yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Desire HD General] lukesan:
Hi Anndrius,

The only way to check what the issue is to try and reason.

Mine has a lock in 5 to 10 sec without those fancy fantastic double amount of sat gps.confs on which I have my own opinion on.

Can you create a small videoclip showing GPS test (chartcross) and standing outside? It will not show your actual position so no risk of privacy things. It will show SNR (signal to noise) and and the amount of sats. Mine are around 30 with some up till 36 and other like 26

So what does yours look like?
[Desire HD General] anndrius:
mine SNR in the GPS test are between 20 to ~30 outside, and GPS sats are constantly changing 5/5; 0/0; 7/8 and so on. Don't have a good way to record on video at the moment, but maybe i will try changing those gps.conf or do a full wipe.
[Desire HD General] lukesan:
That sounds about right, except for the fact that it finds sats and then suddenly not and back.

You could also try putting on a MIUI rom for example and do this http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1028405

It really clears all the data from the GPS
[Desire HD General] anndrius:
okey i will try miui rom and do that wipe efs, but what about superwipe script from ARHD rom? Doesn't it clear everything?
[Desire HD General] lukesan:
Not sure about that one. I think that only clears the memory allocations of the memory etc.
[Desire HD General] anndrius:
well today after not doing anything, just trying to get a lock for 2 hours i got 7/9 sat inside home, but accuracy is changing from ~20 meters to 100 meters SNR between 16 and 25, but outside i get accuracy to 3 meters with 9/9 sats and SNR is about 35. Not sure about later, it sometimes finds sats maybe 5/5 or 4/4 and it just keeps searching fix for a long time, if this will happen i will try MIUI and erasing efs. Thanks for your help :)
[Desire HD General] lukesan:
Ok that sounds more like it!

I also have some weird behaviour which I cannot explain at all.

Reception is good and in gps status it indicates like a 5m precision but the amount of sats is like 6.Checking another phone give me 10 sats but like 30m precision.
[Desire HD General] FiveInline:
For those who still have bad GPS reception. i took some solder on the two contactpoints on the gps antenna, its quick and easy to do, and you dont need to bend the contactpoints on the phone upwards, and risk to break them.
[Desire HD General] Duulis:
Don't know if it has been said before, but a very easy way to get the antenna out without any damages is to take out the battery and push it from there with a non-sharp tool.

And then using a (preferably) plastic tool take it out of its slot.
[Desire HD General] IOwnTheSky:
WOW

Wow im impressed this is nice tip man ill do it if it ever happens to me thanks a lot
[Desire HD General] rs1982:
Replaced the flash cover on my dhd

I've replaced the flash cover on my dhd.

Before replacement i could not get any gps reception.

Tried removing the cover and checking the contacts / bending them up a little / cleaning the contacts on the flash cover but that did not help.

Eventually i bought a replacement cover on Ebay, think it was around 15$, now i get up to 10 sats.

Thanks for the tip!
[Desire HD General] eyeohno:
Did this successfully last week, however, i managed to snap the cover's bottom fastener, it's okay but a bit loose, i'll probably just pick up a thin case to keep it secure. Can anyone recommend one?

EDIT: Note, change in GPS is huge and very apparent. I'd only recommend this however if you gain a significant GPS signal boost while pushing on the camera.
[Desire HD General] krzych:
Man, first of all, where are you from? (yep, I suppose that matters, coz here in Poland nobody has such a signal like ppl here says we should and I do not believe that we all have worse hardware - and it's quite logical that we are closer to another sats than Americans or even English - maybe the Germans have similar conditions, I really don't know, but seems that poland is specific ;P)

Second, if few of those satellites have a good signal, your hardware is ok. Or should I say: at least your antenna is ok I think.

And about the things you did - only cleaning/bending contacts is able to change anything, any other solution will just break or make worse.

There is also possibility that your antenna (cover) is bad quality, but I honestly don't know. My buddy said that it's just a plastic covered with "some ****" (his words) which can be damaged (old and dry? too thin? dunno).
[Desire HD General] Grant Barker:
I reviewed a couple on my site. A couple of them are pretty similar but you can see some close-up pics to get an idea.

