yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
From my experience, most people in charge of twitter and marketing aren't always developers, and only have limited information about problems.

For car navigation, JM5 should be fine (5/10 meters accuracy is fine for cars, because you snap to roads). Remember, the GPS units people used in their cars such as Navman's took ages to lock and weren't the greatest GPS chips, but they worked extremely well. So snapping (and even taking clues from the accellerometer might help with Google maps. I'd say fitness-use is the real problem now (which requires very high resolution to compete against the garmin forerunners and some other phones).

Anyway, Samsung are probably doing a lot of things.. But it doesn't make sense for companies to reveal EXACTLY how they are approaching a problem, because sometimes approaches they take might turn out to not be as good as they expect. And GPS can be a bit difficult to develop for, because to test positions, you can only use mock satellites, otherwise you need to use actual satellites, and those are affected by the atmosphere, sometimes they fail or give erroneous readings (mission critical GPS units use FDE/RAIM to make it safe), and location/time/obstructions affects your best lock. You can't really tell the satellites where they should be to test bugs. That's why it's so hard.

Look at it the bright way, at least Samsung didn't ship any phones where GPS didn't lock at all. In Australia, the HTC desire was shipped that way (because telstra messed it up).

But I doubt Samsung are fine-tuning Google maps honestly. That sounds like something a sales person would say. Google maps is Google's code, and I doubt Samsung would fork it (companies are generally great until sales people get involved). But in JM5, there is STRONG evidence that it can lock accurately (it did so for me yesterday, and stayed, but today it locked a few meters wrongly, and drifted a while).

Either way, I do believe they are trying to fix it. But I believe the fine-tuning rubbish was likely misinterpreted and communicated wrongly.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Bynar010:
Really wish people would stop saying that, its better, but fine? Hell no! I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw chris moyles. Its not acceptable for car navigation at all. Get in an area with a tight network of roads and go round a corner....its awful. My old tytn 2 craps all over the sgs's navigation abilities.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
I second that. Forget about fast fixes and the mythical "here I am" indoor buzz, the problem is that while on the move the thing couldn't keep hold of locks even if you were chain-dragging 4 or 5 satellites behind your truck.

And I'm being nice by saying on the move because it sucks while standing still too. If you forget the inicial assistance and just sit there on the street holding it in your hand, all the signal dropping/sat dropping chaos means it can't even figure out where you're standing.

And I mean in a huge radius. The track of your "sitting there" will look like the result of a 2 year old trying to draw a pentagram over a block on a map.

Must have a tiny little pathetic antenna floating around in a sludge of firmware and driver bugware, along with the nice Broadcom chip. Different ROMs and snake-oil fixes just season the whole crap to taste a bit different depending on the user's palate, but it's still quite inedible considering the premium price we paid.

I have yet to see a single track recorded with an SGS that is right-on-target as with other (similar older) units when you're driving around in a complex city with frequent changes in speed and indeed a messy and tight network of roads.

Maybe roads in Korea are simpler. Nothing but straight lines for miles and miles surrounded by nothing other than free space. :D

I haven't even tried it with Layar and Sky yet... the comments I heard about the results were too disturbing, I just don't have the courage to watch.

PS: Hey look, Samsung just twittered "Samsungservice: We don't want that either! We're working hard on issuing a fix for this. I'll tweet new news here."

I think they're doing it every minute as someone complains to be lost. Maybe it is time to start shipping out paper maps to affected customers.

"Here's a map and a little compass Sir. We hope you're enjoying your Galaxy. Expect more." :D
[Galaxy S I9000 General] fredphoesh:
I wish people would stop non-stop complaining and winging about it here and DO SOMETHING about it!

UNITED KINGDOM

Samsung mobile: 0330 SAMSUNG (0330 7267864)

Monday - Saturday: 9am - 6pm

"The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Oil"
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
And what do you suggest.....

It is easy to say all this but lets not forget

1. All the posts which you mention being posted from 'non stop complainers and wingers' are really borne out of frustration with Samsung, so it is quite acceptable to hear these posts.

2. A lot of people (myself included) have contacted Samsung but it's like banging your head against a wall ~ which then brings us back to the frustration.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] fredphoesh:
three good reasons to not develop a wingefest:

1/ its boring

2/ its unproductive

3/ it is negative
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
Yes, I agree it does not help with sorting the issue out (I've applied countless hours in trying to sort this out so know how members feel) but I can also fully understand their anxiety and as such am happy to tolerate their frustration.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Srdjan1982:
I just got my SGS.It looks like a great phone but I have GPS problems...It is almost imposible to connect with satelittes when i am indoor.Outside it can connect to 5+ satelittes.

Should I flash software?

