yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] xpcomputers:
There is a thread in the vibrant or captivate forums about bending the weak connector inside the phone, that joins the antenna to the board. Apparently it is a really bad design, and barely makes contact.

However you'd probably void your warranty by doing this yourself, so might be best for someone to test the waters and take their phone to a Samsung Repair Centre, and sweet talk an engineer to bend the pins for you, or even replace them with better contacts.

Many people claiming astounding signal improvements with the simple mod though.

However, as they say in that thread, it is not the full story, you still need a good rom, and good settings too..... but with those and this hardware fix, it could become suddenly a good gps unit!!!

If you open your phone to try this, you should bend out slightly all the pins (cell, wifi, gps etc), but be careful, they break easily too! Oh, and clean the surface of the antenna too, to make sure it has the shiny contact to mate against when the phone is closed up again.

I haven't done this.... Yet!

But those with nothing to lose warranty-wise can dive straight in.

It is believed to be an identical procedure on the international GT-I9000.

Mike

Ps. Make sure you find the right thread. There is one wrong thread touting the same gps fix, but then wrongly gives pictures and descriptions how to bend the cell antenna contacts (behind the reverse chin!)... rather than the gps contacts (around the volume control buttons)! DOH! There is another thread with the right pictures.

(Of course ideally you'd do both whilst you are in there, but good to use the right instructions!)

I'll post a link tomorrow if I get a moment to hunt the correct one down... Unless someone beats me to it! ;)

Happy Modding!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] SnoopyDog:
I improved the speed to get a fix by increasing the "accuracy" value. The default is 50 meters and i set it up to 200. The point is, that phone first tries to get an accuracy equal or below this value before it shows a "fix" and this may take some time. If it can not get below this value it gives up and even fixes with a worse accuracy, kind of timeout. Since i increased the accuracy i definitely get a faster fix and the accuracy is still good in most cases (10-50 meters).

The only thing: from time to time the phone does not find any satellite until i delete GPS data. After this, it's working properly again.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] kendragon:
where can I found jpp modem? can I flash it without formatting?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] kunjar:
as xpcomputers stated, try this...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=878970

Also READ this:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=881941
[Galaxy S I9000 General] montrealguy:
Ok I'm a newbie with a I9000M who needs GPS advice:

I had JL2 which never locked on anything and was useless. I installed Darky's ROM 8.0 yesterday and now it finds a ton of satellites and locks on easily.

However, upon testing it, I found the following problems:

-on Google Maps, it shows my location within a 10m accuracy when it is showing my location as 50m-100m from where I really am.

-When on a road, it shows me as being on the opposite side of the road, or in the middle of the building on the side of the road, as if I'm driving the car on rooftops.

-it reacts much too slowly. I was at a red light and it was still showing me as moving for 30 seconds afterwards.

-on Google Earth, it is showing me as being 100-200m from my actual location.

I am using Wifi right now, no 3G and it still gives all the wrong locations.

Here are my settings:

ON: WIFI, GPS, Sensor Aiding

Tracking, S/W Test, Standalone, Hot start, GPS PLUS on, Dynamic Accuracy on, Accuracy 50, GPS Logging off

Custom Config, supl.google.com, server: 7276, SUPL Secure Socket OFF, AGPS: SUPL

FasterFix: north-america.pool.ntp.org (confused why the GPS menu is showing the Google server while Fasterfix is showing the ntp server)??

Can anyone help with ideas for these problems?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] BenEadir:
I found that by following the settings in this thread EXACTLY I have a much improved Google Navigation experience. http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=842694&highlight=dangrayorg

Ben
[Galaxy S I9000 General] zorxd:
Most people will tell you that Darky's ROM fixed your GPS. But these people don't know what they are talking about. I bet they don't really use their GPS, other than bragging that they can get 10 satellites in their basement.

To me it is clear: your GPS is broken. As it is on most if not all Galaxy S that I have tested extensively.

JL2 attemps to "fix" the GPS by discarding wrong data. It works quite well* for me however it might be harder to lock. Today it took me about 2-3 minutes before locking. There is no magic, the hardware is the same, and it is by far the worse GPS of any smartphone I have tested.

