my location within 10 seconds after turning on GPS.

Samsung Galaxy A5 2016 [SM-A510F] - GPS issue after OTA firmware update to Android 7

I recently received an OTA firmware update for my Samsung Galaxy A5 2016 [SM-A510F].
The new firmware version is A510FXXU4CQDJ / A510FOXA4CQDJ / A510FXXU4CQDH.
The new Android version is 7.0.
After the update I started to experience a GPS issue which I try to explain:
it's like at a certain point (can't figure out the trigger cause) my GPS location remains stuck while tracking it.
I noticed this while using a sport tracking app (the workout distance sometimes had been stuck to zero while sometimes had started increasing but suddenly had stopped).
I first thought about a bug of the sport tracking app, but this morning I made a test workout while monitoring the GPS sensor with the GPS Test app.
When the issue occurred in the sport tracking app (the workout distance stopped increasing), I switched back to the GPS Test app to see what was happening: the GNSS Status was still on 3D Fix and there were about 20 satellites in use, but the accuracy was a s****y 32 meters (while it is usually about 4/6 meters).
It took a couple minutes to have the accuracy around 8 meters again. At that point my location in the sport tracking app was updated and the distance started increasing again when moving.
I had never experienced any GPS issue since I bought the phone. I never monitored the GPS sensor but there had never been any issue when tracking my location with the sport tracking app that I use.
I tried to toggle off and then on again the location functionality on the phone, to restart the phone, to clear and update the AGPS but the issue still persists.
Has anyone any idea on how to solve it?

Exact same problem!
Hi, i have the exact same problem!! I can't seem to figure out what is wrong....
Have you found the answer yet???
elbro84 said:
I recently received an OTA firmware update for my Samsung Galaxy A5 2016 [SM-A510F].
The new firmware version is A510FXXU4CQDJ / A510FOXA4CQDJ / A510FXXU4CQDH.
The new Android version is 7.0.
After the update I started to experience a GPS issue which I try to explain:
it's like at a certain point (can't figure out the trigger cause) my GPS location remains stuck while tracking it.
I noticed this while using a sport tracking app (the workout distance sometimes had been stuck to zero while sometimes had started increasing but suddenly had stopped).
I first thought about a bug of the sport tracking app, but this morning I made a test workout while monitoring the GPS sensor with the GPS Test app.
When the issue occurred in the sport tracking app (the workout distance stopped increasing), I switched back to the GPS Test app to see what was happening: the GNSS Status was still on 3D Fix and there were about 20 satellites in use, but the accuracy was a s****y 32 meters (while it is usually about 4/6 meters).
It took a couple minutes to have the accuracy around 8 meters again. At that point my location in the sport tracking app was updated and the distance started increasing again when moving.
I had never experienced any GPS issue since I bought the phone. I never monitored the GPS sensor but there had never been any issue when tracking my location with the sport tracking app that I use.
I tried to toggle off and then on again the location functionality on the phone, to restart the phone, to clear and update the AGPS but the issue still persists.
Has anyone any idea on how to solve it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I am also stuck with this issue

Yvon85 said:
Hi, i have the exact same problem!! I can't seem to figure out what is wrong....
Have you found the answer yet???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try disabling battery optimizations maybe it's causing the problem

Yvon85 said:
Hi, i have the exact same problem!! I can't seem to figure out what is wrong....
Have you found the answer yet???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have social media apps installed(Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Snapchat, etc...), then your issue could be caused by one or more of these apps overloading the CPU and/or consuming all of your bandwidth(not allowing GPS to send or recieve any data to update exact location).
These social media apps are processor and data hogs. They interfere with other things functioning while they are scanning, sending and receiving information packets. They also dramatically impact how long your battery lasts per charge and they can also cause the device to get hot when using these apps heavily, it's even worse if you're charging the device while using these apps heavily.
I DO NOT PROVIDE HELP IN PM, KEEP IT IN THE THREADS WHERE EVERYONE CAN SHARE

I recently had an intermittent GPS problem which finally got so bad that the device (unrooted Samsung A3 (2016) , Lollipop) was not picking up any satellites and thus not getting a fix. After trying all sorts of things, such as deleting files in the phone memory, installing various GPS fixer apps I came across TopNTP in the playstore, installed and ran it. The GPS immediately started working properly again. Don't be put off by the age of the app or the requirement stated in the playstore that the phone be rooted. Mine wasn't and it still worked. Also the install and automatic reboot option in the app does not work. You have to restart your phone manually, but it still fixes the GPS problem.

