yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
*Sigh*.. There are a thousand similar threads, next time check for dupes.

When you FIX something, it suggests it doesn't work at all, but when you optimise something, you improve it's performance. The GPS DOES work, it simply loses signal and doesn't track very accurately. If it needed fixing, there would be no lock, or the lock would be completely wrong (it could show you are in Spain when you are in Australia). No GPS gear is 100% accurate, even the military/aviation stuff.

This means nothing either, because they all run the same software. If the antenna WAS poor though, they probably would have refreshed the models with better antenna's by now, or started shipping them with new antenna's. There has been no evidence of this. The antenna on Garmin Forerunner 305's (a watch GPS) is tiny, and it's accurate enough for fitness. It might be poor shielding, or it might be software. There is no proof the antenna is dodgy

Someone also hooked in an external antenna on the MMCX jack apparently (which you'll see if you take off the back cover) and they said it was still problematic, which provides more evidence of software (or chipset).

Huh? They aren't doing that. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Skyhook/SUPL have been disabled by default. People in forums have been telling others to do this, not Samsung. They haven't mentioned Skyhook at all.

Samsung are apparently using a new generation of GPS chip which offloads the GPS processing to the CPU. When winmodems were first released, they were bad too (low connection speeds, etc. But after their drivers algorithms were optimised, they actually became equal to any normal modem (but cheaper, with the advantage of being more easily upgradeable by software). It's possible we are seeing the same effect here.

Who said they can't? They might have decided it was better to roll out their fixes with froyo instead, so they could fix MANY problems at once (or the GPS fix might have only been tested with many other fixes in place). I'd imagine Samsung's developers are VERY competent.

You may also not realise it, but GPS tracking is a "fuzzy" technology. GPS doesn't tell you where you are, but is used to determine a range of where you could be. Satelites constantly come in and out of view, sometimes send poor signals, and there are many other factors which affect results. So software algorithms play a HUGE part in determining your current location and the range of errors. In fact, even when jogging at 15km/h, on a 1hz chip, the signal updates a MAXIMUM of every 4meters (but the signals aren't perfect themselves either). At 60km/h, that's 16m potential error (which is a lot).

But either way, this thread is a dupe, a total guess (based on poor evidence), and the reality is, nobody here knows or can prove the exact cause, so it isn't a debatable situation.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] titooo7:
andrew, he's not the only one who thinks thst the GPS problem in SGS is a hardware problem that can't be fixed, I really hope it isn't. However you seems to be sure that is only a software problem, as you said there are not any proofs about what's the cause of the problem so your comments are also a total guess. ;)

By the way, in my opinion if that's just a software problem it will be fixed with the official release of froyo. SGS Tab doesn't seem to have this problem (source http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=805149), so if it's just a software problem they already found the way to solve it.

But if froyo arrives to SGS and the GPS continue working in that bad way we really could say that it won't ever get fixed and we all should make a formal complain to Samsugn in that case.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] fluke:
I installed the JM8 rom and all problems regarding with gps were gone, time to fix satellites, and losing randomly signal.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
I'm not.. If you read through, my point is, there is insufficient evidence for us to determine if it's hardware or software..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
I'll add, that the Tab has a lot more free space in the enclosure, so a better antenna wouldn't be an issue. Why would Samsung include a faulty antenna on the Tab too, when it was released long after the SGS? Not hard proof, but just saying..

My thoughts is that it's chipset or drivers, but as I mentioned, we have no way of knowing..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] borchgrevink:
GPS observation

When using "my tracks" and walking the track recorded is allover the place. But when using Runkeeper app the track is perfect. Running jm1. Does this mean that the gps issue is connected to some sw issues in some apps and not all apps?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] compuse:
Surely yea, guessing most are using 3rd party navigational software, maps10 and copilot gave many problems here while google maps is just plain perfect!