*When leaving my phone on the passenger's seat, it often loose satellite lock. However, when close to the window it seems to work quite well, much better than before because at least the precision is acceptable. And I tested this with 2 Galaxy S (three before with JH2)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] montrealguy:
Well I've realized that the fact that it locks on to satellites doesn't mean that its accurate.

-I just changed the Accuracy to 30 and it was more accurate in Google Maps in showing my location than before, but still 20-40 meters off. I'm not sure if it resolves the fact that it showed me moving yesterday even though I was stationary for 30 seconds.

-The real question is: is this the most that we can expect from GPS systems? Does even the Iphone show your location on Google Maps with 5m accuracy in the real world?

-Do you think I'm getting less accuracy in the real world because I have no 3G data?

-What is this "cheap bluetooth dongle" that this guy is referring to here that will make my GPS flawless?: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=842694&highlight=dangrayorg
[Galaxy S I9000 General] zorxd:
bingo

I tested the following phones:

Milestone, Optimus One, Hero, Desire Z

They all have a perfectly working GPS. I only had problems with the Galaxy S.

No, but you could get a slower lock

probably an external GPS solution
[Galaxy S I9000 General] GOTFrogqc:
I have absolutely no issues with the GPS, i use it multiple times per day I work on the road and even downtown i ger no issues. Maps tell me it git an accuracy of 1600m but they always put me excacly where Im situated. Im on Darky 8.0 with JL2 modem
[Galaxy S I9000 General] AMoosa:
JPP modem here:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=9724862&postcount=14434
[Galaxy S I9000 General] DiST_EL:
I installed the jpp modem. It seems to be a bit better than the jpy but in Google navigation it was still sometimes inaccurate and the car was sometimes shown besides the track (holding the sgs in the hand) .

I think there is no solution which works 100 percent accurate.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] BenEadir:
Hi All,

I'm on 2.2.1 JPY and I've a problem with my Accelerometer. When I turn the phone from portrait to landscape (or visa versa) it either doesn't refresh the screen correctly or takes ages to do so i.e. 10 seconds or more. I've tried it in ton's of apps and it's consistently the same so it's not app specific.

When I launch the compass North will travel almost all the way round it I turn the phone 180 degrees!!

I'm also having a problem with GPS in Navigation. When I launch Google Navigation it pops up a notice saying "Checking Navigation Availability" and stays in that mode. It never makes a determination whether "Navigation" is available or not!!

I launched LbsTestMode and I've noticed that whilst All three categories in Orientation and Magneticfield are constantly changing as I move the phone around only X and Y in Accelerometer change, Z seems to be permanently stuck on 19.574993. Could this indicate a mechanical failure in the Accelerometer and if so can anyone recommend a fix other than returning the phone for repair?

BTW I've already done a factory reset without it making any difference.

Ben
[Galaxy S I9000 General] borelis:
Tried this on my I9000

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=878970

Now it works flawless!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Metusion:
I was about to do that, but I can't get one screw lose (now it's damaged a bit)

Think I can bring it to a shop to open it for me? It drives me nuts as I want to do this fix and also see if I can fix the normal phone signal (by bending the contact a little) which isn't that great for me either.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] borelis:
The hardest part is to get the back of. After that, NP.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Metusion:
I'm talking about the screw that won't get loose.. Since it's damaged my screwdriver isn't effective. Can't a repair shop open it some other way?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] borelis:
Shuldnt be a problem for someone with the right tools and know how.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] herbert1:
We can read many different opinions about Galaxy 9000 GPS on this forums:

Some say it's very bad, with either long time (or very very long time) to fix, unstable fix, poor accuracy and so on...

Some say it's very good, with very first time to fix and hight accuracy...

Some have a GPS unit that sometime works well and sometime not.

There are also many fixes for the GPS, which sometime work for some but not for all.

A part of the problem is that it's difficult to compare the tests, since the quality of the GPS reception depends on many things:

if you are inside or outside,

if the weather is cloudy or not,

how many satellites are visible and where they are,

...

So I've made a test in order to compare the my Galaxy's GPS with a bluetooth SIRF III one in the same conditions (same place, same time, ...).

I was inside (so not very good reception, but I'm usually able to get a fix), the phone and the bluetooth unit were staying on my desk

The SIRF III GPS enhancements were disabled (WAAS and static navigation disabled).