Issue with standalone GPS apps

Hi everyone!
I got my HW2 from one month now, and I really love it! Everything is wotking fine, except one thing I am not able to understand: the GPS.
I would like like to use the GPS without using my phone but here is what I can do and what I cannot:
- I can use Viewranger to follow a route, so GPS is working in standalone in this app and in this mode: great!
- I cannot use Viewranger for tracking and recording my GPS watch. I think it comes from the app which is designed to use the GPS phone in this mode. I hope this feature will be available in the future.
- I downloaded Ghost app, which can track and record GPS with a standalone watch mode, but here is the problem: when my phone is connected (and my GPS phone enabled) it works perfectly tracking data from my watch (I know that because the sensor is far more accurate than my phone). But if my phone is not connected (or my GPS phone disabled), even in standalone mode, my watch records nothing.... (of course my watch location is enabled and there is no permission problem with the app).
So.... Am I missing someting or maybe do I have to change some parameters?
Thank you for your help!

Has nobody experienced this problem with the GPS not working in standalone mode?

I use Strava on my watch and leave my phone at home.
The watch records my distance and when I get back home the watch syncs with the phone automatically and I can see the route i ran on the phone app.
I suppose I would like it to be able to see the map on my watch screen...but this doesn't seem to be offered.
Stand alone gps is working tho...that's for sure.

Wait. So you guys have a simcard in the watch and it's not uploading instantly, but waits to be connected to the phone again? Makes no sense.

I use ghostracer all the time on my watch while leaving the phone at home. Works perfectly. I have the LTE version. GPS locks in 10 or 15 seconds and never have issues with it. Perfect tracking. When i finish the run before i connect to the phone my track instantly uploads to ghostracer and strava. All automaticaly. Only thing i have enabled in ghostracer phone app under android wear settings is 'force watch gps'. So it will always use the watches GPS, even when you are still connected to the phone

Thank you very much for your answers. I tried again, and now it works perfectly...
- When I start GhostTracer with GPS watch only and bluetooth connexion to my phone: OK
- When I start GhostTracer with GPS watch only without any connexion (LTE / BT): OK
So I don't know if it comes from the several updates, or if I misunderstood something, but I'm ok with that =)
Thanks again!

Huawei watch 2 GPS doesn't work for me
valentin8709 said:
Thank you very much for your answers. I tried again, and now it works perfectly...
- When I start GhostTracer with GPS watch only and bluetooth connexion to my phone: OK
- When I start GhostTracer with GPS watch only without any connexion (LTE / BT): OK
So I don't know if it comes from the several updates, or if I misunderstood something, but I'm ok with that =)
Thanks again!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@valentin8709 @glenner05 @mitchward1971 I bought Huawei watch 2 recently and built-in GPS doesn't work for me. Mine has Wear OS 2.3 version installed. Please, would you tell me which Wear OS version is running your watch and if it still works? I talked to another HW2 user and he told me he is running Wear OS 2.0 version and GPS works for him. So I suspect Google killed this functionality with its latest update.

And why not use the Huawei Exercice mode on the watch ?

Iv'e had the watch for a couple of months now and use Strava to track my runs and bike rides and the results are very inconsistent. Anyone else have this issue?

HW2 - GPS inaccurate. Strava etc.

I go on a regular 5k run which is tracked and run locally as a '5K'...so I know it should be 5k! When using my HW2 watch with Strava I invariably get 4.8k for this same route. I've tried 3 or 4 times now with the same result.
When I use my phone on the same route it tracks 5k on Strava. I would like to not bring my phone with me when running but if I have to then so be it. Question is, I have heard that if the watch detects the phone it will use the phone's GPS. So, what I was thinking was to try this:
1) Run with phone and watch
2) Use Strava on the watch and hope it detects / uses the phones GPS.
3) Record result and see what happens.
Is this likely to result in another 4.8k run or does the watch deferring to the phone's GPS mean I'm more likely to get an accurate reading?
To clarify, the place I run is a park and therefore there are some trees but my Polar watch never had an issue with this and Strava on the HW2 says it has a GPS lock before I set off, so I don't think trees are the problem here.

i've only found the huawei app to work perfectly on the watch itself, while others hit and miss and that includes the built-in runtastic app - some apps you have to start on phone if you want that to record tracking if using the watch, which then makes it pointless wearing the watch.... I had issues with both mapmyfitness and runtastic where it would use the phone gps, but if turn phone off or it runs out of battery it never used the watch gps, so use one or the other...