Example

I'm sure you can find something like them but cheaper on ebay, amazon etc.
[Desire HD General] PXeuda:
thx for the info and nice video

HTC DHD rooted/S-OFF/ENG-OFF

BlackICEv1.01b5 + LordModUE-8.1-BFS-b5+ + OnDemandX

[Radio] 12.62.60.27_26.13.04.19_M matching Ril HTC-RIL_2.2.1 1003G

CWR 5.0.2.0
[Desire HD General] egyan:
holy ****!!! i've had gps issues since day 1 -- i thought it was the phone's ****ty hardware. i performed this fix; instructions couldn't be more clear. readjusted and cleaned contacts with 70% rubbing alcohol. before performance would be wildly unpredictable; some days would be 5 minutes, other days there would be no lock for hours (0 satellites in GPS status). paired with the 3.1 gps.conf from crypted, the phone locks on INSTANTLY indoors with 9 satellites. i've never seen this performance before, thank you so much!!!!
[Desire HD General] neutron1985:
Hurray!!! It worked

I did the same procedure it worked for me like a charm. One more stuff I found was that my DHD mobile casing was causing the problem. It was blocking the satellite signal (<3 satellite):mad:, once I removed my casing I got 6 satellite signal :).
[Desire HD General] daramzui:
Mine was broken too. So I used an electric wire( or any metalic wire) for antenna. I connected it to the broken position. And I made a hole over the flash cover. I made about 3 ~ 4 cm long wire come out of the hole. It works very well but ugly :(
[Desire HD General] digital006:
I tried this and I had no luck, I now have 0 satellite locks, I'm not 100% sure it was this that caused it though. My phone was out of warranty so nothing major lost but be very careful when doing this.
[Desire HD General] trekkie0927:
I did exactly that, and it worked! GPS lock in 14s inside my bedroom near a window. I had just flashed a new ROM.

Posting a pic in case people might find it helpful. ;)
[Desire HD General] TimmyUK:
Wish I had done it this way!

I tried cleaning contacts, reception worse!

Then I attached additional cable using solder. Got a good contact and the reception was awesome. Couldn't close the cover however so I tried to correct and ended up losing my contacts completely. :(

Any advice on how much a new board is? (UK)

Fortunately we have 2 DHD's and its only me who uses GPS, however I do want to fix this (if possible) because I'm OCD on things like this.

Cheers
[Desire HD General] ed33:
Putting solder on the contacts only lasts a few Weeks,I ended up putting it on both sides but the contacts still bend and lose contact.

Had the wire soldered on contacts for months now and it works perfect.
[Desire HD General] trekkie0927:
Thanks.

I'll remember to do this when I notice it starts to become weak again...
[Desire HD General] egyan:
couldn't you just solder two small wires from the base of the contacts to the flash cover?
[Desire HD General] lukesan:
Any way you can take a photo of the state it is now?

Maybe we can still help you out!
[Desire HD General] mailthev:
I tried the fix posted by OP, but GPS did not improve, on inspection the the contacts on the external cover were very worn out, so I ordered a new GPS antenna cover on eBay (actually description is misleading as these are probably not new but most likely refurbished as they show a slight degree of wear) and this did the trick, now GPS fix is within 10s even indoors from almost getting no fix at all.

From what is posted in this topic there seems to be a definite hardware design flaw with the Desire HD, my phone is around 10-11 months old and the GPS issue only started flaring up around 1 month ago and gradually got worse, so clearly the contacts on the external GPS antenna cover are prone to getting worn out within a year. I would advise anyone with GPS issues not being sorted out with software fixes to contact HTC to get it fixed on the warranty (only reason I didnt was because Im so dependent on my phone and couldnt bear to part with it for even a few days). Disappointing problem in an otherwise excellent phone.
[Desire HD General] waits:
Four weeks after the fix (only small solder blobs on the GPS cover contacts):

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=19495923#post19495923

After this fix, my GPS reception is still fine. However, it is too soon to draw conclusions for the long term.

My guess (just an idea based on my common sense, not on knowledge / technical expertise) is that the original contact area is too small for the current drawn by the flash (the flash uses the same contacts). This leads to some kind of corrosion on the contact area, which results in a bad contact for the GPS antenna. The solder blob is soft, and because of that is slightly deformed by the pressure of the spring contact. As a result the contact area is larger. And that solves the problem. The slightly diminished distance between the contacts, caused by the height of the solder blob, might also help a bit.

I will post back here if the solder blob mod isn't durable ... So no news is good news;).

