yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
lol

I interpreted this suggestion differently. If there is a antenna design issue then this method could be used to create an additional antenna in the backcover.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] aurelm:
I tend to agree. Besides I also own an Eten x600 wich is a sirf star 3 gps phone that worked very well. However for example in a basement I tested both of them in airplane mode and where de sirf only saw 1 sat the galaxy saw 3. The antenna is not that bad. THe chipset might be flawed badly somewhere else or hopefully it is just software and Samsung guys are just incompetent. That being said, Samsung has 2 weeks to fix the damn thing, if it's not fixed I'm getting the iphone 4.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] NetCopAD:
I did the 20km hiking GPS test I wrote about.

In two words - GPS sucks.

Posting the track is pointless. Jumps all around the actual position in all directions. When standing still it produces what I call the "GPS death star" - position jumping in all directions. Reported accuracy has nothing to do with real accuracy. It was 5m to 30m all the time, but in the same time it was off by 100m or more. Conditions were ideal - most of the time I had 11 visible satellites with snr 30-40 dB, nevertheless the device constantly lost fix. GPS stopped working on several occasions and had to be disabled/enabled to fix.

I'm pretty sure the whole thing is a software problem. I'm pretty impressed by the sensitivity and I have never seen it lose sight of satellites. It just constantly loses it's fix. It looks like the communication with the GPS chip is stuck and needs reinitialization. Also, as you all know, it does a terrible job choosing the best possible satellites to use at any given moment.

Just for the record - the firmware is XXJF5.

In the same time I was recording my track with a HTC Artemis and it was pretty much right on and without any jumping arround.

On the positive side - the battery lasted the whole 11 hour journey - tracking and updating my position online every 10 minutes, couple of phone calls, online map browsing, several minutes of "layar" usage etc and I had 25% left at the end. As a comparison - in the same time i used almost 2 full batteries for tracking with my Artemis.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
I also tested JM5 a week ago and it had the same problem. It generally happened when the screen slept, and the fact that the accuracy circle doesn't always envelope you is a VERY good reason to believe at least one of the faults is software..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
At least it's being made known to the world that the problem exists.

Read here.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] rodh257:
http://goo.gl/Hm7 apparently its coming as OTA fix
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
That's weird. Are you sure it didn't jump from a GPS localization to a cell tower triangulation?

I bet we see a lot more battery drainage when the fix will come out. I suspect, but that's only speculation of course (what else can we do?), that they initially designed the software to make a balanced trade off between power saving and accuracy. I think that now Samsung observed that the accuracy sucks in the field that they will unleash the full power of the GPS, and that this will cost some substantial additional power from the battery.

I just can't think of another reason as to why they brought the Galaxy to the market with those weird snr and max. locked sats. (now that it is proved that it isn't a hardware limitation).

(again i like to be as charitable as possible in my interpretations :p )
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
link is not working. Can you post that again?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] NetCopAD:
Yes, I'm positive it was GPS. Cellular localization is way off, especially in remote locations like that, like a few thousand meters off and also I had it turned off for a part of the journey - no difference at all.

As for the battery, I'm not familiar with the internals of GPS nor the particular Broadcom implementation, but I doubt a correctly working GPS would consume more power than a faulty one.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] gllu:
Some good news in the morning:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/13/samsung-commits-to-september-updates-for-galaxy-s-gps-woes/
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Are you a hardware designer or telecommunications engineer? Because you keep trolling these forums saying the device is poorly designed, and have done nothing BUT ***** about the GPS (even BEFORE buying the phone). No, I am not exagerating, this seems to be the truth (looking at every single on of your posts). Are you possibly selling competing products? Please, post proof that you know something about antenna design/placement, and that you have analysed the drivers. Furthermore, prove you know something about GPS, and your knowledge extends beyond comparisons with other devices..

One example was that you called the antenna "just a metal strip" once, suggesting it was flimsy and that antenna design depends on size. I simply point you towards the Forerunner 405, which is watch sized (with no room for a big antenna), yet is fitness-grade. The Forerunner 305 (only slightly bigger), I have driven with and used whilst flying. It kept track accurately..

Furthermore, someone did plug in a MMCX antenna, and they said it still wasn't perfect. Samsung would have recalled the phones by now if it was a hardware issue (they wouldn't let it continue waiting for a lawsuit, at the very least they would have acknowledged the issue was hardware, they wouldn't have said crap like "oh, the signal strength bars were wrong"). Or they would announce replacement backplates with integrated antenna. Instead, they are spreading the phones to more carriers than ever. They have also released car docks that default to your GPS application (which is an odd approach if the GPS hardware is too dodgy to use for navigation).

