yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Desire HD General] joooe:
Ok, tried this yesterday.

No soldering though, as I was scared to ruin the phone.

Grabbed a 3 cm cable from a 12v car leds and just hooked them up to the 2 pins, just twisting a little so they don't come off.

At first the results where not much different. Opened it again, rewired them and voilá.

It's like magic. Just got close to my window and bang!, less then 5 seconds.

I even wiped the phone and installed the rom again and still works!

By the way, I looked at the contacts of the cover itself and tried to rub a little bit with a screwdriver to remove possible rust. Bad news.

Most certainly, the gps problem lies with these contacts. They are too thin!

When I tried to rub a little, I started to see the plastic underneath!!!

So, maybe, the little dark dots we see in them are just the plastic showing up due to use. That's why gps doesn't work as it should.
[Desire HD General] ivolol:
The GPS chip will store satellite location data (in itself) even through a ROM wipe, afaik. So once you get a fix once, it will usually be much faster to lock thereafter (for a day or two, in the same location). You can use GPS Status to wipe the GPS chip's data to get a true cold fixes for testing.
[Desire HD General] joooe:
I don't remember if I wiped the gps data with Gps Status.

Going to try it now. :D

---------- Post added at 01:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:38 PM ----------

Reseted the A-GPS data, didn't even dowloaded an updated one (my monthly data plan is over for this month) and I can confirm that the lock showed up in less than 10 secs, both in GPS Status and CoPilot.

I'm indoors, on the second floor, with big windows. Phone was left against the window glass.

Brilliant stuff. :)
[Desire HD General] TylerDurben:
Congratulation ;)
[Desire HD General] Overloaded:
Damn, your too late :P

Took my phone apart a few weeks ago to pimp it :P

But don't want to take that thing of again because it's a pain in the ass.
[Desire HD General] joooe:
Not really. Use a small customized tool, slightly bent at the tip and insert it carefully through the battery compartment, aiming at the cover. Just a little effort will do. The cover will pop up sligthly, just enough for you to put your nail in it.
[Desire HD General] s0litaire:
Wonder how easy it would be to get 2 of the small ipex connectors and make a small cable yourself?

would be a lot safer then soldering it...
[Desire HD General] laserb3ak:
Firstly this "hack" takes longer than 2 seconds...

Secondly a large majority of GPS reception issues in DHD are related to bad contact between phone and antenna.

So check this connection before voiding your warrenty.

otherwise thanks for the info.
[Desire HD General] moh8021:
so i tried this, and i had to solder the contacts on the antena to have contact with wire and little doohickey thing that pops out of the motherboard, it works better but its not that big of a difference sure i get 3 more satellite locks, unless you guys are using a patch, which i don't know about, plus sometimes it takes more than 10 second to find satellite, are you guys using a patch??
[Desire HD General] BurnQuiST:
Big thanks. My GPS works again and faster than ever ! :D
[Desire HD General] dazultra2000:
This is really handy as I have bent my contacts up so much now that they have snapped through weakness, which means I get NO signal at all. I was thinking about trying to replace them with small springs or something a bit clever like that, but this idea is even better!

Thanks for the idea :)
[Desire HD General] Stoffl_:
Fixing the freakin GPS antenna on my Desire HD mk II:

This time I didn't mess with the Flash cover/gps antenna and applied the solder to the PCB spring contacts.

Before: No proper GPS fix, 4-5 satellites with 15-20dB SNR outside with clear sky.

Just now: almost instant fix, 7-9 satellites with 15-30dB SNR, inside! with the blinds shut

Thank you XDA. :good:
[Desire HD General] Vict20:
I find when I have a GPS reception problem, simply pressing the flash cover in gently below the LED's a couple of times to exercise the contacts beneath will instantly improve the reception.

Maybe solder blobs on the contact points on the cover will make an improvement, but solder will quite rapidly lose its shine and be subject to the same issues.

The long term fix is most likely to replace the flash cover.

Vic
[Desire HD General] Beamen1:
Thanks. My phone started having problems with the GPS lately. I did this and it worked PERFECT. 10 satellites!

I used NO soldier. I have a soldier gun, but I didn't want to risk ruining my phone. Just make the ends thick enough (so they sit pretty tight) and long enough so you can wrap the wire around each contact. No point using soldier really for this mod. Better safe than sorry and I don't think it will come loose any time soon.