[Edit]: I was wrong about the flash causing corrosion on the contacts. The contacts are only for GPS. The flash LEDs are on the mainboard, not in the cover.
[Desire HD General] vikdmon:
OP.. thank you very much. This rocks.. get 10 sat fixes in 10 seconds indoors on my inspire 4g. Came at a cost, some minor scuffs on the flash casing.
[Desire HD General] sheidmik:
I tried to do so as shown in the video and it helped, but not for long. After several days of using the device returns to the problem.I think to try to solder contacts on the cover of the terminal on the board with soft wires.
[Desire HD General] stahlsau:
great instructable, really makes a huge difference, thank you very much!
[Desire HD General] snorbi94:
Thanks man :D
[Desire HD General] sheidmik:
I tried to solder the terminals with a bendable wire. The result was bad, the number of satellites is good, but the reception is 13-17

Option of trekkie0927 in 267 post work better. Thank you.
[Desire HD General] Liden78:
Worked like a charm, did´t even take 10 minutes to do!

-before 0 fixes

-after 7 fixes ( indoors)
[Desire HD General] dseries60:
I have tried everything for my Inspire and nothing worked. I pulled the antenna after watching your video, cleaned the connectors and bent the prongs up slightly and now I lock in on 8 satellites in about 10 seconds (in doors). Thank You!
[Desire HD General] drakexpl:
Man, you are my personal jesus.

I bought DHD 2 days ago, installed ARHD 6.3.1 ASAP - everything was ok except ... GPS - worst signal ever, 1-2 sattelite MAX, at 90% time no satts. WTF?

15 minutes ago I opened this GPS and flash case - all gold patterns were black, cleaned up with special paper and isopropanol alcohol. Result? 8 satts close to windows in home, earlier - 0 !

Thanks man! :)
[Desire HD General] Lil-rich:
Thanks man! Works like a charm now :)
[Desire HD General] swift2fly:
getting the flash cover off was quite easy. i used a pair of mini scissors that is curved at the tip of the blade, pushed the back of the cover (right side) a bit, enough to get my thumbnail in there and just popped it off.

for me the contacts were clean. i followed the instructions rebooted my phone and... i didn't notice any difference.

you guys sure thats the gps antenna? to me it looks like connectors for the flash.

sent from the Penh.
[Desire HD General] krzych:
It's not the flash, it's just a lens made of plastic which should disperse the liht from LED which is onboard. Try to look a little bit closer before asking.

And again, the warning: DO NOT BEND THE COVER! I broke mine this way. It seems like quite stury, but it's delicate. But buying a new one for 6 pounds really improved GPS reception for me.
[Desire HD General] enigma66:
Work!Thanks man!
[Desire HD General] avohai:
I'll try this for sure! Thanks!
[Desire HD General] swift2fly:
i've come to the conclusion that GPS doesn't work well due to my location (Cambodia). One day i will get GPS lock within seconds and other days it'll take up to a few minutes. Trying to get a fix in a building, forget it. HTC just needs to make a stronger antenna. the 2 little connectors isn't cutting it.

anyone try laying tin foil in the Flash cover? i know it makes TV reception better and tin foil is one of the items used to make a booster for WIFI routers. Thoughts?
[Desire HD General] jeffhui:
WA.....very professional!
[Desire HD General] krzych:
You are contradicting yourself. If you _can_ get GPS fix in seconds _ever_ then your hardware is probably quite fine, check your _internet_ connection, because _seconds_should_be_only_in_case_of_AGPS! Normal GPS without network connection is SLOW (minutes).

Ever wondered what's in walls, celiling? There is a big difference between concrete, arourde concrete, gypsum, wood, paper-gypsum walls and so on. It really does not make any point to say "no gps indoors". This means nothing.

Total bull****. Never had such good GPS receiver as in my DHD. Never seen either.

Watch out as breaking the antenna is rather easy. I warned all of you twice already, and one person much earlier reported same issue.

Now, again - check your gprs, wifi, hsdpa or whatever are you using. If it's fast, check your gpsd.conf. There are many different configurations for many different parts of the world which will do better/worse, depends on the case.