It's good to hear Samsung have now set a timeframe OFFICIALLY on the fix (September). So we'll know for sure then (remember, they might need to develop an entirely new GPS stack, we don't know). But there are a few issues with the GPS which are most likely software (and we can confirm to be software if someone takes a look at the drivers). Also, we know the accuracy value can be tricked into being incorrect, so it's even possible the SNR's aren't accurate too either (or interrupts are being dropped and such).

Give Samsung a chance. In September, we will either have the solution, or we will know for sure we are getting screwed around (and that there wont be a fix). Debugging isn't as easy as people think.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
I can confirm this.. If you lock the phone using power button and then quickly unlock, you'll get the same thing..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sanktnelson:
Actually, with this weird Broadcom chip it just might. It offloads certain GPS work to the baseband CPU (as opposed to most other GPS chipsets which basically just report position and accuracy to the baseband and that's it), which makes the chip less complex, cheaper and less power hungry.

In that combination where software plays an important part any numer of things can go wrong, but one guess would be that it's timing-related. Such a solution probably has rather tight requirements on the baseband response speed. The Linux kernel is not well suited as a realtime OS, and on top of that android agressively puts the CPU to sleep to save power. So if it turns out that to fix the GPS they have to keep the CPU from sleeping to meet timing requirements, power usage would go up substantially.

both my SGS are on their way back to Amazon now. I think I'll go buy a navigon and a HTC legend instead for about the same price... just still hangin' out here because I'm curious if this will ever be resolved (although I doubt it). Has anyone tested the GPS on a "speedfixed" SGS btw? still curious if my earlier theory made any sense at all.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
What software did you use to post your realtime position online? Is this just something built into yahoo maps or mytracks?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] NetCopAD:
I used OruxMaps (found about it in this thread) and it supports realtime updates on mapmytracks.com

Pretty cool stuff! If only I had a decently working GPS...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] dakine:
YES!! I so needed an app like that especially since It can use calibrated scanned maps. Now I can use my nautical maps again.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] padlad:
Sorry, you miss interpreted my comment. It wasn't aimed at yourself or Clove, it was aimed at Samsung and their usual verbal crap. They (Samsung) said something very similar last month to Clove as reported by yourself.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
It works great with maps from the good old WinCe oziExplorer. Converting these is a breeze.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
SonyEricsson X10

Bad news, I did some tests with a SonyEricsson X10 and this is what I got:

As you can see ephemeris and almanac data for all satellites. The fix was so fast. Accuracy was perfect (as you can see)...

Alhough I got the same kind of locks on the galaxy (with the new Captivate firmware), the accuracy never was smaller than 5 meter. Whereas the X10 jumped in discontinuous steps of max. 1 meter between different accuracy (2,x - 3,x m), the Galaxy jumped with steps of min. 5 meter (5 - 10m etc).

(I thought the ported HD2 driver was reported wrong accuracies. Unfortunatelly....)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] gadjet0:
Good news yes but it seems to mention AGPS, this is not the problem I'm seeing.

If I've got it right AGPS just helps you to get a quick fix but the GPS is what you need to continue to get an accurate fix whilst driving.

It's this GPS fix that is crap! not the AGPS but I could be wrong, it's not unheard of:rolleyes:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Im getting quite a bit fed up of all this speculation without real world evidence to back it up. :-(

It fills the forum and thread up with a load of non-consequential chatter that doesn't mean anything and hides the real results.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ~gtw:
@sjdean... So true!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Right, I must take exception with this post. First off, there is a problem with the GPS. Everyone knows that there is a problem with the GPS. So complaining about the GPS is hardly trolling.

Whether hardware related or software related, one must question why this issue was never picked up during the initial design and planning phase, and during the three months that it took Samsung from announcement in March to release in June. The phone has since been out for at least two months and released in other markets and there is still no fix.

Worse still, the changes to the firmware from XXJF3 through XXJM5 show that far from stabilising the GPS and improving the accuracy, all that seems to be happening is that the location is being fudged in the backend. In the event of a GPS signal loss, we see that the system works on last known good location, heading and pace to try to draw a path.

None of this has improved the situation in the backend.

The real problem is the instable GPS and loss of GPS signal lock.

I have no seen any evidence that this issue is being addressed in the leaked firmware, even the twitter announcement talks about "optimising" which could be in line with what we have seen already - in other words, not a fix. We have to bear in mind, that this could really be a hardware problem which Samsung are covering up with "optimisations".

Let me take you back 12 months. Nokia N97. They had huge problems with their GPS. It took them about six months to announce that there was a problem and get a fix out there which consisted of new electromagnetic shielding.

Perhaps there is a serious hardware error - the phone is ultra thin so may not be able to afford all the shielding required. The phone chucks out a whole lot of heat during normal operation, which could affect some circuits. Or maybe we can look at the sister broadcom chips used on the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 and think there's a common problem with these Broadcom chips.