I used a wire from a servo (RC) extension.
[Desire HD General] wiwaxia:
Finally I have my GPS work again.but I don't use hardware hack. I simply and gently press down around all the flash cover. Go out start GPS status and gmaps an d they fix in less then 10sec.

I suggest to give it a try to people doesn't won't or are scary about hardware hack.

Inviato dal mio Desire HD con Tapatalk 2
[Desire HD General] michaelopolis:
the tin foil mod on another thread looks much easy to do than attaching a wire.:cyclops:
[Desire HD General] krzych:
link?
[Desire HD General] michaelopolis:
here it is

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1757741
[Desire HD General] msc125:
thanks for this! I didn't do the solder, but this thread helped me at least locate and remove the antenna.

Instead of soldering, I bent up the contacts in the phone slightly, in the hope that they would 'connect' better with the contacts in the removable part of the cover.It worked a treat, got a fix in less than 5sec. Before this, i couldn't get a fix at all
[Desire HD General] domlin:
Quite like the idea of this little mod, will be giving it a try.

However just a quick note to the people saying that its not necessary to solder, it might be a very good idea - just in case your bit of cable becomes loose and decides to find its way somewhere else and short out some components - possibly rendering the phone useless (or damaging parts of it).
[Desire HD General] bitcasual:
Just did this and got a lock to 3 more sats.

Awesome mod man!
[Desire HD General] cybersquad:
Isn't there any app to do this job instead of playing with hardware?
[Desire HD General] DeathmonkeyGTX:
Man I wish HTC still made phones with external antenna jacks. I had a giant 40" aerial antenna back around the Kaiser/TyTn2 that plugged into either the phone antenna or gps antenna on the back of the phone. It was easy to break them so I made an awesome vehicle mount and got really good at connecting it very carefully. That thing pulled in GSM and sometimes EDGE from way outside the coverage map when plugged into the phone antenna and GPS accuracy to within about .5 meters in clear weather. The worst accuracy I saw using that thing was about 3 meters under a large forest canopy in a heavy thunderstorm.
[Desire HD General] dmytrop:
on software level there only limited abilities and if smth happens with hardware in most cases you will need direct fix hardware instead using various soft
[Desire HD General] derDoctor:
bricked devices?

To the people who did this

how many of you bricked their device ?

because i am not sure if i should do that.:confused:
[Desire HD General] DroidRunner:
Brick a device soldering a wire to 2 terminals?

:eek:

You probably shouldnt be doing this mod then.....
[Desire HD General] Toldo:
I've made this tweak without soldering (just wrapped the wire around). It's like magic. Before, I could stand and wait 20 minutes for nothing (never got a fix, oh wait, once, after like 25 minutes). Now it gets fix in like 15 seconds without agps. Only thing in minus is that I've broken one of the gps antennas latches and it sticks like 1/3 of a mm out on a side. But I was thinking of getting a new housing anyways.
[Desire HD General] Hunt3r.j2:
Honestly my suggestion at this point is to not mess with soldering. Possibly the only fix that I can think of is figuring out the height that the GPS antenna contacts the motherboard contact, and attaching something to the antenna so that it cannot push down on the antenna and decrease reception.
[Desire HD General] mase2hot:
excellent I will be trying this!
[Desire HD General] carisuno:
that's done the job. Cheers guys no soldering or whatsoever.... cable is a little thick.... I'm in Thailand right now , no tools available......Thx for the thread
[Desire HD General] trackattaker:
I just did this also and for the moment it looks good. I get 3-4 satellites indoors on a thunderstorm so i'm pretty confident that outdoors in clear weather it's going to work great.

Thanks for the tutorial :D

PS: apart from soldering/twisting a wire onto the contacts, imho the only solution is to buy a new gps antenna cover, because it's not just the "springs" that need adjusting, but, like other members said, it's the thin gold film on the cover that gets corroded or dissapears from rubbing. Because of this it can't close the circuit and make the antenna work propperly.