I've also use only Huawei health built in app, since it records everything in one place - walk, sleep, calories, activity type, etc. I've use runasttic a few times and its seems to work correctly with built in gps.

For runtwstic it was hit and miss with using GPS on Watch, I had to turn off watch for it to trigger. I also found that if you had pro version the built in version wouldn't talk to it and insisted you install basic on phone.
Sent from my Huawei P20 Pro using XDA Labs

Interesting. I have just got a HW2C and tried it out running couple of days ago. Did 16.5k run, which strava and run keeper on my phone registered but the health app on watch have me a reading of 15.7km,despite tracking the route of the run perfectly.
Unfortunately this would be a deal breaker for me. Anyone else experienced this? Gonna try the strava app on the watch next time and see if that makes a difference. Any tips on getting the right distance?

Set up altitude, but "Network unavailable"?

When I selected "Calibrate now" after few seconds show up notification: "Network unavailable"
and next time will show: "Can't get a sea level air pressure reading for your location. Enter manually?"
Data/internet connection working on News, Weather apps. This behavior is same, WiFi or bluetooth connection.
Does anybody have any idea how to fix this bug?
SM-R760
Tizen Version 4.0.0.2
R760XXU2DSA1

deffyplus said:
When I selected "Calibrate now" after few seconds show up notification: "Network unavailable"
and next time will show: "Can't get a sea level air pressure reading for your location. Enter manually?"
Data/internet connection working on News, Weather apps. This behavior is same, WiFi or bluetooth connection.
Does anybody have any idea how to fix this bug?
SM-R760
Tizen Version 4.0.0.2
R760XXU2DSA1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I had the same issue. Uninstalled the Wear application from phone and installed again.
Bingo..
Hope this helps.

I'm having this issue too. Ive tried reinstalling everything and resetting the watch. Nothing seems to be fixing it. Looking at the reviews of the alt-barometer app in the Samsung store seems to suggest the issue is widespread.

Have the same issue too. I think it's a problem of the defined server in the app which doesn't respond anymore. They should update the app...

Hi, i have exactly same problem after update to tizen 4.0. Have you some solutions?

Same problem , too. Last update 14.2.2019
I have noticed today at my job that I was at 188m, and when it worked I was less than 50m.
Same thing after reinstalling "wear", maybe worst, I didn't had backup

Same problem here after Tizen 4.0.

Same problem. Also affects Hiking Activity in S-Health on the watch. (It can't detect altitude so whole activity is broken showing "0km walked", "--" instead altitude and wrong calories). Tried every combination of reseting watch (with and without backup restore), reinstalling wear app and all plugins on phone and reinstalling altimeter app on watch. Even reflashed firmware via NetOdin. Also tried disabling adblock on phone in case some url gets blocked. No difference).
I'm also starting to think this have to do with predefined altitude server altimeter is contacting being down and not responding.
I had enough fiddling with this but if someone is determined they can try downgrade back to 3.0.0.2 to see if problem persist. Or try debugging the watch to see what is actually happening behind the calibrate request. Maybe even use packet sniffer.
SM-R760
Tizen Version 4.0.0.2
R760XXU2DSA1
BTU (UK) region

It must really be a widespread problem. The same here after the update to Tizen 4.0.2. I have made several hard resets of the watch, the only thing I have not done is phone hard reset. Not going to suffer this not knowing if it helps. I was solving more problems, so I have made several hard resets of the watch. For instance, SOME of the incoming calls were not vibrating on the watch. But after the first hard reset after the update the altimeter started working the second day I think!!! I thought it was really an issue connected with unavailibility of a server somewhere. I was solving more important issues, so I have made other hard resets and since then the altimeter jut won't work...

Same problem after upgrade to Tizen 4. Tommorow i trying downgrade to Tizen 3.
SM-R770
Tizen Version 4.0.0.2
Poland

I had the same problem. After several tries is now working. All I had to do was set the location to "high precision " on my phone (note 8) and after 4-5 times the watch will update automatically. Also I went outside.

I tried today and a get altitude measurement! I turned off and on my location on phone. But... I got lucky only one time. I tried 5 minutes later, and get "network unavailable"... Strange...

Problem
I have the same problem..

agawron91 said:
I tried today and a get altitude measurement! I turned off and on my location on phone. But... I got lucky only one time. I tried 5 minutes later, and get "network unavailable"... Strange...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same experience today. At 1 a.m. of our local time (Europe) I got one calibration but since then - nothing. It makes me believe that the problem is not in our watches or phones but on the side of a server somewhere. Were they testing something?