PS. Here's a tip for you, catch :P
[Desire HD General] deconfrost:
I'm not sure if I'm just lucky or plain fluke :) since I flashed Radio to 12.54.60.25U_26.09.04.11_M2 I just leave GPS on all the time so even when I flash to a different rom, it is left on before booting in to recovery, and no matter which rom I use now, GPS will lock within 30secs if it doesnt all I need to do is reset GPS data in GPS Status, download agps data again and done, whereas before I used to have the GPS off all the time when I dont use it, so it be off when reboot in to recovery, really dont know what made the different, but thats the only thing I am doing different.
[Desire HD General] waits:
FYI, an update:

Two months after the mod (only small solder blobs on the GPS cover contacts; no antenna wire; no mobo mod):

Still working fine, so I think this mod is durable, at least for me ...

And why: I think the solder blobs cause a better / larger contact area, due to the softness of solder. The diminished distance between the spring contacts and the solder might help a bit also. A warning: to prevent melting of the plastic, do not overheat the contacts while soldering. A fast short tip should be enough.

After the mod I always get a fast fix, with an average of 7/8 sats, accuracy less than 15 m. And sometimes even more (app: GPS Status):
[Desire HD General] swift2fly:
i dont use agps. somehow it affects google maps, while using CM7 based roms. anyways, gps is working much much much better for me. i can get a fix indoors near a window within seconds, even while having on my rubber slip on case. even faster without the case on.

this fix really helped, even though i had to redo it like 3 times.

sent from the Penh.
[Desire HD General] krzych:
Good for you. By the way, how fast you can get a fix without Assisted GPS?
[Desire HD General] swift2fly:
on average, less than 10seconds. in most cases it's within 2-3seconds, with an average of 9 satellites.

for me the trick is, for a faster fix, is to leave GPS on.

after a reboot or turning off GPS then back on, getting a fix may take longer (30sec to 1 minute). This maybe due to the ROM i am running (Black Ice). My co workers are running the ARHD, oh their DHD, and they get gps fixes within seconds no matter what but with the aid of AGPS.
[Desire HD General] mwarrington1992:
I was reading into this and read pressing the plastic cover where the flash is works too and I tried that and started to get a fix inside my house and I would never get a fix after half an hour before. Just worth trying it before you take you're phone apart.
[Desire HD General] krzych:
Man, you need to read more about how GPS works. It's obvious that when you leave gps on, the chip will have sraps of info about sats which function just like AGPS, its pre-fix phase which allows to speed up fixing. But if we talk about a fix, then we talk about _cold_start_. There are only two types of this - a cold start without injections (no AGPS) or cold start with them (AGPS on). When you recently had a fix and try to fix again, this is not a cold start, its a warm start with preinjected data still actual for speeding up a fix. So, basically, whe you leav your GPS running even withouy a fix, it's gaining data time to time just like it was feeded by AGPS. And that's why more of the times you have seconds to fix, and your mates have always. No ROM differences matters here.

PS. Your fix without AGPS is probably even faster than mine - I usually drive so I'm not observing carefully, but it seems it takes minutes to fix - three or so. With AGPS it can be even 3 to 5 secs, it depends on the weather (as all GPS functioning)
[Desire HD General] swift2fly:
i'm no GPS expert but all I know is that my GPS works better than before!
[Desire HD General] krzych:
Heheh, cool ;) Then just try to observe it sometimes ;). And have a nice positioning ;).
[Desire HD General] ronypony:
Thanks. Working to 100%
[Desire HD General] Noblelox:
Woo Hoo!

Yup! Worked a dream. I'd been thinking it was Gingerbread had done for mine, but I had 7 Sats in 30 seconds, and Sporty pal was locked on and rearing to go in seconds.

Makes me think if this unit can be modded to make it even better???
[Desire HD General] rakesh2002:
@Noblelox: What changes would you like to see? brief me and I will look into the matter. Thanks.
[Desire HD General] Optemas:
hmm..

hmm... defiantly need to look into that..
[Desire HD General] kikibgd:
Done it, works much better,

btw i cleaned contacts with gasoline and that black spot is much smaller after cleaning.

thank you!!!
[Desire HD General] p0d0:
cool! i will test this in a few days!
[Desire HD General] starkilling:
I'm gonna try this out.

Thank you VERY much! it works perfectly. I am amazed at how easily this thing has been fixed and how poor the original design is.

