GPS on Samsung Galaxy S2

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dafman

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#105309 2-Jul-2012 10:14

I was a wellingtonian visiting auckland over the weekend. Rented a car, and was looking forward to using Google Navigation to find my way around. When I first arrived - Thursday - it worked great - but for the next two days, the GPS refused to find a fix and both navigation and maps were next to useless. I tried rebooting the phone several times - tried turning GPS on and off several times - I even had the phone on the roof of car, on top of mt eden, with nothing but blue sky between it and the satellites - but still no joy. To add insult to injury, it started working again on the drive back last night to the airport!!!

So the best part of 2 days without getting a GPS fix despite a well functioning phone and blue sky weather. Any ideas or feedback - is this a common issue - am i missing something obvious?

cheers

old3eyes

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#649501 2-Jul-2012 12:38

I find locating a GPS sat on my SGS2 is quite slow, normally about 5 minutes but have never had a case when it didn't connect at all..

Regards,

Old3eyes

richms

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#649510 2-Jul-2012 12:47

I have had that happen as well to me. No idea how or why. Have been driving along the southern motorway to have the phone in the bracket in the car announce lost GPS, when the HTC in the cupholder when I tried was getting lock fine.

Richard rich.ms

jeffnz

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#649584 2-Jul-2012 14:22

never had that issue on my S2 in fact it worked very well compared to my S1 which was flawed mechanically.
One of the roms had a GPS fix but not sure if it did much anyway but try looking on google play for an app but it certainly shouldn't have the issues the S1 had.

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gzt

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#650394 4-Jul-2012 07:26

Turn off wifi / bluetooth - and and put it in flight mode. Then reboot the phone and see if works just with GPS.

Does that make a difference?

targnik

11 posts

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#650396 4-Jul-2012 07:29

GPS on S II is not what it should be - takes a while to find location (although directions locks on quick)

My Motorola Defy locks on within 30 seconds to 10 meters...

jcddcjjcd

63 posts

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#650435 4-Jul-2012 08:52

GPS has always been virtually instantaneous on my SGS2 regardless of which rom I have. Here is an important tip.

Changes to enable much faster gps data lookup for our region.
The gps.conf file needs to look like this for NZ.

NTP_SERVER=nz.pool.ntp.org
XTRA_SERVER_1=http://xtra1.gpsonextra.net/
xtra.bin
XTRA_SERVER_2=http://xtra2.gpsonextra.net/
xtra.bin
XTRA_SERVER_3=http://xtra3.gpsonextra.net/
xtra.bin
SUPL_HOST=supl.google.com
SUPL_PORT=7276

Only the first line will usually look different so make it like above.

Using Root Explorer:
Browse to /system/etc/, push Mount R/W button, then long press gps.conf and select Open in Text Editor.
Edit the file as mentioned shown above, then save, press Mount R/O button, exit Root Explorer and reboot phone.

There is an app call Fast Fix which basically does just this.

Regards,
John.

oxnsox

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#650478 4-Jul-2012 09:49

In case you're not aware all GPS units get the quickest fix when their internal 'almanac' is up-to-date.

There's a few dozen satellites that GPS uses and because they're orbiting the earth at great speed the actual ones you need at any particular time and location vary. The almanac is like a cheat sheet, based on an approx time and location it helps your GPS go searching for the right satellites. (Turning AGPS on has a similar effect because it 'seeds' the GPS with a time and approximate location.)

If you haven't used your GPS in a while, moved hundreds of Kms since your last use, or reset the device, it'll take a little longer than normal as the unit will have to update (re-establish) the almanac first.

This may have been a factor in your issues, or as others have idicated there may have been masking or interference of the very weak GPS signals.