For the Galaxy S GPS, tracking, MS-Based, hot start and GPS plus were on, dynamic accuracy off, accuracy set to 80m and AGPS set to use SUPL with supl.google.com on port 7276 with secure socket off.

On the phone I have the official Froyo update (PDA:JPA / PHONE:JPP / CSC: JP3).

The green mark is the bluetooth GPS and the red mark the Gallaxy's one. The blue circles are the alleged accuracy reported by both GPS units (15 to 20 meters which is not bad since I was inside).

From the test what I can say is that the bluetooth GPS reported my position correctly (I was really in the upper side of the building that you can see on the map !), while the Galaxy S internal GPS was fooling around...

The low precision of the internal GPS would be more acceptable if it had not reported an accuracy that is obviously not in adequacy with reality.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] zorxd:
Thanks for your test but I don't think inside testing matters.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] lgkahn:
the pt has nothing to do with testing indoors. the point he is making is that when the unit has low signal it is stull showing high accuracy and jumping all over the place.. this happens with low signal outdoors also.. basically it lies about accuracy which causes nav. programs to trust it and jump around. wheras if it didnt lie .. they probably wouldnt jump around if they were coded correctly.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] t1mman:
I use the GPS mainly for keeping track of my runs (jogging) so prescision is more than needed in this case.

With the original rom (JH2 I think, 2.1) it was pretty much useable. From times to times I had the issue where it got all over the place... reset/redownloading data did the trick.

With JL2 (Froyo 2.2) it took forever to get a fix but still, I would get one *eventually. I did a couple of run and it was close, but not as close as before.

Now I'm running darky's 9.0.2 (since the weekend) because I was annoyed by the fix time and honestly, it get the fix in seconds and seems pretty accurate (Haven't done a run with it yet, it's winter in canada... :S). But from what I can see when driving around, it's pretty much on the spot! There's some GPS optimisation out there and it's included in many custom roms, you should definitively try it!
[Galaxy S I9000 General] madmack:
Which modem are you using with Darky's rom ?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] zorxd:
Yeah but who cares if signal is low indoors? Maybe it's always high outdoor? And maybe that with a good signal the SGS behave better than the Bluetooth GPS who knows?

Tests should be made under normal usage scenarios. And I see two main ones:

-Mounted in the windshield of a car

-in a pocket while running/cycling/trekking/kayaking/skiing/parachuting/etc.

I agree that JL2 is slower to fix (2-3 minutes sometimes) but from my testing at least once locked it is never off the track as JH2 was (sometimes 500m off). I tested with 3 phones and I even think that I am now satisfied with the GPS. I never thought that I would say that one day.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] herbert1:
signal are not always high outdoor: weather can be cloudy, in cars you you have to do with athermal windscreen, in town there are high buildings around, aso...

it's not difficult to perform well with perfect conditions (many satellites and hight signals). What's interesting is how the GPS behaves in adverse conditions (not excellent ones but also not too bad ones)

I'm OK with that. What is not so simple is to run the car and to take screenshots in the same time...

I'm not willing to argue or say that all SGS GPS are bad. I just wanted to point out why I (and some other) are not completely happy with theirs.

With my bluetooth GPS, when I drive under a bridge, the accuracy drops briefly and that's logical...

With the SGS GPS, bridge or not, it reports an accuracy equals to 5 or 10 meters but puts me sometime 50m away from my true position. And, for me that's a problem, if the accuracy is bad why not reporting it ?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] betoNL:
Which software are using that puts you 50 m away when signal is lost?

It never happens to me, but then again, I am probably one of those with a "blessed" sgs with a good working gps.

But try this:

-Flash any of the latest 2.2.1 firmwares ( JPY or JS3 preferable)

-Install the latest speedmod kernel ( K12Q 500Hz BigMem preferable)

-Download and install gps fix app from market

-Download and install Motonav 480x800 ( google for it)

Go OUTSIDE, start evrything and wait (1 to 3 min- ) for the first fix (dont rely on fast fixes obtained by a-gps)

And test again
[Galaxy S I9000 General] zorxd:
Alright but how can you know that being indoor is a good way to emulate bad weather, buildings, etc? I think it is very different. I never get a lock indoor, but my GPS works fine in my car.