This is curent version:

PDA: I900XWJG5

PHONE: I9000XXJG1

CSC: I9000OXXJG4

...and i do not have any lag issues so far.

Please help!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
The weird thing is that one can't generalize in this matter. There are really people that have good experiences with the GPS. That makes this whole discussion so difficult.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
It's normal that you can't get a fix indoor. None of the gps's I owned, the bad and the good ones, could get a fix indoor. Bad indoor reception isn't an issue but a feature.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
I don't think so. I think they just think their GPS is good but are clueless. Most are just focusing on the TTFF and initial lock times INDOORS and then while driving on easy straight roads at constant speeds with their Nav software doing all the snapping in grids where a 100m error won't fool the algorithms enough.

I have yet to see someone show me a fine, accurate MyTracks path data after driving around with the SGS in a city with variable speeds (stopping lights, traffic, some buildings, tight turns, etc). I know it is harder under those conditions, but really old units do it very well. Even my cheapo Nokia 6620 tracks much better and it's old and slow.

So IMHO, most "it works fine!" reports are from users who are not evil but are strongly misguided, probably for not having used the units under those conditions. And if I offend any that actually knows what they're doing and has a good unit with good results, I apologize. :cool:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] milsjg:
Well just a reminder

Hi, everybody that thinks I9000 GPS is crap and that Desire is flawless, do you remember this discussion http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1429739.html.

I understand that several people have a problem with the GPS. However in this thread there are no clues to how widespread the problem is. Most comments are done by just 5-10 SGS owners with a faulty GPS and if you look in other similar forums and threads they are the same.

Some are very angry and even writes that they haven't seen a good track posted. That is just plain wrong I have seen at least as many good tracks as bad posted in different forums.

Also do you really know what a good track is? People claim that every position comes within 2 meters or so for some devices. That is just false. A good normal position without any correction should be within 5 to 15 meters 95% of the time meaning that 5% has a larger error. The other thing you have to understand is how accurate the program is. For example take a favorite track in Google Maps and change the view between "normal" and satellite. Surprise, the track is often in different spots with a error between the maps with up to at least 10 meters (this is different for different part of the world). So the spot on positions can very between maps.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Don't think that people with pretty good results don't feel like visiting this thread and to share their good results with frustrated users. Maybe they aren't that misguided after all ;)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] larryccf:
I'm sure there are a number of folks with working GPS, but after my first one went south, and i exchanged it for another new unit, it arrived with the GPS crapping out on me

what are the odds of getting a 2nd bad unit and it not being fairly widespread occurrance?

when 2 in a row are bad, the odds are stacking up that it is fairly widespread

if it were only 40 - 50 users complaining to Tmo & samsung, we'd never have seen a response from them, to that small a population
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ghosty_uk:
apple flap you hit the nail so hard it tore the wood there, i have had experiences in both, really crappy performance (my first SGS) and alot better but not perfect (my second SGS), so i know how it feels to be on both sides of that line, yet i still find it unacceptable that samsung has not held there hands up and said yeah there is an issue we are aware of it it is to do with XXXXXXX part and can be fixed ect...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
That's a fairly fuzzy argument by induction :)

Anyway, if you guys want to sort this thing out, and try a cooperative, joint effort I'm willing to jump in and do some android programming.

Point is, my GPS isn't that bad so I can't do much on my own...

EDIT: that is not to say that I support a case against Samsung!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
There's a survey at the top of the page thats been taken by almost 600 people, showing over 65% of people having some problems. Although all those that voted how great it was for them 3 weeks ago and would like to change their vote now, cant.

Vent your frustrations, calmly & politely here : http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/SamsungUKmobile
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ghosty_uk:
been there done that got the usual response, that they are aware of it and want it fixed, look at my response to theres. sorry it will be under my name James Hilton
[Galaxy S I9000 General] milsjg:
Yes, but milliones of SGSs
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Kilack:
I guess the more that do it the better though, they probably don't want the wall covered in comments about the bad GPS.

Anyway I just left one...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
I believe most of the Desire GPS problem threads were generated by Telstra customers. I do not own the Desire and am not into the details but as far is I could figure out it were due to the assisted GPS and gprs/wifi usage for location, not the capacity for holding those locks and being able to have stable, accurate navigation after the ttff period. But correct me if I'm wrong.

You are correct that 2 meter-sharp tracks are probably impossible in these devices but realize that the SGS is producing tracks that are miserably bad. At least mine is. It keeps fine for some meters (10-15m error) and then has wild zig-zagging, up to 250m errors and it hops around losing locks so fast that no miracle nav snapping algorithms can save it.

I believe people are getting good tracks with the SGS, I just don't see anyone posting those consistently, having them all the time. Most are like me, with a few moments that are ok and then of total disaster where your sat nav software keeps spilling out nonsense because the position is hopping around in a 100m+ range.

