TL;DR version:
1)Start Google Navigation, pick destination, start driving. Result: Sporatic or no lock and definitely no turn by turn working.
2)Start Google Navigation, pick destination, start GPSTest, start driving. Result: Almost constant lock and turn by turn works astonishingly well.
What gives?
Alright, please read this whole post, try it out, then comment on whether there is something to this or maybe I'm just crazy (a very definitely possibility). I was playing around with the GPS today and tried the Vibrant GPS hardware fix (pulling up the contact so that the GPS antenna is making better contact with the metal back). There wasn't much of a difference, so I decided to take the back off and run the GPS without the metal backing. I found that interestingly enough I was getting a better SNR with the back off than with the back on it was 8/8 at about 25-30 with the back on (using GPSTest) while with the back off it was 8/8 with 30-35.
Now comes the really interesting bit. On my drive home today I decided to see how well I could hold a moving lock. I turned on Google Navigation, pointed to my house, and started driving. Needless to say I was not able to hold a lock for very long. However, if I left the navigation app running and started GPSTest, all of a sudden I was getting the turn by turn voice pretty accurately. I then exited GPSTest and probably 10 seconds later lost my lock again. Open GPSTest, BOOM lock back on and turn by turn working again. Am I just hitting a really lucky coincidence or is GPSTest doing something we're not aware of? Please post here if you can either a) replicate what I'm seeing or b)think I'm blowing smoke cuz you aren't seeing a lick of difference.
smoking blow/10
anyways I'll try it out
comdei said:
smoking blow/10
anyways I'll try it out
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Click to collapse
BTW... this is GPS Test by Chartcross Limited, NOT the one by Mike Lockwood. You're welcome to try both however.
Previous GPS threads have repeatedly documented the positive effect of moving your nav app to the background. Theories on it center around backlight, temperature, or CPU/GPU. My own myTracks tests seem to point towards CPU/GPU. Or, at least, they seemed to rule out temperature or backlight as a factor.
So did you have GPS Test in the foreground during this test? This will pretty consistently give you improved performance over having Navigation up. If you turn the screen OFF altogether, it almost works as well as a real GPS! Check out the difference by recording a few drives in MyTracks -- it's night and day, on my phone at least.
My personal, uninformed theory (guess) is that the CPU/GPU and screen during Navigation are starving the GPS subsystem of power, causing either reception issues or causing the clock to desync and lose the position of the satellites it's tracking.
Ah well, such is life.
Perception 10.2 | SpeedMod K13D | I9000XXJQ1
I noticed this as well with my old setup (phone bought in August 2010 running Cognition & JK4 radio firmware). I got one of the refurbs from the random power off fiasco and GPS seemed to be just as unreliable. I've recently flashed the JL2 radio firmware, and GPS locks on within seconds and stays locked around town - as it should. I think a lot of people's issue would be completely resolved if they played around with radio firmwares...
Ikonomi said:
So did you have GPS Test in the foreground during this test? This will pretty consistently give you improved performance over having Navigation up. If you turn the screen OFF altogether, it almost works as well as a real GPS! Check out the difference by recording a few drives in MyTracks -- it's night and day, on my phone at least.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, GPS Test was in the foreground, navigation in the background. I get the feeling however its more to do with the application than the hardware. I say this because having other apps in the foreground doesn't quite have the same effect for me. Is that the case for everyone else as well?
knyghtryda said:
TL;DR version:
1)Start Google Navigation, pick destination, start driving. Result: Sporatic or no lock and definitely no turn by turn working.
2)Start Google Navigation, pick destination, start GPSTest, start driving. Result: Almost constant lock and turn by turn works astonishingly well.
What gives?
Alright, please read this whole post, try it out, then comment on whether there is something to this or maybe I'm just crazy (a very definitely possibility). I was playing around with the GPS today and tried the Vibrant GPS hardware fix (pulling up the contact so that the GPS antenna is making better contact with the metal back). There wasn't much of a difference, so I decided to take the back off and run the GPS without the metal backing. I found that interestingly enough I was getting a better SNR with the back off than with the back on it was 8/8 at about 25-30 with the back on (using GPSTest) while with the back off it was 8/8 with 30-35.
Now comes the really interesting bit. On my drive home today I decided to see how well I could hold a moving lock. I turned on Google Navigation, pointed to my house, and started driving. Needless to say I was not able to hold a lock for very long. However, if I left the navigation app running and started GPSTest, all of a sudden I was getting the turn by turn voice pretty accurately. I then exited GPSTest and probably 10 seconds later lost my lock again. Open GPSTest, BOOM lock back on and turn by turn working again. Am I just hitting a really lucky coincidence or is GPSTest doing something we're not aware of? Please post here if you can either a) replicate what I'm seeing or b)think I'm blowing smoke cuz you aren't seeing a lick of difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this worked really well for me. am on andromeda 3. but was getting on locks without staying on continuously. with the approach. gps was spot on.!! a BIG Thanks
I've noticed this for some time when running the GPS Application Test in lbstestmode. Run the GPS test first and then move it to the background and launch your normal GPS program and you'll usually be better off. Needless to say, I'm doing another warranty exchange in hopes of getting one with better GPS hardware soon.
