[LG G5 Guides, News, & Discussion] disk@tek@:
Ok. I decided I have nothing to lose and drilled the hole.

I've spent half of the day testing and in parts reading radiowave theory refreshing my uni's 3rd year.

Long story short conclusions are:

Eventhou I use shlom's shame-hole method the drilling part is the most damage prone step to take.

You do not have to solder PCB if you do not have skills (or balls).

You do not have to remove the mainboard.

1. Get the wire of 47 mm long. Strip 1mm from one end. Flatten this 1mm part. If you have soldering iron - good, use it to flatten and fix the wire. If not, depending on the stiffness of the wire, it might just keep the shape.

2. Now unscrew one bolt that is close to the connector. Pry this end of the board with something reasonably sharp (please do not use knife or blade) just to lift it up a bit.

3. Toss the flatten piece of a wire under the connector. And press with the mainboard. Tight the bolt.

Note: I had my flex cable cut that goes to the main antenna inside the display. Like in the Rick's method. Unrelated to Rick's fix. So you might have to isolate it by placing a thin plastic piece below the wire. Just stick minuscule piece of duct tape to the wire before placing it under the connector. Will work like a charm. OR cut the flex cable. OR you might try to play with the signal not removing connection to the main antenna. In my case antenna is disconnected.

4. Drill the hole. Put the wire in. Pull throw and carefully close the phone.

5. Now the fun part. Not going throw the deep of antenna building theory basics please realise.. Wire antenna in ideal world should be 47.7mm long as shlom said. Which is a quater of a wavelengh of GPS frequency. In real life it depends. On many things. It will be shorter for optimal SNR. In my case it is around 34.5mm of the sticking out piece. Again. Not the whole wire. But the sticking out piece, because the case of a phone is a reflector. This corresponds perfectly to the theory and other applications of wire antenna testing. It is shorter (always) in real life. I've cut thru many wires before concluding my tests and I believe 34.5mm is optimal for my phone, my wire, my specific condition at the moment of testing. Once I got great results with only 32mm. But it was inconsistent. So I've stuck another wire and continue with my tests.

So my suggestions would be. Start from whatever you have left of 47mm and cut by 1mm and see the improvements. Once you are satisfied - stop. You know my measurements.

6. You ask if was it worth it? To me yes. I gave joy to my inside engineer and fcking fixed that damn gps. I got quick fix (no more that a minute) and 15m accuracy sticking my phone out of a window of a tall building. I have multiple 30+ SNR satellites. Before I had all ZEROS! Once in a while single with 15-20. Trust me, you might have better results with better luck.

PS. BTW I have tested all possible wire antennas with this shame-hole method. Wavelenth, 5/8 of wavelenth, halfwavelengh and quater. In theory the longer the antenna - the better. Not in this case. I think the biggest issue is to place a wire in straight line and having a phone as a reflector itself with unknown groundpoint. It is not an easy task to do. No wonder LG screwd up. Best results I got are with 1/4l.

PPS. All the points at the back of a case that are referenced in this thread as GPS related are connected. Mean they are all grounds. And the wire mesh is a ground too. Mean this connection is a base reflector to or is piece of a weird sophisticated (dipole or what?) antenna LG was trying to produce and make work on GPS 1575MHz, GLONASS 1240/1600MHz and LTEb7 2600MHz. It didn't. In fact I'm surprised this wire method is actually working, up to a tolerable, I'd even say reasonable degree. I guess I won't have any b7 signal anymore.