yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
underlying chip driver? would this be something more than the usual libgps.so and libsecgps.so and so on and so forth - perhaps even something that sits on the chip?

or is it just libgps.so? not that im doubting, because i don't know, just struggling to wrap my head around libgps.so doing more than telling the chip to start and give me data...

whatever it is, it sounds like one great big piece of coding that would be really lovely to see :-) (as a fellor programmer of course)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
It does seem that way.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
one thing i noticed, comparing my SGS i9000m vs. my HTC Athena

is that it works even on crappy rainy days, meanwhile the HTC Athena always had trouble picking up good signal on greyish days

so, even though enviromental is a factor, i can say the SGS is doing a pretty good job, if not accurate.

and i'll stop at that, since every one have different levels of Accuracy in mind
[Galaxy S I9000 General] NeoXTC:
Did a few my tracks to and from work. and yeah can notice some "off track" weird stuff but for 90% of my route, it works fine. I do notice that when it's off is when I was in the city with heaps of tall building around.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
That's right, so if you look at the sources here you see something like bcm4751_gps_suspend(), so this is something from a higher level driver, what you don't see is the HW driver underneath that programs all the registers, releases all the resources, reprograms the clocks, winds down the voltage, maybe sets some wakeup IRQs and then sends the device into idle. That's where all the control is to make the changes.

Now as I've said in the past, I don't do GPS chips, I do graphics chips, so the details may be off, but I'm just giving a rough picture for comparison.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
also keep in mind that everytime the GPS loses signal, and regains the signal, it needs time for recalibration for it to be Accurate again.

So times when the Tracking paths are a bit off mark, are most likely the times when it was re-adjusting itself

A tip most of you might have noticed already.

If you keep the phone Horizontal, or bottom up (antennae facing up) you get better GPS reception

if you noticed all the "official" Samsung listed car docks / car mounts are horizontal (it's was like an obvious hint)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] boomerbubba:
So how does all this get delivered to the phone in the form of an update? Broadcom does not deal with the phone or its user. Either Samsung releases firmware or the telecom vendor pushes new firmware to the phone, depending on the country and business model. Is Broadcom's binary delivered as a file that is even identifiable as the driver? And how can we ever know empirically if such a new driver is even present on a device. (Never mind the internal contents of such driver.)

This is very significant on my side of the pond right now, as Sprint has announced that the next Galaxy S variant, the Epic 4G, will be sold Aug. 31. Samsung has made a cryptic announcemnt to the effect that the GPS has been "tested and validated" on the Epic, which apparently may be a more advanced status than what they said about the Captivate and Vibrant in the same statement. Those platforms are still said to be awaiting new firmware in September.

But Sprint and Samsung have not expressly said that new firmware, including all the remedial "optimized" changes, is actually installed in the units being shipped Aug. 31. Is there any way to tell?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Agreed

Disagreed. You are assuming the issues are software..

Past changes don't reflect future changes. Samsung might only be integrating minor changes at the moment, but the full fix might require more than tweaking a simple driver (and even some of the way the OS works). I don't think we can draw conclusions off this..

Actually, for a few builds it was, because some of us couldn't get a fix at all.

Agreed, there is accuracy issues, some bad, and the lock is an issue, but there are others.

I might be wrong, but is it possible the driver is generating the NMEA strings based on information from the device in this case (there are rumors this device uses software heavily).

No of satellites and SnR

The GPS system also shows a problem locking onto Satellites with an SnR < 20 and locking onto more than 8 satellites. You may see more, but it doesn't lock onto more than 8 - unless of course you're using the Captivate fix.

This may or may not be an issue. The underlying GPS chip according to the raw NMEA data unprocessed by Samsungs drivers, seem to show that the GPS chip can itself lock onto more than 8 satellites and satellites with an SnR < 8.

With more satellite fixes, we should in theory be able to improve the stability of the GPS through urban canyons

Unfortunately the NMEA data clearly shows more locks, and I fear merely tweaking the Samsung driver that does the reporting will not resolve the actual issue.

[/QUOTE]

The fixes never worked.. If the fix was easy, Samsung would have fixed it by now.

I certainly agree that there is no way to fix GPS currently (it's only good for grabbing an initial position). But, there is still no proof its hardware or software.. We are all just speculating. Either way, we will know for sure in September..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Bynar010:
You've had enough of wild speculation and opinions about the gps....and so you start an entire thread dedicated to your own wild speculations and opinions?

Epic fail.

You know what I have had enough of it, I'm going to wait to see if septembers update fixes it. What is the f----ing point of constantly theorising about what the problem may or may not be?

Samsung have acknowledged it, they are working on it...what's the problem?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] darkoroje:
The problem is that Samsung should not have released the phone without a working GPS. They either did not do any testing or knowingly released it in this state. And their Twitter post does not say they will fix the GPS, merely that they are "optimizing" it whatever that may mean.