Today I also noticed that in this area where I drive (with a couple of overhead passes) my Nokia E72 kept locks as usual while every time I tried there with the SGS, it lost locks and ZZZed around wildly for many meters.

And I'm talking E72, a phone that is quite mediocre at sat nav. Maybe they forgot to put an antenna in my SGS, besides having the driver issues.

The problem with the SGS is not that we haven't seen a good track now and then.. is that those are totally inconsistent and no one understands why at times it tracks ok but usually it loses locks and seems as if it has no antenna at all. Maybe we're being too active in complaining but many people here have deadlines to meet (30-day windows to return phones) and need to know if they should trust a solution will come.

If Samsung acknowledges it can't improve the matter due to sw or hw design flaws, fine, I'll accept that and move along. But just provide some feedback on the diagnosis, and make it fast.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
For the past two days I've been testing the Arabic JPJG8 firmware many people were praising in relation with GPS (among other things). I have to say the praise was deserved. At least on my phone it pretty much solves all the GPS issues I had. I've recorded a short comparison track again today. Galaxy is blue, VF845 (representing the accuracy I'm used to from my old Magic) is red, real path is green.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...d=102660500975740475499.00048d7eac267928944aa

Note that this was not the only test I've done in those two days. However, I'm consistently getting very good results, which is something I've never experienced before with my Galaxy. In many places, the Galaxy is even more accurate than the VF845 and the only problems are at places where there wasn't very good signal coverage, but then again, VF845 wasn't exactly the most accurate there as well (it might not look like it, but the last third of the track was quite difficult in terms of GPS coverage - high buildings and trees all around).

So, what this tells me is that the GPS problem is absolutely a software one and it should only be a matter of time before this fix reaches the European firmwares. I'm very satisfied with the results and I highly recommend giving JPJG8 firmware a try. It kills two birds with one stone, really - fixes the lag and responsiveness issues AND the GPS issues and finally makes Galaxy the perfect phone without any major flaws. But of course YMMV.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] x50v!:
How many Satellites can you lock onto now?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Singhman:
Some Interesting Information about GPS Problem

Just wanted to share something. when I bought my galaxy S on the release date here in Canada on August 6th, the first thing i did when i got in my car was to try out the Navigation, and was thrilled when it locked in within a few seconds. Even inside my house, sitting on my couch, I could lock into gps.

I couldn't understand what all the complaints about GPS were about because over the past 5 days, my GPS worked flawlessly...until...i reset my phone to factory settings today. After this, I have not been able to lock into GPS. I was going to exchange my phone today because of freeze up issues, so I reset the phone to clear data. Well, Bestbuy was sold out, and asked me to come back friday for an exchange. Well now 'my location' is useless on this phone. GPS useless. What could have caused this? It seems that the gps works fine straight out of the box, but once a factory reset is performed, you can kiss GPS goodbye...what do you guys think?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
Is heat killing our GPS....

I know we have a ton of threads on this but I think this is proof that we have at least a partial hardware problem.

First some background: I'm on JM2 now and I haven't been unhappy with the gps performance of my sgs. It's not very accurate but usually good enough for car nav.

Today I had to make about a 2hr trip, gps did fine on the way over but on the way back I decided to stream some news through radio time. After about 10 minutes I noticed my gps started to go a bit wonky and after another 5 it was going completely nuts, it was randomly skipping around putting me in places far away from my actual location.

I waited and waited but it couldn't get a fix at all so I felt the back of the phone and noticed it was really warm. I unplugged the samsung car charger and aimed a vent at the phone and within a minute or so I had my fix back. I then drove unplugged for another 10 with no problems, I plugged the phone back in and within minutes the gps was completely useless again.

Maybe someone else can reproduce this: My phone gets warmer when charging so plug the phone in, run an app on the phone that heats it up and see how it affects the gps.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] robnil:
in captivate or vibrant forum (dont remember) a guy came to the same comclution. He put the phone in the freezer hehe, and got better gps-reception.

He now places it close to the vent in the car. Dont know if this is placebo
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Mr.Sir:
Nothing strange here? My Touch Pro hangs if using GPS and charging at the same time if it's sunny outside.

It's sad that they don't take that into consideration when constructing a phone like this one.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] robnil:
sounds like something was configured on that handset that was not in the reset-ghost. I wander what that could have been.. hmm
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Tulips:
Found a new bug with the GPS¿

Hey,

I found a new bug?with the great gps, if you have gps lock and turn the sgs in landscape mode the gps drops out and when you have a lock in landscape mode and turn it upright again i drops the lock. :rolleyes:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Bynar010:
This is new?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
Someone mentioned that some time ago but it is not confirmed. Rumor has it that there is the possibility that the CPU load causes a slight delay in processing and it affects lock holding (if the gps chipset relies on the main CPU for some processing).