=/
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Oletros:
Ein? Google Maps, Google Navigation or Copilot have the same bad behaviour
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
depending on which software you are running.

you have the option to customize the sampling rates

usually the more sampling rates the more accurate it gets

problem is the more sampling rates, the more battery it uses

the default accuracy sampling is set to 50
[Galaxy S I9000 General] t1mman:
i've just started a thread with specific info in the settings. I'm getting "all over the place" issue also with SportyPal (wich I've been using for more than a year without issue on Froyo on HTC Vogue). I'll try to get the settings on the vogue to compare but you can probably compare your settings with mine just for the heck of it.

If I don't see any difference between vogue and SGS, I'll try playing with Accurancy.

BTW, is the accurancy setting a "Per time" (increasing it's value will increase accurancy) or a "time before" (decreasing it's value will increase accurancy)?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mike.sw:
I'm on JPK recording my cycling tracks with Endomondo and works perfect.

But recording a car track is way worst.

Do it with my tracks and it just bad.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mike.sw:
GPS and latest Froyo releases (JPK/JPA) - fixed or not?

Well let me just show you few examples:

a recording I did with my SGS and friend's Nexus One phone while sitting in the same car:

My SGS running JPK FW:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...d=103378720844078541500.0004925e3286cfa0ab46b

Friends NO running CM6:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...560353618778776094.0004925e5d7a76db22a6e&z=14

the difference is pretty obvious isn't it?

Then I did another test drive with JPK:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...2.114821,34.833741&spn=0.013922,0.027874&z=16

much better but not in the same level as the nexus.

Now here's a record I did few minutes ago after I flashed to JPA:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...32.11275,34.832904&spn=0.013922,0.027874&z=16

looks to me same JPK level gps. nothing new here.

(all recording where done using My Tracks on default settings)

Honestly as long as then gps is not as bad as I received in the test I did vs Nexus, I'm ok with that. Waze works well with such reception levels most of the time.

But I doubt that it's going to get better from this point.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
JPA? Is that a recently released Froyo similar to JPM?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mike.sw:
Yea it's pretty much same JPM/JP6 only for arab countries (meaning it has better RTL support for hebrew).

It got released yesterday few hours after JPM/JP6.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Looks good, and looks as though there is quite a bit available to interfere with the signal too.. It will be interesting to see what happens when someone goes on a long jog with it through dense forest.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] lafaya:
GPS Fix speed vs Accuracy

I thought I would make a new post re GPS accuracy vs the speed it takes to place a fix. They are not the same things. It seems a number of people on the forums are posting that their GPS 'works' because they have over 5+ satellites when before they had none.

Just because you get over 5+ satellites, does not mean your GPS works. The real problem for us XDAers is that the Samsung have failed to find a fix for accuracy. If you are getting accuracy to 100 or so meters then that is on the borderline of pathetic for in car navigation.

My GPS for example locks into 7 satellites but when driving, at times it thinks I'm driving on houses (lol). When I stop at red lights, it keeps on drifting. This is the problem most of you would have if you tested carefully.

tl;dr - we don't care if you get x amount of satellites locked in. We want to know how accurate it is (5m?10m?etc)...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mstrandbo:
Can't say that telling how many meters GPS Test/Status says is a valid test for this. You have to go out and track a path to really see if it's accurate. With JM2 I could see GPS Test claiming an accuracy of 5-10meters often, but when out running it would be really inaccurate. Now with JP6 the inaccuracies have vanished almost completely, it's usable now. Though I haven't tested car navigation yet.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] lafaya:
I can confirm that for walking is okay.

I'm on JP6 and can confirm that on in-car navigation, the gps on the phone cannot keep up. This definitely seems like a hardware problem unfortunately :(
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mike.sw:
1) this isn't a developers section material.

2) i totally agree. as a proof i can show my tracks that recorded while i was driving and while i was cycling.

here is a map recorded with My Tracks on JPK FW:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...2.097227,34.830179&spn=0.029448,0.038581&z=15

this is a really bad record.

here is another record I did on JPK FW:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...32.115912,34.828248&spn=0.014721,0.01929&z=16

this time much better.

here is a track record I did using Endomondo while cycling:

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/o0VmtMPM6cA

the track record while cycling are almost the same all the time, and near perfect (5-10m accuracy)

here is a map recorded with My Tracks on JPA FW:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...=32.112622,34.83254&spn=0.014722,0.01929&z=16

So is there a GPS problem? I think so. Will it get better? Don't think so.

