yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] smashpunks:
funny cause recently gps has gotten better for me too. I havent had too much issue but today I got 7 locked satellites out of 12 vs usually 4 ish... Thats in doors.

For me GPS is usable. I hate when people say their all broken cause thats not the case. Mine works good, could be better, I like anything better, but it directed me places Ive never been before and got locks pretty quick...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
The simple fact of the matter is it clearly is a major problem to a lot of users. As such you have to sympathize with those experiencing the problem and not condemn them as you place it.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Makpoc:
From what I understand from your comments:

1) Samsung has acknowledged, that there's a problem with GPS?

2) The problem is in the software (driver?) and it's fixable without any hardware changes involved?

3) A fix is expected soon?

I was considering buying Desire, but with its current overheating problem I decided to check for alternatives. If the above conclusions are correct then maybe SGS is the right device for me..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sturmeh:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/18/samsung-says-gps-is-tested-and-validated-on-epic-4g-our-testi/

EDIT: No mention of i9000, but I can only assume we have a hope?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Makpoc:
Thank you! Really helpful :)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sturmeh:
I just tried this trick found here...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=728611

Except the server was already set correctly.

I'll see how it goes. :D

EDIT: Looks like a bad idea, my phone won't boot. <_<
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
This trick doesn't really work anyway.. It just improves initial locks..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Mithent:
I don't think that changing the aGPS settings is likely to be the cause of that.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
Well, I hate when people say the GPS on Galaxy is fine just because it's good enough for their needs/standards. I'm happy for you, but it tells us nothing more than that you just have lower standards than others (nothing personal).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
I have been puzzled by those comments for weeks (even before I had my SGS/returned it) and have assumed that "good for my needs" meant pretty much "it's a piece of s#t that can't navigate my as$ out of the backyard, let alone the village... but I'm fine with that, I accept that my 599€, 2010-built gadget provides totally pathetic/mediocre navigation capability and I'm proud to be an owner. And check out the purdy screen".

Yeah. But we - *****y ones - are not talking about guiding a Tomahawk into someone's pillow on the left side of the couch; Nor precise geocaching; Not even about having pretty decent tracks to show off on Google Maps. I only meant basic, 2004-grade navigation capability...something my almost 10-year old Nokia brick can achieve pretty well next to the pentagram-sketching SGS. Example: Get in the car and get me from here to 10 miles away in a city, without making everyone in the car laugh due to the repeated nonsensical-contradicting vocal navigation instructions.

Yet, all the "oh the GPS, it is fine enough for me. Gets me to me place. Maybe you should get a TomTom if you're that picky..."

Some of those I dismissed as clueless ducks that can't tell the difference between a fast TTFF/lucky nav software snapping and proper tracking... but the rest, or most - I admit - are not evil nor misguided... they had indeed good experiences with the GPS on the SGS and have good tracks and other bits of proof - they are actually not dumb and are having good performance out of the gadget.

That's what makes it all more fascinating (or annoying if you actually PAID for the toy and didn't get a refund - Ah Ah) - it seems that the GPS performance is quite schizophrenic depending on the physical unit/branding/batch/ROM/user/lunch/toenail size. Something is going on, at least when it comes to consistency on the manufacturing line and/or previous QA work.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Seifer1975:
Different needs for different folks. Don't have to put people off just because your GPS is "broken" according to your standards. I only use the GPS for navigation when driving and so far it has met up to my standards.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
I think that is what he meant. We "others" are not picky. We just mean that our units are a piece of s"#$ when it comes to GPS accuracy. It can't hold the locks or be overall reliable enough for you to even navigate while driving.

After all this time reading a zillion forums, I do not doubt that you're demanding enough and are getting satisfying accuracy and navigation. The problem is that many of the units can't achieve even basic performance, e.g., drive from here <home> to the mall 3 miles away. During the ride you will keep losing locks and the magic buiding voice will tell you nothing but drunk nonsense. IMHO you should feel lucky your setup is working but at the same time I'd be worried... something fishy is going on (drivers/firmware/hw, who knows).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] larryccf:
apparently someone over on the captivate forum extracted the gps jupiter file from the firmware on the Epic 4G that samsung has "been validated", and they're reporting its working on their captivate