PS2: My only worry is that this hack would interfeer with other sensitive electrical circuits in that area. Anybody noticed poor reception or wifi signal or some kind of unusual battery drain?
[Desire HD General] Toldo:
It can't affect cell reception or wifi, because they have separate antennas (the bottom cover is the GSM antenna, and the battery cover is the WiFi antenna). No unusual battery drain also.
[Desire HD General] Lobey Dosser:
Replacing the flash cover worked for me

Firstly - thanks to the OP and to all on this thread who have tried to help. It has been a great source of ideas and advice.

My GPS was working fine last October when I used the supplied Route 66 SatNav software to drive 1500 miles around British Columbia and Alberta on vacation, with no trouble at all. However it stopped working a couple of months ago for no obvious reason.

So, having cracked the cover getting it off, I tried the OP's suggestion and soldered a random length (just whatever would fit in the space) of multi-strand wire to the mobo posts. Result - no improvement at all.:(

Then I read on and saw the posts suggesting that single core was better and that the ideal length was 4.7 cm, so I unsoldered the first attempt and soldered the new wire in. Result - no improvement. at all

So I ordered a new cover, stripped out the second wire fix, straightened the mobo posts and fitted the new antenna/cover.

RESULT - BRILLIANT SATELLITE RECEPTION and quick fixes.

Looks like there's no substitute for the manufacturer's own part.:good:
[Desire HD General] Hunt3r.j2:
After messing with it, that's really what I've learned.

My GPS is completely dead by this point, however, because the GPS contacts are broken due to bending. Hopefully, other people learn from my mistake. Don't solder anything. Just make sure the contacts are not crushed and that the GPS cover is cleaned up without any corrosion or erosion of the contacts.
[Desire HD General] carisuno:
hmmm... i wouldn't say that... cause for erveryone of us it's different. for example my contacts are working flawlessly, but the cover doesn't provide gps reception. so for me it's allright to put in a cable ( without soldering, cause it's easier ) and let it do the job. My device is getting really old by now and i'm not gonna spend some 10€ on the gps cover ( thats what it is here in germany in ebay ).... cheers
[Desire HD General] maddog486:
on most laptops old and new that have wifi and on nitendo ds they have wireless antenna , there's a wire with a push connector on them for the Ariel could u use this type of conector instead of soldering as a fix ? ( u can buy the cable cheep as a spare for the ds)
[Desire HD General] DubelBoom:
Didn't work for me :(

Still no fix :(
[Desire HD General] FastJack2:
Found another option to fix the Pins wich worked great for me :)

After removing the lid, i applied i thin film of Artic Silver thermal compund to all contact areas and reassembled the device.

Resulting in about 2sec gps lock and much better reception(peak at 47 in GPSTest app).

think this will also work with copper paste or other electrically conducting compunds.

greets

FastJack2
[Desire HD General] leopardtag:
Once I pop the gps cover I saw that the contacts were with that black spots. After testing with a wire and a almost filled gps cover with aluminium foil I decided just to put a little bit of aluminium in each contact. Result... my gps never had green signals in the gps test and now I've got 35 to 42 signals. Thanks to all the people who shared their experiences because it was really helpful.
[Desire HD General] bogduke:
One can get the best results buying a new antenna (flash cover). Zero risks and zero soldering skills needed. Don't be cheap; you bought a pretty expensive phone, spare some money for a new antenna.
[Desire HD General] trackattaker:
If you are careful while soldering you don't risk damaging anything. Just don't hold the soldering iron for long periods on the contacts, and keep it tidy.

@FastJack2 : Never thought about the Arctic Silver thing :confused: . Sounds like a good plan if you don't want to mess with soldering. Think it will compensate for the erosion of the contacts on the antenna cover?
[Desire HD General] Koani:
Is it possible to use aluminum foil instead of the conducting foil tape and fix it on the plastic with glue?
[Desire HD General] Astralix:
Have the same problems with my DHD.

It's funny... I disassembled the lid from the phone and found that the springs had whiped off the gold/copper contact areas of the lid.

But there is (ehm, was :rolleyes:) warranty on the phone. So I asked HTC for a replacement lid. I mean, I broke warranty (sure? It's just a removable plastic part like the other covers too) but I and HTC will save a lot of time, transport costs for the phone and so on, if they simply send me the small plastic thing. They don't... lots of eMail traffic still going on, but I guess they won't do it.

