[AT&T Galaxy Note 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] EdAus:
GPs dropout plus

Hi all. as i have gained a lot from XDA in the past i reprint here what I posted on another site.

so far so good for my GPS issue and minimised the reboots as well. Waiting on Samsung and my phone supplier to get back to me (if ever) on the external write issue as i do not want to void my warranty just yet by rooting....

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Since the upgrade to kitkat, 3 things happened that wanted me to dump Samsung(google) forever.

1. To many reboot times through out the day.

2. GPS signal kept dropping out causing navigation horrors when driving

3. No WRITE to EXT SD card.

Without going through the description of hours of testing/isolation here is what i found .. its a summary of what i believe will fix ( or minimize) the reboot events, and fix the GPS issue.

To fix (HOPEFULLY) item 1 and 2.

A. Move any/all your apps on the note3, off the EXT.SD CARD back to the internal card. ALL your apps should now only exist internally on the phone.

B. safely remove your SD card from your phone (if you don't know what that means don't do anything at all)

C. Insert into PC and copy entire SD card to your PC ie MAKE A BACKUP. MAKE A BACKUP oops accidental repeat

d. Format your SD card in the PC

E. Insert the now blank SD card into the phone and use the phone format utility (yes yes i know its technically not necessary but are you absolutely certain Samsung is not setting some hidden bits on the SD card within their format function)

F. Safely remove SD card again and put back into your PC. copy back your files with the exception of the following.

Do not copy back the folder ANDROID/DATA

For the hard of hearing... REPEAT ...DO NOT COPY BACK TO THE SD CARD the folder ANDROID/DATA

You should have found the the format you did within the phone created the folder ANDROID/DATA anyway, and there probably will be differences between the new and the backup you made. IGNORE THOSE DIFFERENCES.

G. Put SD card back into the SGN3 and REBOOT PHONE (normal restart nothing fancy just reset it)

H. run every app one at a time ie run test close, next app, run test close etc. My guess any app that writes an event/data to the external card will set it up at that time ..let me know if i am wrong here but that is exactly what i saw in rebuilding the ANDROID/DATA folder.

J. So far this will have fixed or minimized the number or reboots. so far i have only had one reboot in 3 days whilst trying to make the machine do too many things at once.

K GPS should no longer stall but to ensure speedy GPS satellite lock install an AGPS utility, there are enough on the market. Please note i initially tried only the AGPS option (before the SD card fix) and that lasted all of 5 minutes before SGN3 started losing satellites again.

For problem 3... no WRITE to EXT.SD card. All my reading on the net shows that the culprit is a setting in the file PLATFORM.XML.

There is several lines of code that show the r.w. (read, write) settings for EXT DEVICES are set only to "r". I am not going to repeat it here as fixing that requires you to ROOT your phone and change those settings. Do your own research and if my fix for the GPS works please drop a line and advise. Again do all at your own risk but there is not much you can do wrong.

Ps There is also an issue with Bluetooth lock up when jumping from headset to car and back to headset and BLUETOOTH SHARE not closing properly.. unknown how to fix