It seems that reinstalling the app would help. I have done it, and for now it's all good
again, network not available , one or two updates and gone again.

Another +1 here - I have just discovered that my S3 Frontier is doing exactly the same thing. Uninstalling the companion app on the phone and reinstalling it hasn't worked for me, the intermittent nature of it (based on previous posts) would suggest some back end network issue at the end of whoever provides that data.

deffyplus said:
When I selected "Calibrate now" after few seconds show up notification: "Network unavailable"
and next time will show: "Can't get a sea level air pressure reading for your location. Enter manually?"
Data/internet connection working on News, Weather apps. This behavior is same, WiFi or bluetooth connection.
Does anybody have any idea how to fix this bug?
SM-R760
Tizen Version 4.0.0.2
R760XXU2DSA1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I posted before, same happened to me the first time after the update to Tizen 4
I had to turn location to high accuracy and had to go outdoors, and after 4-5 tries the altitude is calibrated and working perfectly now. One thing I noticed is that you need to set your phone location on all the time with at least "device only" option.
GOTO_GOSUB said:
Another +1 here - I have just discovered that my S3 Frontier is doing exactly the same thing. Uninstalling the companion app on the phone and reinstalling it hasn't worked for me, the intermittent nature of it (based on previous posts) would suggest some back end network issue at the end of whoever provides that data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems that the data is provided by the android location services, not by your data/wifi; in this case you need to have the location on with "device only", seems to solved my problem, BTW I havent noticed more battery drain than using "battery save" mode.

Seems that the data is provided by the android location services, not by your data/wifi; in this case you need to have the location on with "device only", seems to solved my problem, BTW I havent noticed more battery drain than using "battery save" mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for this tip - I missed your earlier comment so repeating it here again is useful and does seem to provide a work-around. Have a "Thanks" on me.
Since this is a recent change I wonder if Samsung got their device class confused and are trying to get the watch to aquire a "true" GPS fix rather than using the phone if available, but got it wrong with the latest build so now the watch has acquired a dependency it didn't have before.
My S3 has Wi-fi (but turned off) and no carrier / network (ie mobile phone) support and that used to work perfectly well with my phone's location services set to "High Accuracy" over the Bluetooth link which should surely be enough for any non mission critical consumer device since that uses network location, Wi-fi and GPS. I can see why someone might want a high degree level of accuracy on their watch but then surely the watch should be acquiring GPS itself which is why I wonder if Samsung were trying to be smart and got their wires crossed.
I will check out the battery usage implications of restricting my location to GPS at a later date, but I am mostly indoors and a) don't use the altimeter all that much and b) won't get much of a GPS fix in the concrete and steel bunker that is my office so I am expecting it to be an absolute battery sucker.
Thanks again for the tip about changing the location services on the phone.

GOTO_GOSUB said:
Thanks for this tip - I missed your earlier comment so repeating it here again is useful and does seem to provide a work-around. Have a "Thanks" on me.
Since this is a recent change I wonder if Samsung got their device class confused and are trying to get the watch to aquire a "true" GPS fix rather than using the phone if available, but got it wrong with the latest build so now the watch has acquired a dependency it didn't have before.
My S3 has Wi-fi (but turned off) and no carrier / network (ie mobile phone) support and that used to work perfectly well with my phone's location services set to "High Accuracy" over the Bluetooth link which should surely be enough for any non mission critical consumer device since that uses network location, Wi-fi and GPS. I can see why someone might want a high degree level of accuracy on their watch but then surely the watch should be acquiring GPS itself which is why I wonder if Samsung were trying to be smart and got their wires crossed.
I will check out the battery usage implications of restricting my location to GPS at a later date, but I am mostly indoors and a) don't use the altimeter all that much and b) won't get much of a GPS fix in the concrete and steel bunker that is my office so I am expecting it to be an absolute battery sucker.
Thanks again for the tip about changing the location services on the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My S3 is exactly the same as yours, and I dont have wifi or GPS on either, it gets the location straight from the phone, I checked it and when I go to altitude on my watch I can see that the icon of "searching location" goes on in my phone.
I am pretty sure that the GPS of the watch doesnt work by itself because I use it to run everyday (with my phone) and is tracking the metrics and altitude just well, also the location is locked and working, I run 5kms per day and I get 3 and a half days of battery and when I run with the watch alone I can get 1 and a half day (cause GPS and Spotify).
BTW, where I live/work there are no high structures or buildings miles around, maybe it means faster location.
Regards.

I found solution that help me in reddit: "Switch on "location history" in Google account. Should help"