Life could be so hard :mad:

Astralix
[Desire HD General] Coblica427:
Let me preface by saying this is a cool idea if your antenna springs/coatings are shot. However, if your antenna springs, contacts and coatings are all fine when you take the lid off this tutorial is excessive. I decided to try this today to see if I could improve my GPS reception, and upon removing the back lid I discovered the springs and contacts were all fine so I decided to just try some contact cleaner (DeOxit D5) on a cotton swab, and just dabbed some on all the contacts to clean them. I additionally took a small flat blade screw driver and gently bent the antenna springs upward just a tiny bit above parallel to the board to ensure that when I put the cover back on they would be making good contact again with the contacts on the door. After trying this my GPS is running like a rock star again.

Note: I take no responsibility for any damage that results from trying my method - just another route you can take if your springs and contacts are fine.
[Desire HD General] olgs:
I manage to restore GPS performance by soldering the Back Cover GPS contacts directly to the Mainboard contacts using 2 pieces of 1.5cm long wires cut from an ordinary telephone extension cord.

GPS now locks within 30 seconds and often within 10 seconds.

Disclaimer: The soldering is quite hairy as the parts are small, I take no responsibility for any damage that results from trying this method.

kl
[Desire HD General] benno4403:
I tried this fix but a test with GPS Test shows my accuracy is not as good as it should.. I stick around 25 Meter where I first had about a 3m accuracy.

I guess the accuracy is related to signal strength of the satelite? or.. I already tried the GPS patch found somewhere in the thread.

Thanks in advance
[Desire HD General] drpsyko:
It is clear that different types of wire have different reception input. Not to mention that the insulation cover also affecting the performance. Also, is it necessary to link up both of the connectors since it picked up signal better on the right hand connector? When I tried to link both of them, and put the wire close to the circuit board, it would barely pick up any satellite.
[Desire HD General] benno4403:
Good question, I was so sick of it that I bought a new HTC one x and I now modded my desire hd with a nice wire running out the casing xD it does not look that good but it works perfectly.
[Desire HD General] synergydev:
Yeah, deoxit and/or lensline is the proper non-hacky way of doing this.
[Desire HD General] drpsyko:
Been thinking of doing that also. But since the phone is wrapped in casing 24/7, it shouldn't be a problem isn't it?
[Desire HD General] synergydevelopment:
That wouldn't be a problem at all, but I think you should try cleaning and pulling the contacts first.
[Desire HD General] Hunt3r.j2:
Don't do it.

If your case is causing poor GPS reception, just trace out the outline of the plastic flash cover when the case is on the phone, and then cut the case out with the phone out of the case. If you still have poor GPS reception, open up the flash cover and either try to remove the corrosion or get a replacement cover, make sure the contacts are not bent from parallel to the motherboard, and put the cover back on.
[Desire HD General] Dutchship:
In my case the cover piece had contacts which were not only tarnished but worn through altogther. The phone side of the assembly was in tip top condition. Given this situation, no amount of cleaning would satiate the desire, hence the cover contacts received a very fine layer of solder. The contacts positively gobbled up the solder, great wicking, and upon replacement the thing works like charming. Indoor signal in ~15 seconds in brick hut with double skin walls, cavity insulation, sincere and proper ceramic roof, quite unheard of.
[Desire HD General] Rolf74:
Hi. that's what I did:

wire 1mm

Contacts for communication with the cover had to broken. Now only soldered wire, is antenna, is this normal?? Or old antenna must connect to contacts?

Testing new antenna - delay for later, bad weather for 2-day, is rain, homes near the window catches 2 satellite.
[Desire HD General] mcjordan92:
Is that good? bad? better than before?

I actually think about doing this but I'm not sure how much it improves to take the risk..

also my GPS is pretty fine but better is always welcome :D

P.S: the black "cube" inside it on the top right corner of the opened area, is the battery?
[Desire HD General] Rolf74:
In the rain, I did not check before, but noticed that the signal is higher than without the wires.

Also noticed that the signal above with the addition of the old antenna

I advice check first without soldering, try to twist the wire and if you like - soldering

P.S. battery:)

Although now check again without cover showed the same results as and with a lid, perhaps it because of the changeable weather

Tomorrow I try test outside home, then there will be a more sober assessment of the situation.
[Desire HD General] Rolf74:
random way made a very strong signal ...

description in the next post, I can't add a picture there

---------- Post added at 10:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:48 PM ----------

And today conducted another test, remove the cover, and bend wire, for protruded out from the hole and unsolder 1 contact. like that:

After that in GPS test in my flat, signal up from 22 to 40 and add satellites from 2 to 9!!