notice i said "they're reporting" its working, holding locks etc

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=759641

fingers are crossed on this one
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
I think you misunderstood me, or perhaps I've expressed myself wrong (and if I did, I sincerely apologise). It wasn't meant to be putting someone off, really. You saying "different needs for different folks" is exactly what I meant. If the GPS works good enough for you, or if by any miracle it does really work just fine for you (and hey, even my GPS has had very good days, see my posts a few days back) - again, I'm happy for you (honestly, I am) and more power to you. But since there's quite a few of us disappointed by the GPS accuracy, perhaps even majority(?), it's obvious that these are not some occasional bad units and that the problem lies deeper. So if it indeed does work for you, please, don't tell us unfortunate enough to be bugged about the GPS not working (and therefore being more touchy about the whole issue) that there really is no problem and that's just us making stuff up, cause the problem obviously is there (more or less confirmed by Samsung) and we're not making this up. If there was a thread where people would be praising the GPS accuracy, I would not go there saying things like "I hate it when people keep saying that their GPS is perfectly accurate". I might ask for some proof of their claims to see if it's really as accurate as they say. The proof about GPS being horrible for a lot of people has been posted in this thread and many others countless times, so all you need to do is take a look through this thread. There has also been proof that for some, it really seems to work great, so there's no doubt in my mind those people are actually telling the truth and however high standards they have, they can be met by SGS.

And even if your GPS doesn't work by our standards, but does by yours, I've got absolutely no problem with that - again, good for you. Quite frankly, I envy you. But once again, please don't come telling me that the GPS works just fine on SGS, because I can clearly see it doesn't on mine and I'm far from alone. And hey - maybe if SGS was my first phone with GPS, I would think the GPS works just fine as well. But I've seen it work much better on a daily basis on my cheaper and older phones, so I guess I'm spoiled by it (to my disadvantage).

I hope I've explained myself better this time. Basically, I'd like for people to respect "different needs/results for different folks" - just both ways. But I can understand that it probably didn't come out like this before.

Great! Was expecting the files to leak any day now. Though I'm not sure the problem can be fixed just by editing the jupiter.xml, I'll certainly take a look and give it a try.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Kilack:
Hmmm reading that thread about the epic gps.

It seems the parts different in the jupiter file are just agps settings.

libgps hasnt changed or at least is exactly the same filesize but libsecgps has changed.....

Anyway the user that just copied over jupiter, isn't that just simply again tinkering with agps, you can see the diff he did.

Has anyone done any proper testing on the epic yet? tracks etc?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
But has anyone actually checked the kernel drivers? The optimisation probably extends the bounds of the GPS library, it might even involve better scheduling.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
I've downloaded the Epic dump and am now testing the files that differ (which is also the "glgps_samsungJupiter" and "libsecgps.so"). So far, it seems worse off than with the JH2 based "fix" or with plain JM5 for me - accuracy mostly around 30 meters, no sub20dBHz lock, no 8+ lock, sensitivity of the GPS seems somehow lower also. If I get lock, Maps/MyTracks still show me tens of meters off while indicating great accuracy by the blue circle. Not very hopeful now :(

I'll try flashing the whole dump if I have to (but we don't have the kernel available, so can't try that).

But right now I see four possibilities:

1. There's something else changed that's causing it (be it files that are in the dump or files not contained within the dump, ie. radio).

2. The phones are not really that compatible and what works on Epic doesn't work on SGS, which would require different fix Samsung is yet to provide

3. Epic's GPS isn't really fixed at all and those journalists just didn't test it enough for it to show

4. It really has something to do with hardware and our SGS' are defective :(

Hoping for 1, of course, but afraid of 4...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Where did you get the dump? Can you give a download link?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=7752751&postcount=1

Anyway, getting much better results now (and I mean MUCH better). I'll give you an update.zip to test very soon, give me a minute (I just want to prepare the packages for reverting it as well).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Realistically though, the dump can't prove there is no fix (because we don't know exactly what was changed).. It can only prove that there is one. But either way, we can't trust the journo's anyway
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
1. Thanks

2. Great!!!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
So, took me a bit more time than I thought, I was testing some finetuning ideas before I went "public" (didn't work out, though). Anyway, hope that no-one does mind, but I've always felt like this kind of thing really should be in Development section, so I took the liberty of posting the update packages there (also because I'm actually very hopeful this might really be it). So see here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=7758364
[Galaxy S I9000 General] MoWa22:
I placed my SGS right next to my Garmin Edge 705 bicycle GPS computer. I checked the GPS graphs and compared them. On the Garmin it locked on 8-9 sats, and they were extremely stable in the graph - almost no change in SNR, nice and smooth - the tracks coming from this GPS are as close to perfect as they can be. The SGS (using "GPS Test" from the market), however, locked on to everything from 3 to 8 sats... And the problem is, it doesn't hold on to many of those - the SNR jumps wildly up and down on most of them. I'm starting to doubt this problem can be fixed by software, it seems like a bad hardware malfunction to me. I tried the "new" GPS fixes with the Epic and JH2 files, not much difference - in all cases the SNR is extremely jumpy.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Did you hold the garmin unit and the SGS in the same way? Just out of curiosity.. Because if it is a garmin unit which mounts to the bike, then it would certainly get a more consistent signal.. Just want to be sure..