Try this:
Get a mobile hotspot (or someone who has wifi tethering enabled on their phone). Put your phone into flight mode, then turn WIFI on and connect to that mobile hotspot. Fire up navigation, and go for a drive. You'll be amazed at how accurate your GPS is.
That leads me to believe that there is an interference issue in the GSM/GPS antennas. Part of the reason why putting navigation in the background helps improve the GPS performance is because it stops refreshing the map, which means it's not trying to use the GSM radio. But if you fire up Pandora, even with Navigation in the background, the GPS will start going nuts again.
I'm pretty sure AT&T is aware of this, and I even think they have a... well, not a fix, but a way to mitigate the problem.
A friend of mine did a warranty exchange on his Captivate last Monday for a problem with his USB port. The Captivate he got in exchange has been getting much better performance with it's GPS. And since his worked just fine all week, I exchanged mine yesterday. Now, quite often after flashing a new ROM, the GPS will work fine for a day or three. So I'm not going to be convinced mine is working as well just yet. But there are some notable differences from what I've seen before... When I'm tracking my position on Google Maps, my actual position now stays within what the GPS reports as it's error, even when I'm driving around. Previously, my phone might report a 10m error, but my actual position might be 200m or more from where it thought I was. In addition to that, I'm seeing that my phone is locking into more satellites, and holding that lock even as the SNRs drop due to obstructions. And finally, my GPS works just as good while it's in the car dock, whereas before it would only intermittently get enough signal to fix a position. Overall, while my GPS still isn't as good as other phones I've had in the past, it is now actually good enough to use and trust.
I think that AT&T isn't advertising this because it's not something that they can push out over the air or through a Kies update. I'm guessing that either they modified the antennas slightly, or that they installed a new firmware to the GPS chip (at a lower level than the driver)... or maybe both.
Either way, my friend's GPS has been working great all week long, and mine appears to be doing so as well. I'll not say that it's permanently fixed yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic. We'll see how it's doing after another few days go by.
UPDATE 3/28:
Two more days of testing have passed. So far, the GPS is holding up nicely. The only issues are with the car dock. When the phone is in the car dock, the GPS will occasionally drift 5~10 meters off of my position. This doesn't really surprise me, as the electronics in the car dock are right up against the GPS antenna, and simply putting the phone in the dock will drop the reported SNRs by more than 25% - usually a lot more.
Still, even with the car dock, the GPS is perfectly usable. And without the car dock, the GPS is now exactly what it should have been from the get-go.
I've also found that if I run either gps status or gps test to get the fix, then start whatever app I need to use, the performance is much better. Recently I just use lbs test to get the fix, then proceed with whatever app i need to use. Seems to work better, as lbs test continues to work in the background
i have seen this in the past but trying to prove that it is not random has been a problem as i cant repeat the results.
also i dont thing i have ever observed the phenomenon while using control plane mode.
maybe another coincidence, i cant tell but i have been using the control plane version of da_g's fix for a couple months now in combination with the jl3 modem and have gps that many smart phones would envy. i find jl3 to have the most stable positioning and tracking, less blue circles ect. i also find agps settings to hinder tracking. i only set agps mode to standalone. not sure how supl works or if controlplane supl setting is actually doing anything because i was under the impression that supl was part of agps but it is a combination that started working for me and i am sticking to it.
anyone else experiencing slow tracking and movment when using google maps or latitude?
my GF's Wildfire S is perfect while my Galaxy S plus is slow to get GPS if it gets it at all and incredibly slow while using maps or latitude, its like when you used to play a game on a pc and the HDD would start thrashing lagging your game like crazy.
its as if something is trying to access cpu in the background, im getting sick of this phone it was supposed to be a bit of an upgrade to my Wildfire S but all i see is the Wildfire S kick its arse even with that 600Mhz cpu compared to my 1.4Ghz cpu.
can you check please how it runs by clicking the compass icon top right while looking at the map and setting it to follow you so the map moves around you when you turn.
Thanks
Hi BackDaws,
This is a common problem it seems across the SGS+ phones as I have also been facing the same problem. This is what I have found and you may check it at your end aswell.
1. Enter the start and the end direction and the route comes up.
2. Now tap the Blue icon which states your current position and it will now come to the centre of your screen.
3. Then press the cmpass icon on the top right. Now your screen will refresh as you move but now the problem that you will face is that the whole route has been compressed in one screen and you will not be able to make out if there are frequent turn in your rout.
4. Now go the Zoom out tab that is there at the right bottom corner and Zoom it to a level where you can see the route clearly with the turns.
See if this helps... It has helped me but there are times when the refresh rate is slow because of the data transfer rate.
Also do let me know if you find any other way out
Thanks
Sunil
Has anyone else had any issues with GPS and/or Ingress?