GPS seem to have good moods and bad moods. Now it looks like it works ok with JPA but who knows maybe tomorrow it will act like the first record.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dcarr622:
GPS has been greatly improved with JPM/JP6. Before with JPK and ZUJP2 I didn't even have a working GPS.

Now, while driving, I get a fairly consistent 10meter lock that provides decent results in My Tracks. Sometimes it goes down to 5meters which is quite good.

However, there are times that it shoots up to 20meters and 50meters and then I get some pretty bad results that prevent me from trusting it for car navigation.

At least it works, but it's often inaccurate. The Aria (and G1) gives way better results that are very consistent. Locks are as good as 2meters.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Rawat:
http://bit.ly/9P7acw - That was done on JPM whilst walking yesterday, with the phone held in my hand. It's a pretty short track, but it hasn't tracked me correctly once on there. I went up Chancery Lane, then turned onto High Holborn before stopping the app when getting on the tube.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] rkantos:
Yea, I definitely second this. Initial fix on newer roms has got very much better. Using GPS test accuracy is a fictional number :D. When using my exterbal LD-3W the difference between it and Galaxy s is night and day. Galaxy accuracy in straight line is something like 10 meters, when you turn the accuracy drops to 45m. This is based on a recorded track and not GPS status. With the external gps the accuracy is about 2 meters when going in straight line, when turning it drops to about 3-5 meters. It drifts a maximum of two lanes, while galaxy s drifts 5-7 lanes.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dcarr622:
Yeah that is pretty bad. My results haven't been nearly that bad while driving but still, a device of this stature should give at least as good results as cheaper, much older devices.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Rawat:
Those all look pretty good compared to the track I posted :(
[Galaxy S I9000 General] lafaya:
http://goo.gl/J4iD

I beg to differ as I believe this should go into the developers section because the question always gets asked and people give differing answers. Hopefully when people read this, they will get a better sense of the real issues
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mike.sw:
Yea I can see that, your result is really awful. makes me feel "lucky" lol.

Do you enable data when using the GPS? (like wifi or 3g/2g)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] BronzedDroid:
Here's my result while driving... stopped the car a few times there, but everything seems nice.

Using JP6/JPM here. BTW the little "detour" seen in the middle of the track was me driving into a parking lot.

http://maps.google.no/maps/ms?ie=UT...826085217733179193.000492ad9285e89351efe&z=16
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Rawat:
I had 3G on, Wifi off.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] lafaya:
the question is, should one return their SGS for another one ?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] danamoult:
Personal experience, it can say it's got me to a 5meter accuracy yet place me in the middle of houses when I'm walking along a street.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] cba1986:
Not Again. It's not a hardware issue.

Since XWJM7 the GPS always works with me without a hips or jumps. I cannot tell how many "meters" of accuracy. Usually between 5 to 15 outdoors and 15 to 25 inside my house with a floor above me. Using Ndrive i Never lost fix or had any jumping.

Here a track that i record with Mytracks walking:

http://maps.google.com.ar/maps/ms?i...530534326986514281.000492b00aec10ca08796&z=17

Even recorded when i crossed the street.

I don't care about the offsets it's seems that google maps has a little error with position in my country. I port the track to mapsource and the offset is gone.

Do not trust enterely on google maps!!!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dcarr622:
I don't think it's a hardware problem, but there are definitely differences in how different phones seem to perform.

It makes sense that walking is good, mine is pretty reliable when going slow in the car too. But when I'm going fast and make a turn, it keeps heading off straight before figuring it out and makes for some ugly My Tracks.

Basically the phone isn't accurate enough to consistently tell when you're arriving at an intersection and is therefore not trustable for in car navigation, one of the supposed features of the device and OS. It's just not acceptable.