All this is just unconfirmed speculation. I dont' think it really matters because the signal keeps dropping out, going up and sat locks jump around like a drunk monkey all the time anyway, no matter how you're holding it and so on.

It's just a schizophrenic unreliable GPS system.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Tulips:
Not good :s
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
All of these units can in theory perform better in lower temperatures due to reduced noise. That applies to many electronic devices.

I don't think that is the main problem with the SGS. Perhaps it loses a bit of sensitivity when it heats up more but it already has critical firmware/driver/antenna/chipset (?) problems under that.

Personally, I have used it mostly in the car and without being charged so the battery isn't very hot. The phone is also placed in cool areas and we're having temperatures of 37C here in Lisbon now so I always have the AC set to really cold... 19C or 20C, the car's inside and the unit are very cool.

Noticed no particular differences in warmer environments (i.e. using it right after a charge and as soon as I get outside).

This GPS is very consistent in the way it sucks under various environments and settings. That is probably the only thing that is it consistent at.

(and agree we're having too many theads on the GPS cancer. Getting harder to keep up)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] d0p3d:
It's just a software bug, I fully trust it to be fixed in an upcoming patch. It has nothin to do with the hardware...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
This would explain signal drops when screen locks too..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Tulips:
yes probably
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
hmmm... nope, i did that test before

it actually receives better in landscape mode, without dropping signal when going from vertical to horizontal

if you want to get the best signal, put the phone upside down

then the antennae is at the top, it gets the strongest signal

when your usb port is facing down to your shoes, then you will have the antennae heading up

when it is in landscape mode, it doesn't matter if it's facing left or right, it gets the same signal strength
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
I'll suggest to do the 1 click lag fix

that should solve the reload problem
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
I'm not convinced the problem is completely in the software but we'll find out soon enough I guess.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
nothing new, as far as i know all cell phones with build in GPS have the same problem.

my HTC Athena was exactly like that, but instead of "warm" it actually gets nearly burning hot, it was too hot for bare hands, so i always end up aim my AC vent to it to keep it warm

Blackberries are better at that, they only go mildly warm

SGS same thing it only goes warm, as long as i don't use WiFi, else it gets hot, the 3G doesn't create that much heat.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
see, that's what i've been telling people, and they think i'm crazy

about this no idea, try another factory reset using this (make sure you have your backup before you do it)

*2767*3855# WARNING! FACTORY DATA WIPE AND RESET as soon as you enter the last # use it only if you want to clean wipe your phone

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=721111
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
Well then I guess from now on I'll just have to blast airco on the thing then. Good thing it's mounted right between 2 vents :)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AllGamer:
same,

i've always had problem with the sucktion pads holders

the air vent ones works 100% except winter time when i turn on the heat

cheap air vent phone holders used soft plastic and it will MELT!!!!!!! LOL :D

killed 2 of those in the past like that, paid a little extra for the one i'm currently using, and this plastic is better, survived 2 winters already
[Galaxy S I9000 General] PsiIion:
It seems like one of the main issues with the software is the fact that it does not lock to more than eight satellites, and not to satellites with SNR <20.

That means that it's not good at tracking when you are not getting a very good signal. I guess that is why we see some people having a lot of issues and some not. There can be differences in signal strength at different locations, heat can mean you get a little bit worse reception and some units hardware might get somewhat better reception than others.

If the software would lock better those differences might not be very noticeable, but with the weak performance under less than ideal conditions it now makes the difference between a working and useless GPS.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Roy Ngan:
Same here
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
I confess: the gps is *not* good :) but..

No really, no joke... I was one of the defenders of the relative good performance of the GPS, until today... Today I got my HD2 back from repair (flashed one to many) and after installing Android on the HD2 and running my GPS app I couldn't believe my eyes. Whereas the Galaxy got an accuracy of 5-10m on a lock of 8 sats, the HD2 got an accuracy of 1.5-2.3 m on also a lock of 8.

All satellite data were more or less the same on both devices (i.e. sats in view, amount of sats constituting a lock and snr values were more or less the same), except for one big difference. My app reported that the GPS engine of the HD2 contained ephimeres and/or almanac data for some of the satellites, whereas the Galaxy S GPS engine had no data for the satellites AT ALL....

So, how do we get those data :)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
Oh no, not again. Does it really matter how many satellites you get a lock on as long as the results are good? If yes, then why?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] pizzachips:
+ 1

in canada and no issues with gps whatsoever...

on the international ver of the i9000 (not the bell one) if that makes a huge diff
[Galaxy S I9000 General] larryccf:
Case - curious if it's improved your compass's functioning - assuming your compass was suffering same as the GPS before
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
This makes sense to me.