Here's the problem. While playing Ingress and being tethered to my phone, the GPS usually cannot get a lock on ANY satelites. I mean absolutely 0. Occasionally I'll end up moving but we're talking hundreds of meter jumps, usually taking anywhere from 20 seconds to sometimes up to 5 minutes for 1 to occur (in the 5 minutes one, I was nearly 2 miles away from where it last jumped.....).
Now, you'd think there was something wrong with my GPS, right?
Well, how come I can go and open my Google Maps application, and within 15 seconds have a lock on 5 to 8 satelites and have correct placement as well?
I've tried this a number of times, where Ingress essentially has me no where near where I should be. I exit out of Ingress and go to Google Maps and nearly immediately it shows my current location exactly without issues.
I've tried nearly everything I can think of to get this fixed. Overclocking/underclocking and such make no real difference here (hoping that maybe there wasn't enough processor speed or the graphics were too intense), has little to no effect as one would hope. Even using a few GPS tools (such as GPSFix, GPS Status and Toolbox, etc...) provide little insight into the problem, as they just confirm my fears, that inside Ingress I get 0 satelites, inside any other GPS application I'll get a lock on 5 to 8 satelites in no time.
Does anyone know of a way that I can truely monitor the GPS while using another application? I'd like some kind of log or something to help figure this out.
darkhawkff said:
Has anyone else had any issues with GPS and/or Ingress?
Here's the problem. While playing Ingress and being tethered to my phone, the GPS usually cannot get a lock on ANY satelites. I mean absolutely 0. Occasionally I'll end up moving but we're talking hundreds of meter jumps, usually taking anywhere from 20 seconds to sometimes up to 5 minutes for 1 to occur (in the 5 minutes one, I was nearly 2 miles away from where it last jumped.....).
Now, you'd think there was something wrong with my GPS, right?
Well, how come I can go and open my Google Maps application, and within 15 seconds have a lock on 5 to 8 satelites and have correct placement as well?
I've tried this a number of times, where Ingress essentially has me no where near where I should be. I exit out of Ingress and go to Google Maps and nearly immediately it shows my current location exactly without issues.
I've tried nearly everything I can think of to get this fixed. Overclocking/underclocking and such make no real difference here (hoping that maybe there wasn't enough processor speed or the graphics were too intense), has little to no effect as one would hope. Even using a few GPS tools (such as GPSFix, GPS Status and Toolbox, etc...) provide little insight into the problem, as they just confirm my fears, that inside Ingress I get 0 satelites, inside any other GPS application I'll get a lock on 5 to 8 satelites in no time.
Does anyone know of a way that I can truely monitor the GPS while using another application? I'd like some kind of log or something to help figure this out.
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Click to collapse
Hello friend. It has been almost a year since you have posted, but I've gone through the same hardships, on different device though.
See my post here, if you still need some solution and see if it helps.
Im having a small problem while using google maps the arrow that shows my location points in a wrong direction, about 90 degrees to the right of where i actually am headed. How to solve this problem as it is annoying and confusing when navigating.
I'm having an issue where it takes fund minutes to lock location on the phone. The problem is most noticeable on Waze. I turn Waze on every time I get in the car (the speed traps alone are worth it), and sometimes it's half my trip before it locks on.
The location is set to high accuracy, and it does eventually lock on. My 6p would lock on in one second.
Anyone else? Thanks
lanternca said:
I'm having an issue where it takes fund minutes to lock location on the phone. The problem is most noticeable on Waze. I turn Waze on every time I get in the car (the speed traps alone are worth it), and sometimes it's half my trip before it locks on.
The location is set to high accuracy, and it does eventually lock on. My 6p would lock on in one second.
Anyone else? Thanks
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I've seen issues in Waze as well, with both GPS lock and the Compas going screwy...
Have you guys tried running gps status or gps toolbox?
What settings do you have selected in location settings?
On my v10 if I enable the additional low power Qualcomm IZat location estimation option, gps runs all screwy.
Id like to know if gps is hit or miss, as its another of the main features I need and use on a daily basis, along with Ok Google..
My Pixel is now locking GPS in a few seconds after I open Waze. Probably even faster than my 6P.
For anyone else having these problems, here are all the steps I did (not sure which if any of these actually solved the problem)
1. Uninstalled Waze. Turned off Location. Rebooted into Safe Mode (Long Press "Power Off")
2. Once in Safe Mode, turn location back on, open Google Maps outside, let GPS lock (that time still took a while) and use navigation for a while
3. Rebooted the phone again into safe mode. reopened Google Maps and let GPS lock on
4. Rebooted the phone normally, open Goolge Maps first to make sure GPS was working. Then installed Waze
It's been working pretty well for the past few days.
I'm still seeing issues with the compass, I get a GPS lock quickly, but it always shows I'm pointing 100-160 degrees off from my actual heading. Tried using GPS status to calibrate, it now says I'm calibrated, but I still see the issue, even in GPS Status.The compass points in one direction, then once I start moving, the GPS corrects the heading to my actual direction...
I've never had this issue with any other phone, very frustrating.