Also, the little cap thingy is higher towards the camera, it's no leveled with the rest of the phone. Any ideas on how I can get it back down?
[Desire HD General] Hunt3r.j2:
This doesn't really make sense.
[Desire HD General] crazyboy1978:
thanks,

2 drops tin on the contacts , pull it up.

great mod thanks

7sec indoor and 8sats.
[Desire HD General] Zebede:
Thanks

Excellent solution, Worked well, Cheers
[Desire HD General] ltkort:
Worked for me
[Desire HD General] Stoffl_:
Tried to improve GPS reception by applying solder to the gold contacts on the antenna cover but ended up making it much worse - Struggling to get a fix even outside with clear sky.

Never touch a running system. :/
[Desire HD General] rakesh2002:
Soldering has never been recommended in the main post. I would request every DHD owner with soldering in their mind to first use standard repair procedure which must work by the way. The alternative is to invest $5 on the antenna casing which could be found in Ebay or other popular E-shopping websites.

Only those with soldering expertise could take the extreme steps because extreme heat can burn the internal circuitry or adversely hamper the very intention of this post.
[Desire HD General] Stoffl_:
Yeah I've allready ordered a new GPS antenna, it's not that I lack soldering experience, probably just had the soldering station turned up to high and destroyed the thin layer of gold paint.

Tried to fix it yesterday but no luck.

It's rather embarrassing tbh, just the usual process of me trying to improve something which is allready working *just fine* and ending up breaking it in the process. ;)

I never touched the circuitry, I was just messing about with the antenna.
[Desire HD General] sashank:
Brilliant!

I just did this on my DHD and I'm getting a 10 satellite fix in my room! That's never happened before. I used to catch satellites only when I stood in my balcony or next to my window, that too after quite a long time. Big thanks to rakesh2002 for this guide. Anyone who's having a GPS problem that doesn't improve no matter what they try on the software side, I advise them to try this out. It's the only sure shot way to fix it. I knew for sure it was a hardware problem on my DHD, because I used to get a crappy 3-6 satellite fix even when driving, but when I lightly pressed and held down on the GPS antenna cover, it immediately jumped to 10 satellites or more and went back to 2-6 satellites once I released the cover. Try this out first with your DHD to check if the hardware is at fault. If you're getting a good satellite fix normally, then no problem. Also, if you're scared of doing this, an alternative is to get a tight fitting silicone/hard case for the phone and putting that on when you want to use GPS (if you don't like using cases for regular use). The case will press down on the GPS antenna cover and give you a good satellite lock. I used to use a silicone case and never had a problem with GPS for more than a year since I got the DHD. I started experiencing problems only after I stopped using the case because it looked like crap.

Point to note - The bottom of the antenna cover has a strange clip. It's just a plastic projection unlike the standard clips on the top and right side. It's quite hard to put back into the phone because you can't just press it in like the other clips. You'll want to be careful with this to avoid breaking it. Mine broke as I was prying open the cover itself and is sort of dangling in its place now. I put it back into place and stuck it with super glue, but I was unable to put the cover back into the phone without breaking it again. So I gave up and just let it be. But it doesn't affect the result at all. I bent my spring contacts upward and even with this clip broken and the GPS antenna cover subsequently not having a tight fit at the bottom, I'm still getting a perfect 8-10 satellite fix in my room. :cool:
[Desire HD General] rakesh2002:
Thanks Sashank.
[Desire HD General] stutunaru:
Awesome!!!! it worked beautifully for me....thank you very much Rakesh2002
[Desire HD General] limct:
The mod doesn't work for me . It only work if the wire is hanging outside the case. Once the cover is closed, they is no signal .

Got a new antenna cover from ebay for $5 and it solve all my problem . For those who don't want to mess around with soldering . I will advise you change the cover instead . It save all the trouble on soldering and might even damage your phone .
[Desire HD General] jfphillips:
I'm sorry but I can't believe this is a hardware issue. In my view, the GPS problem is a software issue.

Let me tell you about my HTC Desire HD. Google navigation worked fine on the stock ROM. I then decided to root it and to put CyanogenMod 7.xxx onto it. That's when my gps problems started. I would get a lock on very quickly but then it would hunt for satellites after about a minute.

I tried all sorts of solutions, none of which worked. I then put the stock ROM back on and the GPS worked flawlessly.

After a while I thought I'd try an experiment with an ICS ROM. I tried MIUI, Virtuous and PrimoS and the same GPS problem came back with all of them.