I greatly appreciate that Samsung has improved it a lot, but it has still a long way to go.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] BronzedDroid:
With what firmware are you experiencing this "heading straight after turning"? Some people have reported that many froyo releases have this issue, but that it works on JM8 and JM9. I also think it MAY be fixed in JP6/JPM, atleast it seems so from my track posted earlier.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mike.sw:
I think you can clearly see what chambo622 is talking about in my first track that I posted. some of the turns there are waaaaayyyy wider then they should.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dcarr622:
I'm using Doc's mod which is JPM/JP6. Before this I was running JPK and then ZUJP2 and I don't believe it was working at all or if it was it was so bad I didn't have the patience.

Here's a pretty long one from today that shows lots of pretty bad errors.

You need to zoom in to appreciate the full badness of it.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=205563318457099999241.000492b0a0971f29d06f9

And just to note, the weird squiglies that you see in a couple places weren't me, I was just stopped in my car and the thing was going nuts trying to figure out where I was!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Lawliett:
I was thinking my tracks looked okay until this.. I just realized how zoomed out I was on them.. Back to the drawing board I guess
[Galaxy S I9000 General] lafaya:
some people have reported co-pilot works because there's no need for data connection (less work for phone apparently). I'll decided to fork out $50 and download it and see what happens

thanks google checkout's refund policy if this doesn't work :D
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dcarr622:
We really shouldn't have to use sleazy third party apps just to "give the phone less work." This phone has the best specs on the market right now and it can't even do what a G1 can do no problem!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] lafaya:
@Chambo622 - thank Samsung and their crappy file system for that.

I'm interested to know whether the GPS and RFS's slow io could have anything to do with it
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dcarr622:
Well once Voodoo comes out I will definitely try it and see!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mike.sw:
you can try oclf in the mean time.. although it's really hard to believe it got anything to do with the file system..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Lawliett:
Ummm i've tried CoPilot. It's not bad but it did sometimes put me off course. If I was close enough to a street, it would sometimes place me there. Of course, I've usually started it up on the go and not stopped and waited for a solid GPS lock. Not sure how much of a difference that makes though.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] cba1986:
I have this issues with my stock FW (JF3). But after flashed to XWJM7 the GPS was near flawless even now that i'm using JM9+JM4 it's even better. It's not perfect ofcourse but not even near as the track posted before.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] syrisara:
I agree, JM9+JM4 is working okay! Not perfect but acceptable. Car navigation is no problem.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] FadeFx:
could it be gps inaccuracy is somehow related to totaly inaccurate compass readings?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Landorin:
Thank you so much, lafaya, finally someone created a thread exclusively dedicated to the GPS issues that drown in any other threads. :)

I never modified this phone so far, still on JM1 (according to Kies) and I had major issues with accuracy.

The situation seemed to improve when I started to use the apps "TrackerBooster" (suddenly I didn't have to reaquire the fix when starting another GPS app) and "GPSopt" (which promises to make some improving changes but doesn't say which). Also, I turned of the wireless aid to find my location (as suggested in another thread), I consider it possible that this makes quite a difference maybe (as cell triangulation may not be as accurate maybe).

Now I am only placed sometimes on the opposite side of the road but not as much as it used to.

Still this isn't really satisfying, especially if you ever navigate in an unknown big city with lots of streets nearby and you have to wait for GPS to tell you where to go when you suddenly have to make a quick decision on the motorway (go to Paris and you'll see what I mean ;) ).