You don't need screenshots. Just record the track with my tracks or any alternative.

Well I agree that it would be better if the accuracy reporting was right but in the end the only thing that matters is if the GPS is usable or not.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] t1mman:
JL2

10 chars...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] herbert1:
I don't say it's a good way to emulate bad weather aso, but it was easier for me to show one of the problems I have with my GPS...

When I use it in a car it's worse... but I can't show it, so don't trust me.

No the accuracy is here to show you the quality of the FIX, it's important !
[Galaxy S I9000 General] zorxd:
I've had plenty of GPS problems so I trust you. However, I think you should record tracks while in your car if you want to proove someone that your GPS is wrong.

I prefer looking at the number of satellite and signal level for that.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] herbert1:
With NMEA the GPS is supposed calculate the quality of the FIX. Normally it provides 3 values: HDOP (horizontal dilution of precision), VDOP (vertical dilution of precision) and PDOP (position dilution of precision) (more info on wikipedia).

These values depend on the number of satellites used for the fix, their positions in the sky, the quality of the signals ... and the GPS.

The horizontal accuracy is approximately equal to the gps precision*HDOP (e.g. 10m with a HDOP of 1.0 on my SIRFIII GPS).

The SGS internal GPS is supposed to be better than the SIRFIII. I can understand that it's difficult to integrate all these components (GPS, bluetooth, GSP, etc..) in a phone. However if there is a reception problem (on my phone) I should see it in the reported accuracy !
[Galaxy S I9000 General] montrealguy:
What exactly are you referring to when you say "accuracy"? Are you talking about the "stated accuracy" in GPS Status, or are you talking about real world accuracy.

In GPS Status, my GPS locks onto 10 satellites in 8 seconds and says 10m accuracy. In Google Maps it shows me as being 50-100 meters from my current position.

The "stated accuracy" is entirely bogus in my experience.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] herbert1:
When there is a FIX, the GPS gives you your location (latitude, longitude, altitudes) and some DOP (dilution of precision - HDOP - VDOP - PDOP) which reflect the quality of the fix. Normally you can use it to obtain a acceptable approximation (what you name "stated accuracy") of real world accuracy. It's not perfect but with a normal GPS it should be quite reliable. With my blutooth GPS it is. With the HTC Sapphire or the Acer Liquid I've used, it was. :)

If it isn't that means that there is a problem. :mad:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] herbert1:
[video] Bluetooth GPS and SGS GPS compared

...

OK, I've made a video: the SGS is mounted in my car (real condition - normal usage scenario) ;)

[YOUTUBE]S73h8gkzMVo[/YOUTUBE]

At the beginning I'm parked and then I drive in town.

As I'm in town, there are some buildings and the car has an athermal windscreen so the satellite signal reception is not very good. However the GPS is still usable (you can see that sometime the accuracy of the bluetooth GPS drops briefly...).

In this test the red mark is the current position reported by an old bluetooth SIRF III GPS and the green mark corresponds to the signal of my Galaxy S (I9000) internal GPS.

The blue circles represent the accuracy reported for each GPS. The mark size is approximately 5 to 10 meters and the map is centred on the bluetooth GPS.

As I was in the car I can say that the bluetooth GPS position was quite accurate...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] betoNL:
Naaah...my videos are better.

One made using a BT external gps receiver

and other WITHOUT any assist!

Real live action, still from the Eclair time...

Of course it only got better with the arrival of Froyo 2.2.1

And even better with the Speedmod kernel

My BT gps receiver is retired!

See my signature for the videos :
[Galaxy S I9000 General] cedricberger:
Thanks for this very good illustration of how bad the sgs gps is.

Not just having bad sensitivity, but also being bad at dealing with it : too much averaging, and lying about precision (preventing application from making good use of the information since they cannot know when it is all guessing from the gps unit)

(and I confirm this is the kind of behaviour I get with my sgs in car)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] betoNL:
Sorry, I didnt pay attention before, but now I see your "video" is very interesting!

Which softwares are you using in order to:

Use both ( a internal and a external) gps receivers at the SAME TIME and allowing MOCK location??

Which software you use to capture video on screen?