And by the way I have both a Galaxy S and an iPhone 4 and the iPhone has no problems with GPS - in fact it works as well as my TomTom.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] takerbaod:
gps fix hopes dashed by samsung

just spoke to samsung customer care today about when the gps fix is going to be ready as im a truck driver and use this phone as my sat nav.

I was told that there is no such issue samsung is aware of. I then spoke to one of the managers there and was advised of exactly the same thing.

Guess ill give then till end of September to sort gps out. Not very confident though....shame to.....one of the best phones ive ever had!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Bynar010:
Hope the *****ing is making you feel better.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Customer care for all companies is shonky. They have never probably used the phone, often they have a database which they read from.. Applecare in Australia is often redirected to India for instance
[Galaxy S I9000 General] darkoroje:
Yes it does but a working GPS would make me feel even better
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Karupan:
Customer Care will probably have NO idea about issues with the phone whatsoever! Don't lose hope yet. I am hoping Samsung will deliver the promised fix next month.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] teryz:
I hope you spoke to really incompetent people, otherwise it will be very sad for us, my gps just doesn't work...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] MoWa22:
I've talked to customer care in Denmark, they were aware of the problem and said a "fix" was coming. Personally I don't think it can be fixed in software, but I hope they prove me wrong. :) It could also be that they've found out that it can't be fixed in software, and have been told to start denying there is a problem - I wouldn't be surprised.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Fatherboard:
Wonders of "Tier 1"...

If samsung know what's good for them, they will have to solve this problem, period.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Yes, Apple instead shipped a phone with other problems (they shipped it with an Antenna that causes issues for left handed people). The desire in Australia shipped with broken GPS in Software. And Sony Ericsson shipped plenty of phones with a joystick which broke quickly. And these are simply the cases I am aware of.. Apple shipped the first iPhone with support for nothing. The fact is, the release date would have had to be pushed back MUCH later to Sep if they didn't release it when it did.

ANYWAY, THE GPS DOES WORK, IT JUST ISN'T AS ACCURATE AS IT SHOULD BE. That's optimisation. You can't "fix" something which doesn't have a definite state. Yes, they can fix Radio support (since stereo is apparently broken), but they can't fix GPS, because it DOES lock, it just has accuracy issues.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] northdevonflyer:
Sorry to hear you guys have GPS trouble, but are you sure you just don't have a simple hardware fault which needs a phone replaced?

My new i9000 gets a fix within seconds -never more than one minute even when driving fast...

(As said above this seems to be the best phone I've had, more user friendly than my HD2, touchHD, four previous HTC win mobiles with every ROM under the sun tried. Android kicks ass - and you can change batteries)

Firmware ver2.1-update1

KErnel 2.6.29 root@se-s603

Eclair.BVJG1
[Galaxy S I9000 General] :
Just check the Twitter feed for up to the moment Tech news.

http://twitter.com/samsungukmobile
[Galaxy S I9000 General] northdevonflyer:
I looked at the twitterfeed, looks like I am in the lucky minority :-(
[Galaxy S I9000 General] takerbaod:
Im gonna wait till the very last day of september.....if there is no fix im gona be writing a stinging letter to the bloke in charge of the whole galaxy range and tell the muppet how I feel..

You'd think after spending a small fortune on something it would work the way it was supposed to work!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Fatherboard:
I hope it's not hardware related, but if I'm mistaken, I doubt samsung will ever perform such massive recall. they'd rather blame me for holding the device wrong or something like that.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] MarvinTheAndroid:
Kind of glad I've only got 10 months left on my contract.

If Samsung are washing their hands on the GPS issue this will the last Samsung phone I ever have.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] foxbat121:
Obviously you don't know Samsung well enough. Every single Samsung products I've owned have been released this way, i.e. full of bugs and feels never was QAed. That includes 3 WM smart phones, one DVD upversion player and one HD DVD/Blu ray player. The last one was also a Samsung BroadCom collabration. It was first released for $800 and virtually nothing worked out of box. It took Samsung over 6 months (or rather BroadCOM) to release the new firmware that makes it work as it should be. And by that time, the product has been discontinued.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Tachikoma_kun:
Which would get replied by his junior PA on his behalf, saying they are "sorry to hear of your troubles", but they "are working on it"
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Samsung TV's at least seem fine..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] foxbat121:
I wouldn't dare to trust my $$$ for a Samsung TV. No, I've seen plenty of reports that their TVs are not free from the same Samsung business practices. They seems to give it a little bit more effort than other products though.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] takerbaod:
God i wish i could put the bloke in charge of this on my passenger seat in my 18 tonne truck and show him how difficult it is to just drive properly abd safely when your sat nav is going wild with wacky directions!!!!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Bynar010:
Samsung tvs are the bomb. Highly recommended, their lcd range is superb. I've a series 5 and love it, my bro has a series 6 and its even nicer. My folks have a first gen sammy lcd and its still trucking on after many years.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] miki4242:
please, don't make it worse than it is.