My phone began to catch the satellites in the middle of flat!:good:

before, in good weather, near the window barely barely ..
[Desire HD General] shaz2sxy:
Going to have to give this a try as my GPS is shocking.

even tried the foil antenna but that doesnt work that well.
[Desire HD General] Hunt3r.j2:
Replace the antenna cover, make sure your contacts are not broken.
[Desire HD General] shaz2sxy:
contacts seem to be fine, will give the cover a try. thanks
[Desire HD General] recolor-shrink-spool:
Well this sucks...

Since I don't have a soldering iron I ordered a new flash cover. This one has contacts that are normal. I also bended the springs up a bit.

And then I hoped that I would have gps again, but no, it still didn't work :(

Anyone who also has this? Any tips to get the gps working? Springs and contacts are both fine, so it should be working...
[Desire HD General] AgentCain:
Tried this mod myself, on a second hand DHD.

First of all, a bit of soldering on the contacts works miracles. After examining the antennas contacts under a microscope, I spoted worn out areas. Carefully add a bit of soldering and file it till its flat. Clean it with alcohol, clear gasoline or even an electronics cleaning product (ex Panasonic Cleaner) to achieve maximum conductance.

After that, I though what the hell, I should try out the wire thingy. No luck there. Used an 0.8mm copper wire from an old transformer winding. Rather good for this job, since its single cored and it has a strong and thin insulation (lacquer ). Just strip 1mm on the edges and its ready for soldering. But the results were the same/worse as the stock antenna. Of course if you lack the cover antenna or the mobo springs, its the next best thing to do
[Desire HD General] hotmailcom:
Works like magic

Followed the instructions on how to open the back cover on youtube - the movie called "Desire HD gps antenna swap",

then soldered a 0.3 mm wire. IT WORKS!!! before, the gps couldn't find any signal, now it takes from 10 to 30 sec to sync.
[Desire HD General] RogerL:
My go at improving GPS

I’ve been trying various ways of improving my DHD GPS performance.

Software:

I’ve tweaked the gps.conf file a number of times, but have ended up with what is written using Faster Fix, which is the basic configuration for my locality, and seems to be as good as any other.

Hardware:

Using the standard setup with the GPS antenna/LED cover pushing onto the mobo contacts, I was getting reasonable GPS performance, but fixes were not instantaneous, and it tended to lose the fix when on the move.

I tried the soldered wire loop as in the original post, and found that I couldn’t pick up any satellites at all.

I then tried connecting the cover with soldered wires. First I tried using coaxial cable. GPS reception was very good with the antenna connected but not fitted, and then lost all reception when the antenna was fitted. I found the cable too unwieldy and difficult to route and store under the cover.

I tried a similar setup but with 2 separate thin stranded wires, one for each contact. These were easier to route and store under the cover. This time, the GPS reception with the cover connected but not fitted was amazing. A fix in 2 seconds down to 7ft accuracy, and with about 9-11 sats. This is comparable with the HTC Desire GPS performance which is always excellent and is what I’m using as a benchmark. However, when the cover was fitted, using tape over the contacts to just use the wired connections, GPS performance again dropped to virtually zero.

This proves to me that the software is fine, and the whole issue is with the hardware. The DHD is certainly capable of this level of GPS performance.

There seems to be an issue with the proximity of the cover to the case/mobo. I found this interesting article about the Nokia N97 GPS, which suggests a shielding issue with the mobo connection:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/10588_Getting_the_Service_Centre_low.php

So my next approach will be to look at using foil shielding under the cover. I’ll re-post when I have some results.

Has anyone else found that they get this amazing GPS reception with the antenna connected but not fitted?
[Desire HD General] AgentCain:
A bit of foil tape should do the trick. Just open some holes for the leds and contacts. Grounding the shield could be done by using the small screw at the corner
[Desire HD General] RogerL:
Good point that the shielding would need to be grounded.
[Desire HD General] AgentCain:
ceduTun known

Otherwise it wouldnt be a shield, would it? :p
[Desire HD General] recolor-shrink-spool:
I'm very interested in this shield idea! Please keep us informed about it :)