[Galaxy S I9000 General] sanktnelson:
Now on my 2nd SGS, starting to think lag and GPS are intimately related.

Hi all. Just registered to share my experiences:

The short version:

I just got my 2nd SGS, returned the first one because of crappy GPS in the hope that this one would be better. interesting result: It was significantly better (though still not really acceptable IMO) until I started downloading another application, then it went totally bonkers.

The detailed account is as follows:

I unpacked the phone, stuck in my SIM, logged into google and downloaded mytracks. The phone came with XXJF3 firmware. Then I went for a walk around the block and it worked reasonably well. Fix was quick, track had somewhat rounded corners indicating exxcessive averaging, but was generally no more than ~20m off the mark, while indicating a position uncertainty of <5m. So it's still badly broken, but at least it would be somewhat usable that way. btw. so much for all the people claiming GPS generally can't be that accurate... other devices at least don't lie about accuracy... but I digress. The interesting part is that I then got annoyed by the screen in mytracks switching off all the time, so I installed "screen mode widget" from the market to keep it on all the time. And during download and install the GPS went totally bonkers, jumping all over the place, but then returned to the somewhat reasonable state after installation finished.

I realize this is anecdotal evidence, but I don't really have the time to test 100 tracks and see what comes out. There are still two important conclusions from this:

1. This is strong (additional) evidence that the problem is very, very widespread: This is the second phone I got, it has the same problem as the first, and it was from a major retailer (amazon) that should have quite a bit of inventory throughput so it's unlikely to be just an unlucky batch or something.

2. The GPS problem is likely relatedd to the lag issues on these phones because:

- It is well-known that the broadcom chip unloads some GPS processing to the baseband processor

- I have just seen a direct relation between baseband load and GPS funkyness

- that would also explain why a previous poster with the apparently lag-free arabic firmware has no GPS issues

- and why pretty much every power-user (with lots of apps installed and all kinds of stuff running in the background) is complaining while lots of casual users who bought the thing more for style and probably have nothing installed besides the standard apps frequently say it's fine

- and why some people claim GPS was fine when they got the phone but then deteriorated over time (they probably started installing more apps and the phone got progressively slower)

Would be interesting to hear if people who applied the speedfix have GPS problems...

Anyhow, I'll try that mythical arabic firmware, and if that doesn't help this one is going back for good and I want my money back.

<rant> I'm already majorly p****d off at Samsung and will never buy from them again if I can at all avoid it. I hope someone at Samsung reads this. The time I have spent on this piece of s**t was already worth a multiple of the sticker price. Just goes to confirm that if you want a top of the line smartphone that just works, give your money to apple. And I would gladly do that myself if the things weren't simlocked DRMed and whatnot to oblivion. I guess I'll just go back to my not-so-smart sony walkman phone. with opera mini it browses the web almost as nicely, the sound is actually better, voice call quality is leagues better (lots of people I was talking to with the samsung actually thought I was in my car or something because the quality was so bad compared to the old sony), the FM radio is awesome in both reception and sound quality (have you TRIED the one on the samsung? that alone is a reason to return it!), it doesn't pretend to have GPS but still runs google maps with comparable accuracy from cell-tower info alone and last but not least plays MP3s for like 3 days on a single charge.</rant>

Anyway, I'll report back on what the arabic firmware does.