As has been mentioned many places, the Galaxy S series uses a GPS chip that's also used in top of the line TomTom navigators. Also there's a serious hint of a GPLed patch to the Linux kernel supporting this chip, so that's fewer proprietary blobs to worry about.

Unless they fubared bigtime with the hardware (the antenna mainly), I'm very confident that there WILL be a fix (pun intended).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] darkoroje:
I would take issue with the statement "GPS does work". For GPS to be considered to work it would have to be able to acquire and keep lock and keep reasonable accuracy during driving or walking. This the Samsung GPS does not do. It is unusable for reliable car navigation or even finding your position most of the time.

You are right about the iPhone having the antenna issue, but at least Apple addressed it in the end by giving everyone a free bumper. We have yet to see what Samsung will do about the GPS, so far there is only a vague Twitter post about "optimization".
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Well, I know people with them, and they are fine. I also know someone with an older Samsung mobile, he was VERY happy with it.

Oh wait, I also sold and set up a few for customers when I worked at a Apple premium reseller, and they were fine. No complaints by customers (I recall we had more problems from other brands). Then again, I do have a grundig TV which has been repaired 3 times in the past 3 years for different problems, and have seen laptops repaired 3x in 1 year.. And honestly, I can bet that I can find problems for every product released.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Richthofen:
IIRC:

M = Milestone

P = Prototype

;)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
the n#1 rule of all customer service duties is

DENY EVERYTHING the customer ask you about :D

it's true, i've been on Sales and CS position before, the first thing they teach you is to keep shut your mouth about anything you heard internally, specially when it has to do with product defects, and pretent nothing is going on.

Ask the customer back silly questions until they give up or burst to frames

if they burst to frames, pass the bucket to the manager, which will just repeat the process

if the customer demand even a higher manager, just repeat the same, until the customer quits or quits :D

another popular thing amongs sales/cs rep is to have another guy pretent to be the manager, and the manager of a manager :D LOL

............................... now lets get back to the serious stuff ................................

What firmware are you using?

Which GPS software are you using?

What are the symptoms when your GPS doesn't work?

How long does it take for your GPS to get a lock?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
If you are driving an 18 ton truck, and relying on GPS as your primary means of navigation, you probably shouldn't be driving. You sound like the kind of driver who drives off a cliff or gets stuck in a lake because the GPS tells them to do so.

Even pilots lose satellite accuracy (and they always have line of sight). The only difference is that they have Error detection, so they know when stuff is wonky. NEVER use GPS for primary guidance whilst driving, because roads change and you can't rely on any unit. Instead, grab a map, and know where you are going first, have a list of directions, and only use the gps for cross-checking and knowing when turns are coming (but also use a watch to aid you). GPS is not reliable, which is why it's use in aviation is often debated.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Will.1:
Wow, are u telling the man how to do his job? And who uses paper maps anyways? We're not in 1991 ffs, everyone rely on GPS now.

Back to the topic at hand, Samsung is definitely aware of the issue, they've fixed it with some of the American phones (captivate or Vibrant i think) and are in the process of fixing it for the i9000, it's a driver issue. I posted a thread about this, how they officially recognized the GPS is ****ing up
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Seifer1975:
Mine points to that as well.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] varunrai:
Agreed. I have Wi-Fi off. Skyhook on. And I'm DEFINETLY getting better locks. I used to have 6-7 available and 3-4 fixes, now I've got 9-10 available and 6-8 fixes. I don't think it makes much of a difference to the number of available satelites, but it definetly locks on better. Oh, I've also set my accuracy to 80. I read somewhere that increasing the accuracy can get locks on lower snr. Don't really see a difference, but I'm happy! Driving test to follow!

Likewise. Anyone have any idea why?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Morghus:
Apropos that, any good Nav apps that doesn't consume data by downloading the maps on the go?

I'm in Norway, so I can't get paid apps yet though.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
That's interesting.... in a confusing way ~ By default Skyhook uses Wifi and Cell Towers. With Wifi switched off all it would then be seeking here is the Cell Tower information.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
Skyhook does seem to help get a quicker fix especially in urban areas. My wifi turns on momentarily when the gps turns on, not sure if it did that before. I doubt its a solution to our problem though.

Off topic: anyone else get force closures everytime they post something with the xda app?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
That is correct, check the several threads and poll about the issue. Its pretty close to useless as a serious navigational aid. Those that deny that simply havent stressed the system. im pretty confident it will be fixed through an update.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
You can try sygic mobile maps. For some reason they sell from their website rather than the app store. Will market enabler give you access to the paid apps?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Evans_Prophet:
Could thid be the source of the problem? Trying to download ephemeris data from a website that doe snot exist?