Did you ever run a offboard gps program like iGo or Navigon, which are much more reliable than Google navigation?

Just back from a long car trip to Germany and my sgs ran iGo MyWay (8.4), flawlessly not only on the highway but also inside the busy city of Hamburg, without any assist of an external bluetooth or a-gps ..

Anyway I am interesting on that software (video screen capture)..

My video cam is on a strike
[Galaxy S I9000 General] herbert1:
For the bluetooth GPS, I'm using BlueGPS4Droid which works pretty well with my BT-338. I have configured it to redirect the bluetooth GPS on its own GPS provider. So the internal GPS and the bluetooth GPS are both available at the same time :cool:

I'm using ShootMe (Screen Grabber) developed by Johan Cloetens.

How can I compare both GPS, if I use a app that tempers the GPS data ?

No misunderstanding, that's fine... but not for this particular purpose.

On the other hand, I prefer also to use open data (OpenStreetMap) and open source software when I can...

Since Samsung's last official Froyo update, the GPS of my SGS (July version) doesn't last more than 5 minutes after the first fix. So it's barely usable even with a very good navigation app (another of the many problems I have with my SGS GPS...).

Except that (and the lack of notification led) it's a great phone.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Evans_Prophet:
The GPS has clearly a hardware problem and that is its weak antenna. I have gone through some tests and it is obvious that even the roof of your car (i.e. no direct view to the sky) can cause serious signal degradation.

I am looking whether it is possible to extent the gps antena somehow without resorting to an external GPS. If anyone has any idea on how to do this (there is a plug in the back of the phone) it would be a great contribution.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] herbert1:
If it's a weak signal problem why does the GPS still report high accuracy and low level of DOP. Somehow Samsung or Broadcom either have also made a faulty software or are cheating with the data... :mad:

The signal strength reported by my old bluetooth GPS is not higher then the one of the SGS GPS, but it's by far more truthful and accurate.

For me it's like when Apple was saying there is no problem with iphone 4 antenna, we will increase the number of bars !
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Auzy:
Also, there are plenty of documented cases where people have experienced an accuracy bubble outside their actual location.. You need RAIM to ensure accuracy, and there is no currently no evidence which suggests that we have it. There is a reason why mission-critical applications of GPS require FDE/RAIM, and it's simply because without it, everything is an estimate. The accuracy bubble seems mostly correct in JPY (not properly tested though), but I'm not sure enough recent testing has been done to confirm it's accuracy.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] DiST_EL:
I had several cases where i was outside the bubble with jpy. the most annoying issue for me is that direction changes are shown sometimes completely wrong and to slow like u didn't got the curve (in maps)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] DocMarc73:
For me gps now works okay. Fixes sometimes take up to 2 Minutes (worst case) - normally a couple of secs - but i have to admit that i cant use agps data at the moment (waiting for a new sim w dataplan).

So here's what i've done:

1) Did the hardware gps antenna fix: open your sgs and CAREFULLY bend the tiny copper contact a bit upward so that there's more pressure towards the antenna contact area: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=878970

2) Stock Rom XXJPY + JPA WiFi driver (just for energy saving). I tested different modems (including the "famous" ZSJPE and DXJPB) but i returned to the stock XXPY for best results (Germany).

3) Speedmod Kernel K12u CWM 500Hz did really improve fixes!

4) SGS Tools:

- GPS fix (europe.pool.ntp.org)

- GPS application settings: everything on default exept : accuracy increased to 100 m

Result: Once i got a fix, it's almost rockstable with an accuracy of 5-10 m. Navigon works flawlessly as well as my tracks and google maps. Fixes should speed up once i can connect to umts using agps data.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] zorxd:
Nope, it has nothing to do with the software that you use.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] BogdanSNB:
After a few tests on XWJS5 ... GPS is accurate (5m) and fast (after 15 sec is connected to 8 sattelites).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Auzy:
Bogdan, check the tracks and post them.. What GPS status tells you is useless.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] alelas:
A bit off-topic but look here how I managed to improve GPS SNR significantly (1-minute easy hardware fix):

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=12972756&postcount=248

Gives far better results than anything I have tied before in hope to make GPS work better. Please report back if it works for you guys!!!!