Vibrant GPS Fix

[atvman29]

Here's a fix I stumbled upon over at XDA to help the Vibrant capture a GPS signal a little quicker. It doesn't seem to be the end all solution, but it did help a little.

I can now get a lock (most of the time) regardless of my location. Before I couldn't even get a lock in my car 50% of the time. Sometimes it still seems like the GPS doesn't work right, but I have no idea why.

For me the boot time did go up substantially. Although ever since I plopped my G1's 4GB SD card in, its taken longer to boot anyways, so what's another minute.

Here's the link:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=728611

Also, I was having trouble with Google Maps locking up my phone (black screen with lit soft keys) and I believe its Latitude. Every other time I'd boot up maps, it would brick the phone. I'd have to kill power to try again. Doesn't seem to be doing it with Latitude off though, so that's a relief.

[extorian]

A very interesting thread - thankyou.

It sounds to me the very issue I posted in this thread http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f...ed-apps-37467/ (see post #4).

The fix they're describing on XDA is essentially telling the phone to use one of the assisted modes, and changing the server where it downloads the almanac data from.

One form of assistance the GPS can get is that it can download up to date almanac information. The almanac data is what tells the GPS exactly where each satellite is at any given time, and changes frequently - it'll be out of date in 2 weeks. If the data is out of date for a given satellite the GPS will receive the signal from it still, but won't "use" the data.

So - the fix they're suggesting implies that the server the SGS range of phones is using by default isn't responding too well. When I tried to access it manually just now it seemed to be too busy to respond. Google's server (which they suggest changing it to) will likely have far more capacity.

The GPS will also download the almanac data from the satellites it's connected to, but it takes a long time (15 minutes or so, with a perfectly clear (no buildings or trees) view of the sky.

[brandisss]

Here's a fix I stumbled upon over at XDA to help the Vibrant capture a GPS signal a little quicker. It doesn't seem to be the end all solution, but it did help a little.

I can now get a lock (most of the time) regardless of my location. Before I couldn't even get a lock in my car 50% of the time. Sometimes it still seems like the GPS doesn't work right, but I have no idea why.

For me the boot time did go up substantially. Although ever since I plopped my G1's 4GB SD card in, its taken longer to boot anyways, so what's another minute.

Here's the link:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=728611

Also, I was having trouble with Google Maps locking up my phone (black screen with lit soft keys) and I believe its Latitude. Every other time I'd boot up maps, it would brick the phone. I'd have to kill power to try again. Doesn't seem to be doing it with Latitude off though, so that's a relief.

I had a task killer of some sort downloaded that killed tasks automatically. My GPS navigation would never pick up a signal and it would not work. When I deleted the auto task killer the GPS immediately worked just fine. I think that was my culprit

[extorian]

Yep - that would make sense too. There is a background process that deals with location. Can't find the name of it though