I have enabled skyhook (though I believe I am in non covered area) and ms based and I get a relatively quick signal, but it is laggy.. (if I stay for long on the same spot eventually it will find, but if I move the gps will lag or be off).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Evans_Prophet:
TEMPERATURES:

Having done some (non scientific) research I believe that temperature affects the gps performance (either because the gps chip does not tolerate higher temperatures or because some soldering has gone bad. Indications towards this conclusion are the following:

1. That many people experience proper gps performance some days and bad on some others (this could also be due to overcast sky - to check).

2. That when wi-fi / 3g / heavy gps applications are used (i.e. leading to higher internal temperatures) the gps performance seems to fall.

3. I checked today (30 degrees celcius): Clear blue sky, urban road. It gets a lock quickly, after some time it finds the location properly and thereafter it starts moving away quickly and losing accuracy again. It looks like it is affected by something, whoch most probably is temperature (I can feel the mobile getting hotter in my hands).

4. This also might explain why some people do not experience GPS problems (they live in colder climates).

Please provide some feedback - I will run a test from my A/C car as soon as I can.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] varunrai:
Yes. Essentially, that's what Skyhook does. But I'm guessing there's a little more to this than what we've understood. I have this really strange feeling that Samsung goofed up on some configuration related to the GPS which gets sorted out on activating Skyhook. My knowledge is very limited, these are my findings. :)

Also, tried once more (absolutely no work at the office). Walked around a a mile or so and it was working fine. Sportstracker gave me absurd speeds, but I had excellent connection through out. Haven't had that in the past. It always kept dropping signals. Reasonable amount of cloud coverage as well. So it did help. I just can't pinpoint how!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
I've run about 10 tests now with Skyhook on and off, and I don't see any consistent evidence that its actually improving satellite signal or accuracy in GPS Test.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Tyxerakias:
MS-based should not have any effect with a non-existent supl server... has anyone tried supl.google.com, port 7276?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
Well... looks like BANG goes that theory.

Thanks Mark
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
For giggles, take the phone for a drive with google earth on. Unlike car navigation programs it's not programmed to think you are on a road so it just shows what the gps is telling it.

You will see that even with skyhook on it's still hopelessly inacurrate.

So what's the best way to report this to samsung?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Seifer1975:
But that cannot explain how ndrive is able to track my every turn, even when I didn't follow it's directions. Also the position is lost almost immediately after I drove into a tunnel, and not after a while of signal loss
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
I have reported the problem via this link http://www.samsungmobile.co.uk/support/contact-us.do selecting the 'Find help online' option and then selecting the email option at the top of the page.

DO NOT use the email link on the first page as this goes to /dev/useless in the ringtones and downloads department.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Tyxerakias:
Reported it as well. Let's see when/if they will answer.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
I mailed them as well. A squeaky wheel gets the grease.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] poolcin:
Sent them an email as well.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] d0p3d:
Yup, sent it too
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ooo.stephen:
my experience with tier1 support (including samsung premium support), is that they are dolts, and not even tech enthusiasts. so, i'm taking the twitter feed at face value, and expect a fix around the end of sept.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] adirtymonkey:
Sorry to be blunt here, nice phone could be better but when I wanted a GPS sat nav I bought a GPS sat nav.

It plays music but I'm not expecting it to sound like my Bose system.

Big clue, it rings, you answer it, talk to someone must be a phone.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] bilboa1:
since when the quality of your gps tells anything about your driving skills? Are you driving eyes closed hoping to take proper turns ? That'd be a first !

You're a joke to post such a hateful message lacking any kind of sense.

Besides phones gps usually get the job done.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] foxbat121:
LOL. I REALLY REALLY hope my phone doesn't sound like a Bose system.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] uberberben:
+1

but it depends on car :P
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Logicalstep:
Well I just properly tested the GPS on a 300 mile rounds trip and it's poor, I had Tomtom on my old Blackstone running and it never lost the lock once, where as the Samsung lost it about 15 times, leaving the arrows floating around the map.

My take is that they sell this thing as having GPS, if it isn't fixed in the September Firmware, the phone goes back and not fit for purpose. and me giving them till September is being generous as most consumers who don;t know about flashing and updates would send it back right away.

Logicalstep
[Galaxy S I9000 General] MKVFTW:
Crazy! Your GPS device worked as a GPS device and your Cellular device made a bad GPS device...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] enigmameusa:
I think that's a bit harsh, it's a cellular device with a GPS. A GPS that doesn't work.

Truth be told, none of us bought just a cellular device. If I just wanted a mobile phone to be a mobile phone I could have got a cheap one that just makes calls. These new devices are out of this world with all the things they can do.

Saying all that, I still have faith that Samsung will fix it, the Wave had similar problems and that was fixed in later firmwares apparently