Not that it matters anyway, because it isn't September yet (this isn't an official fix, and just a hack).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] MoWa22:
I didn't hold any of them, I put them right next to eachother in the window. I know it's not the perfect place to get good reception, but it's the same problems I see out in the open - jumping SNR, even sats that it has a lock on suddenly disappears... The Garmin - just plain perfect.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] mrmagmrmag:
Alternative - use your Bluetooth GPS receiver as GPS source

As I cannot use the internal GPS in my car AT ALL (coated windscreen will not let my SGS find more than 3 satellites!) I use a Bluetooth GPS receiver and a very nice program called 'Bluetooth GPS Mouse' (a free test version is available at the market).

Now I am happy as my applications can now profit from the good GPS receiver which I have mounted below the hat rack of my car (no coated screen there ;) ).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] NeoXTC:
GPS Problems

Hi,

Was wondering how EVERYONE is saying they got GPS problems but for me I don't seem to notice it. Like yeah I can't get a proper fix while inside my house but outside I can get a fix within like 20secs and it seems pretty accurate to me. Yes sometime it's about like 50m off (inside my house and not moving) but while driving and everything, the fix and accuracy for me is pretty good. Using Copilot.

Is getting a fix in 20secs considered bad? Mind you I come from a Touch HD and sometime taking +1min to get a GPS fix was the norm ahahah

So my question, am I really getting problem but because I'm more tolerant coming from a Touch HD I don't notice it? or is it I've got a special phone that doesn't have gps problems?

I'm just curious as all these people saying GPS problems but I never really "notice" it.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] lgkahn:
It's hit and miss.. sometimes works fine when lots of good signal other times will lag behind and start jumping u all over... try using it a lot.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
The nature of the bug means the problem is variable. Some people can go weeks on end with a stable connection. Enjoy while it works, and if it does go wrong rest easy as a fix is coming soon.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] CommanderROR:
@NeoXTC

Try using Google MyTracks or a similar app and see what it records. If it follows your course accurately then you're lucky... ;)

Try it a few times, if it works fine over the course of a week then I guess you're pretty safe.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] foxbat121:
Try the built-in Google Navigator if you can. Other, better, navigation software has smart algorithms to smooth out the GPS jumps and snap you to the road you're traveling. Google Nav doesn't have such algorithm and it will jump around and lag behind with big blue circles and often snap to the wrong road nearby.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] gkrishn:
Neo,

Same here. Used my track to trace route while walking, riding bicycle, driving car. Been using it for 3 weeks now.

It's working perfectly.

Never used a gps device before though.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] CommanderROR:
That is weird, I thought the GPs issue was hitting just about every user of the Galaxy S around the world.

Can one of you lucky ones who have a "working" GPS use Google MyTracks to see whether they can reproduce any of the quirks others have been reporting?

Maybe there is a new revision out or something that has fixed GPS hardware, if so it would be interesting to find out how one can identify these devices...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] gkrishn:
Commander,

My previous post is based on MyTracks observation. Even google maps is accurate.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] evans3228:
I've had my captive for almost 2 months now since the day it came out and have used google maps, default google navigator and tracks and only time I've had a problem connecting is on a rainy crappy day
[Galaxy S I9000 General] CommanderROR:
Very strange indeed. I wonder...do the Galaxy S devices have different revisions? OR is it just coincidence???
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
the problem only affect some users, not every one

all the SGS i9000 and i9000m

i've had through me were tested for GPS, and they all work fine.

locks in 5 sec.

usually it's ready to go, before i event take the car out of my garage

I depend on the GPS alot, since my speedo is ... lets just say modified, so i need to GPS to keep an eye on the "real" speed vs. the speedo speed, it also has to do with the plus size difference of the wheels :D
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ghosty_uk:
teleportation

i would like to annouce i have successfully managed to teleport not only myself but also my car and all it contents.

ok so joking aside, i finally managed to get my-tracks uploading to google, and here is a map i did

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=e...d=108028205142152500488.00048ea84e7afb23f84c4

conditions:

bar the instalation of a few apps from market place and the addition of an sd card, all setting to do with GPS have been left untouched.

very rainy, total cloud cover.

as you can see from the track it is fairly bad, it actually missed of the last part of the journey, some 250yards up the road, how this is a plausable trak i do not know, but as you can see it appears my car teleported from one location to the next.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] q123123an:
Wow, that is amazing! That makes me think that the so called GPS problem, might not be a problem at all. The jumpy GPS signal that we see, isn't a bad signal, it might be the phone preparing (energizing) for a teleport jump! ;)

(sorry... ;) )
[Galaxy S I9000 General] boomerbubba:
And I will plan to mount a dedicated GPS receiver and antenna under my hat as I move around! An Android phone is a handheld pocketable device. It is not meant for use only in a vehicle.