I so hope the situation improves with Froyo now but from what I read so far, it doesn't sound very promising. :/
[Galaxy S I9000 General] The3D:
man trust me, i'd like to record a track like this, my ****ing GPS is completely erratic. Today i had to find a place, used google maps and it reported my position with 1.4-2 KILOMETERS ACCURACY - this ****ing phone is mocking me. Doc's rom JPM.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
Yes I'm sure, English obviously isn't that person's native language and that's fine with me. They responded within 24hrs so I can't complain. I'm just wondering if it's really going to make a difference if I drive to some service center to show them the problem.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] cioccorollo:
sry to tell but looks like this pool is not much usefull since there are no clear results....
[Galaxy S I9000 General] systoxity:
If you have one of the phones that can successfully reproduce the GPs Breakdown then I really believe you would be doing yourself & all of us a favor by going. Also, who knows, maybe you'll walk away with anew phone or some compensation for your trouble. Please keep us posted. =)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] larryccf:
this poll as well as the comments, has got me wondering if i wouldn't be smarter waiting a few more weeks before pulling the trigger on this phone, to see if the US released phones are demonstrating these GPS issues

GPS is important to me - without a good GPS, it's more than a deal breaker
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
Just this second received a message from Clove:-

Mike

We have been informed by Samsung that there will be a home update available this week for upgrading to JF6, by using the PC sync software. This should resolve the GPS problem. They did make us aware that the upgrade would delete all user data so a backup should be performed first.

Regards

Sales Team

Clove Technology

TEL: +44 (0)1202 552936

FAX: +44 (0)1202 552937

Email: sales@clove.co.uk

Website: www.clove.co.uk

Blog: blog.clove.co.uk
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dizzle118:
I do get a lock fairly fast I'm on I9000XXJF3, though Google navigation seemed slow to update, making it unuseable I'm disappointed - I'm interested to know how to I contact Samsung? I believe they could fix it in an up and coming release but we need to put it on thier 'radar' so to speak.

You may find this claim to be interesting http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s/104872-gps-issues-3.html#post1135635 ....... a possilbe firmare update to solve GPS problems, upgrading to version JF6 :confused:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
You obviously did not read my post one message above yours.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dizzle118:
Doh! Sorry, beat me to it, picked your post up on androidforums.com and just posted a reply in my old tab.

its good news though.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
That's encouraging. I just posted a thread about a new update pushed out in Korea, although it didnt list GPS fixes.... fingers crossed.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] piya_m:
Some info with SGS's GPS

Hello all, I live in Thailand and I'm the one who have problem with SGS's GPS.

In my case, my SGS GPS stability is very poor and almost can't be use without A-GPS (wifi or mobile data)

Also First connect is very slowly.

After tested it head to head with my wife's HTC Hero, with "GPS Test" program.

I found 3 things that different.

1. Actually SGS can detect satellites at more signal strength than Hero,

when compare at same satellite.

2. SGS won't connect to satellites which signal strength lower than 20dB,

While Hero will connect to every satellites with more than 10dB.

As you can see in pic, the orange bar on Hero is 10-20dB satellites.

My SGS never has orange bar, just gray or yellow or green,

which mean 10-20dB satellite never be in used

3. SGS suffers with severely swing signal on every satellite,

while Hero is almost lock down and very stable even it show lower signal strength.

My thought about this is it's software problem which could be and should be fixed.

If SGS can connect with 10-20dB satellites as Hero then it'll become more stable.

I've explored through lbstestmode and can't find where to set signal strength threshold,

there's only accuracy setting but I've tried 30-200 and still can't find any different.

Hope Samsung will fix this ^^
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
Yes... I have noticed the very same on the Desire.

With this I passed this information on to Clove with pictures of proof for them to then pass on to Samsung.

This was done at the time when we first found the GPS problem.

I'm hoping this new JF5 update is going to address the SNR level issue.

On that I have another post to make below....
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
Guys,

Whilst we wait for the JF5 firmware fix to appear here is a tip which I have tried and seems to work 'very' well for me.

1. Change to using Skyhook using the hidden menu as explained in other threads.

2. Download, install and run 'GPS Refresh'.

GPS Refresh does exactly what is says... it continuously refreshes the GPS frequency which in return gives a much better lock.

What I do is with Skyhook now enabled I first run GPS Refresh and wait whilst it locates my position and starts refreshing (you see it doing this on screen).

Once this is running happily I then use whichever GPS application I wish to run.

i.e. Skyhook ON, GPS Refresh running, My Tracks running.

Running this procedure I now have a MUCH better lock and continued location service.