Problem here, is that Samsung have been promising fixes in the past few weeks, they're going to release new firmware this week, next week, the week after....

I'll believe a September release when I see it.

Do not assume though for one minute, that any updated firmware will solve this issue. As I say, we only have to look at the words which talk about "optimisations" and the "optimisations" rather than fixes on XXJGx and XXJMx firmware, not to mention the issues with similar GPS chips used in iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
I think they're just using the AGPS term wrong. Most people do. Or should I say "I hope"? ;)

If the Captivate "fix" proved anything apart from that they're working on it, then I think it's the fact that the reception is not an issue.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] foxbat121:
AGPS part is added by Engadget. Samsung's tweets never mentioned (A) part. Most bloggers have no clue and still think the so-called 'fixes' that change the supl server address actually worked.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Only HuMAN:
Maybe this will help:

drippler.com/samsung-galaxy-s/gps-problem-fix-for-samsung-galaxy-vibrant-captivate/
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
A bit decency please. Almost everyone is speculating here.

I'm fed up with this community
[Galaxy S I9000 General] foxbat121:
Did you even read through this thread? Your link pointed to an old *fix* we already discussed and proved not a fix at all.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
So a couple of points:

The fixes, that I am aware of, should not have any impact on battery life, they are simply bug fixes and some 'tuning'.

Regarding the external antenna not really helping, thats because the bugs have nothing to do with reception. Although an external antenna may increase signal strength it's not required.

Finally to Mike, I think I speak for most when I say we really appreicate you talking with Clove and sharing their feedback as this provides another element of insight in the form of a phone retailers perspective, who have a better line of communication to Samsung than we do as customers.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] tannerswe:
internal storage drain

Is anyone who uses this fix having problems with drained internal storage?

I installed the GPS fix last night and run out of internal storage. This morning I flashed in a new firmware and installed the fix and very soon I will drain the memory again if I keep using the GPS. Perhaps it could be due to the fix?

I did some testing and when I run GPS test the internal memory went from 185 to 175 in 2 minutes. After 2 minutes with My tracks, down to 168mb. and after a couple of minutes with google maps, down to 161mb.

So something is fishy when I use the GPS.

But I'm also using RyanZA lag fix v2.3. Hard to guess what causing it.

The memory I talk about is the last option in Settings > SD card and phone storage > Internal phone storage

You who are using this fix, with/without the lagfix, can you check if your internal storage decreases when you use the GPS and ie. google maps.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] NetCopAD:
Debug is enabled in jupiter.xml and GPS usage generates log files. Search the original Captivate thread for how to disable.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Sorry, let me get this straight, you post another speculation (of which I state I think speculations clutter the group), and you accuse me of being indecent?

The way I see it, you have 2000 posts, you have experience, but frankly, I don't want to hear more speculation about how you think future firmwares will drain battery with absolutely nothing to back that up.

Meanwhile, any meaningful and useful posts just keep being lost amongst this "speculation".
[Galaxy S I9000 General] invaderjohn:
the fix didnt work at all fopr me, i can only find 1 satelite now, is there asnyway to revert back without re-flash the rom ?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] larryccf:
do you have a link to that post? - i had been waiting to see Beowulf's results when his antenna came in, but i think he gave up on his i9000 before trying it

tks
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
Well, if you have root, you could push back the necessary files from your previous firmware manually (that is, push them to sdcard and then copy them to their correct location, since none of the current root updates doesn't provide us with an insecure adb to push directly to /system, sadly...can't understand why, really...)

Or I can make a revert file, but I can't do it right now and even if I do it, I'd have to use ie. JM5 files to do so, even if you don't run JM5.

You should've made a nandroid backup of your ROM before applying this highly experimental fix...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
I actually kept all my files from before applying this fix and create my own update.zip.

Trouble is now, they're going back with the wrong dates - even deleted them all and tried again, still the wrong dates - 01 Aug 08 instead of 29 Jul 10. Plus now my GPS won't initialize.

Im gonna reflash. Haven't done it for a few days.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Why I call you indecent is the tone with which you are trying to express yourself. If you don't get that....

Meanwhile, look back and be honest and see how much speculation is going on in this thread. Mostly done by frustrated users and mostly concerning the hardware.

And I refute your "insight" that I speculate that much. That's totally rubish. I mostly refrain from out of the blue speculations.

I pass this thread. It's to much unconstructive, negative reinforcement for me.

Have fun with all those "meaningful post". :D
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Somebody know how to hide threads?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Look, I don't much care about speculative posts from noobs. That's what noobs do. You have nearly 2000 posts though.

Even when people have been telling you other things, you've been quite insistent in your viewpoint and disregarded everything else.

You've blamed the developers of apps like GPS Test and MyTracks because you *think* that it's their fault the GPS doesn't work properly even though everyones told you the same App works elsewhere.