BTW, I am still a bit skeptical about whether and how that Bluetooth app is supposed to work. How can a non-privileged app install itself on the phone to spoof the GPS location listeners build into Android, to which other apps connect? Is the code for this app published?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ghosty_uk:
nah, nothing to be sorry about, i started the post with some humor, so its all good, as for poor performance, that is the worst i have seen it since i got my SGS replaced, i actually used it to navigate on a treasure hunt last saturday, when my garmin could only go to a set postcode or town, i loaded google maps, put my finger on where i wanted to go and got it to navigate me there. i did notice the gps drop a few times (when i was under trees) but then the mobile network took over so it didnt actual loose track of me. i unfortunatly did not think to run my-tracks in the background.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
Just a short note to those still believing this to be a hardware problem and that it can not be fixed......

No, nothing to worry about. It's definitely a software issue ~ borne out of using a new broadcom chip that hasn't been utilized or set up correctly.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] MoWa22:
I highly doubt that - I'm sure Samsung has tried to fix this from even before the Galaxy S came out, and they don't have any idea how to do it. This should be a very simple problem to fix if there wasn't any hardware problems - which I'm quite sure there is.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
The Galaxy S is one of the first devices to use the BCM4751, there were bound to be a few bugs. When it comes to debugging silicon and drivers, 'simple' is a rather relative term.

Broadcom fix the drivers and release them to Samsung, who we are now all waiting on to release to us, which they have said they will issue in September.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
That would be the BCM4750, not the BCM4751. The 4750 is also used in TomTom's and all manor of GPS devices that work perfectly well. Not sure there's any comparison to be made between the iPhone and the Galaxy S.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
How do you fix drivers for a chipset, who, if we take a standard dumb Bluetooth GPS receiver as an example, is designed to - switch on, scan for satellites, get a fix, and then just spit out NMEA data and location information.

I sincerely hope the chipset can be programmed/tweaked on the fly because it didn't fill me with confidence seeing NMEA data whose location information was out of whack too.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
Mark.... wasn't sure how much info you could release so had to tone it down a bit.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
[Q] GPS Files Haven't Changed

Someone mentioned about one of the GPS files haven't changed... ever... or something... can't remember if it was libgps.so or that samsung_jupiterWhatever file it's called...

Whoever it was, how are you testing that file? IIRC, files may be the same size, but they had different contents. Think you need to do a raw diff on the files.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] MoWa22:
I hope you're right - but I must admit that I doubt it. To me the jumping SNR indicates that it's a hardware issue - but heck, we'll see. If they can't fix it, they'll have to let us return it or exchange it for a new unit with a working GPS.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Both have Broadcom chipsets, both, if IIRC seem to use a lot of components made by Samsung too?

:-)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
@sjdean

You should also mention about the different level of GPS expected "work" level and accuracy.

for example

- There are SGS with GPS that doesn't work at all (that's major)

- There are working SGS with GPS that works but takes a long time to lock (that's another major issue)

- There are working SGS with GPS that locks under 5 sec, but has different degree of accuracy problem (minor issue, software calculation optimization required)

- There are working SGS with GPS that locks relative fast, but accuracy is waaaay off as shown by trackings uploaded by some members (that's a medium issue, probably software based as well)

You get my point?

We need to set certain gauge to measure the effectiveness and the truthfulness of people claiming their GPS doesn't work, instead of just going onto a rampage without properly analyzing the factors involved.

I'm sure i'm missed some scenarios, but this a good place to start.

- edit -

just recalled another popular scenario

- There are SGS with GPS that works great one day, but totally unresponsive the next (these type of issues requires further investigation to narrow down the causes)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Would be pretty sweet right now if I could update the title of this thread
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
Edit in Advance mode, then you can change the tittle
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Good examples, of course the potential problem with this, is all of the different firmwares, the environmental issues, not to mention, does that SGS just have a hardware issue.

How much of that is involved in the honest and truthful results people see. I can test my GPS one day and get great accuracy, the next day, dreadful. But that could be due to the number of sats in the sky with a good visibility.

If we're hoping on some major hardware or software bug, Im not entirely 100% convinced that our SGS's are going to be behaving that differently - most likely environmental factors at play affecting results.

But really hard to say.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
What you see as the output is in terms of NMEA and location data doesn't reflect what the underlying chip driver is doing. This will be a collection of register programming to control the IO ports, stream low-level data and build it up into something that can be presented to the higher level as standard start/stop/recv/send interfaces that present NMEA data.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
Well, I'm not saying it couldn't be a hardware issue, but that doesn't necessarily prevent it being fixed in software. I've lost count of how many hardware bugs I've fixed in software over the years.