You went off and enlisted the help of another programmer who told you that the GPS is faulty on the Galaxy S alone as it turns itself off after two seconds. You made claims despite ever seeing the Android API and blamed developers.

There's nothing at all in Android that does this, and the claim doesn't even stand up to actual testing. Well, unless the screen goes to sleep, but that (I think) can be handled through onPause and onResume.

After having written your own App, are YOU feeling sheepish for giving this information?

You've told us that the Android system can be linked to an External GPS. That may be true for a single App, but it doesn't work across the whole of the Android platform. It's just not possible. Google "Bluetooth GPS" and "Android".

Most people generally offer up speculation with the words "I think", but much of your speculation seems to come across as actual fact.

I've even posted real empiral evidence showing that the underlying GPS subsystem which spits out the NMEA data strings suggests that the system does lock onto more that eight satellites and those < 20 SnR - but the problem appears to be in the way that Samung then passes the info to Android, not to mention both systems suffer from a lack of accuracy.

But you ignore it, and write a program to explain to us how the system can see 12 satellites, even though we know that this isn't the problem, besides which, this has been proved elsewhere.

The latest about how you think future updates will drain the battery is really like, wow.

What it seems like you're saying, I can't reply to you and tell you if I think you have it wrong, and I cannot tell you things if my own experience differs?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
OMG, come on Simon be a bit reasonable. I think the most wise thing for me to do is to get out of this thread. I honestly try not to say anything more about the GPS :D

Lets burry the hatchet and let this be a place where people like to share opinions, speculations and discussion. If i'm annoying you that much... I will refrain from posting more on this subject and give some room. No problem. Alright?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Btw, Samsung has now set september as the release date for GPS "optimisation".
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Bajo76:
Could you please make an update where in jupiter.xml loging is diabled, cause it makes my system low memory through the logfile in /data/gps. Tried to change it with root explorere but not possible.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Btw, yes, I am sick of debate too. Fact is, there is no new information for anyone to add, so I'll drop out until I see evidence that Samsung merged their "optimisations" (and if it doesn't fix anything, I'll probably be returning my phone anyway).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
I don't like repeating myself. :D

I really don't have a problem with you. I may disagree with what you say, and I will respond if I think you're barking up the wrong tree and give you examples and samples to back up my argument. It's not a personal insult, I'll respond to anybody if I think they're wrong.

Like just then, when you told me you don't speculate and I told you all the times that you have speculated.

I'd better add a smilie on in case you think Im being difficult. :D

Not that I have a problem with speculation, I just feel this thread could be a lot tidier with information easier to find if we keep the speculation and chitter chatter (like this) to a minimum.

I don't think that's in anyway unreasonable.

What I also don't like doing, is repeating myself. :D

If you have root access, it's dead easy.

The file is called "jupiter.xml" and can be found under /system/etc

Towards the top of the file, you'll find:

You'll want to change

cLogEnabled="false"

to

cLogEnabled="true"

and you may want to change:

acLogDirectory="/data/gps/log/"

to something else, like

acLogDirectory="/sdcard/gps/log"

If you use a program like Root Explorer, you can actually edit the files without messing around with adb etc.

Cheers

Simon
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
I agree it could be anything.

We hope it isn't hardware. We hope it is only software. What we have seen in the leaked firmware isn't the end result. We hope that Samsungs past record on GPS isn't the future for the Galaxy S. We hope that the lacklustre GPS performance on the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 using similar Broadcom chips isn't an indicator for the performance of the Broadcom chip on the SGS.

We know that XWJM1 was/will be released through Kies for whatever reason. Communication from samsung to Clove suggested there would be a "beta fix" last week. We also know rumblings from various sources suggest a fix will be in place in September (most of those rumblings though are US based, and the GPS drivers vary between US and UK).

All in all, a complete mixed bag. I just hope we don't get to September and have Samsung tell us we have to wait til October.

So I think in summary, we don't know that it is hardware, we don't know if it is software. We also don't know if it will be fixed in September. Samsung haven't got a great track record on GPS and iPhones which also utilise Broadcom aren't great.

Fills me with confidence. By the end of September, if this isn't fixed, Im going to HTC.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
no you don't have to, I think that you're an [MOD EDIT] anyway.

Mind the language please!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
Might I ask why do you think the GPS drivers differ, especially given that we've just succesfully tested Captivate GPS "drivers" on European i9000 without any problems apart from the drivers being buggy?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
I've asked you this on the other thread but you've probably missed it - did you test it by using the full Captivate firmware or just by copying the few GPS-related files to the usual i9000 firmware? 'Cause I'm not getting any ephemeris or almanac lock with the copied files, so if you do with the Captivate fw, then it must mean there's more to it than just those files...