yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] boomerbubba:
I don't like the bloatware, but I think it is a red herring as far as the real GPS issues go. Besides, I believe that is T-Mobile's bloatware inflicted on its U.S. customers, so irrelevant here. We yanks are sort of trespassing in the I9000 forum.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
I opened the two kml files in Google Earth and what is interesting to see is that the NMEA log records more points than mytrack:

(white line is MyTrack log, blue line connected to blue squares is from the NMEA log)

The fact that you've seen 10 fixed sats in the nmea log is really interesting. It may (thus) be that we never see such rare fixes because they slip between the measurements on a higher api level or are simply not polled by the different GPS apps on Android.

For those who want to compare the tracks made by Simon, I've attached the two kml files of these trackings in a zip file. They can be opened in Google Earth.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] tejajuloori:
Guys I was thinking of getting this phone or nexus or desire,and read a few posts suggesting it could be a hardware problem with galaxy s...any news on whether it will be fixed?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
I'm not convinced that there's something wrong with the GPS hardware. It could very well be that the majority of GPS apps running on android aren't as sensitive as the GPS itself :)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] tejajuloori:
Well the same apps run fine on other android devices...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Ok, now you're adding nothing to my comment :) My comment implies pretty much what you are saying.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Kilack:
Maybe we are misunderstanding you because from your comment I picked up that you think it is a problem with the apps rather than the hardware. I am not sure how you come to that conclusion given that the raw nmea data was incorrect coming from the chip also?

Perhaps a driver issue or something between the chip and the apps but i cant really see how the apps can be at fault here....
[Galaxy S I9000 General] tejajuloori:
+1
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
incorrect is I think not the right word. I've seen worse tracks.

Simon's tracks are for more than 90% on the road. Again, I can't imagine that a navigation program would have many trouble with it.

My speculations are driven by some observations I made before with a program called OzuxMaps. (quote from a post in this thread:)

If the gps gives a lot of changing data and a program takes just one datum so now and then from this pool without a statistical analysis it is not suprising that it can hit on a sequence of wrong data.

Also the fact that Simon observed that the NMEA data stream have shown some fixes on 9 or 10 sats, and we never seen such a fix in programs like GPS Test and GPS Status can also point to the fact that some relevant data is missed.

What I want to do is to write a GPS app that will infer all relevant GPS data from a NMEA stream and compare that to the data it will get from other interfaces.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] tejajuloori:
@appelflap - a part of your statement may be true,but the known fact is this device has a malfunctioning gps,it may be the software drivers or the hardware that is faulty..and many apps which run on the desire and othrs- google navigation for example don't get proper fix on galaxy s..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Here is a little track of 6km I did with OruxMaps with a setting of 1s between two measurements. I don't think my GPS is malfunctioning. In fact, I think it is very accurate!

Track on google maps
[Galaxy S I9000 General] tejajuloori:
Thts good to know,but if everyone s gps was so good then this thread wouldn't have been created..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
The trick here is that I changed a parameter when logging the track. I recorded measurements once every second. See our discussion...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
I am also waiting to buy/or not and hoped that by now we'd have at least some good information on if the problem is hardware-dependent and can never be really fully fixed.

Well, I guess that even it its just drivers/firmware there are no guarantees that Samsung/Broadcom will ever bother to fine-tune it much.

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried the SGS with one of those cheap external 1.5 GHz GPS antennas just to see how it performs when getting a bit better SnRs.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
I've done a little comparison myself as well today - once again, the cheapo Vodafone 845 (about 100€) vs. Galaxy S (about 500€). I've had the VF in my pants front pocket and Galaxy in my shirt's breast pocket, so I'd say the signal conditions for both were pretty even. Red path is Galaxy, blue is VF845 and green is the real path taken as accurately as I was able to reproduce it.

GPS Comparison - VF845 vs Galaxy S

The thing I find interesting is how consistent the GPS in VF845 is (it fluctuates a lot, but otherwise the tracking is pretty solid) in comparison with Galaxy's GPS, which is sometimes actually more precise than the VF's, produces much "neater" tracks...and then all of a sudden something happens and the track is all over the place (see the end). I've been desperately trying to find that "something" and one thing occured to me - 20 or so meters before the railroad crossing I've heard a text message notification on the Galaxy, but didn't bother to read it. And strangely enough, GPS accuracy seems to be degrading from then on. Could that be a factor as well? And one more thing - that last third of the track is located very near our local strongest BTS - could that perhaps have some effect as well? Though I really might be grasping at straws here. You could say that the last part is so bad because of the trees, but then again I went through the park as well, where the trees are quite dense and you can't actually see the sky at all there, unlike the last part by the river, but in the park the GPS performed flawlessly.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
Both companies are working on getting the fix out asap. The amount of testing that goes into ensuring they make things better and not worse shouldn't be underestimated.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
This is not a reason to suggest that the Apps are in anyway at fault, or are not as sensitive in reading in NMEA data.

I have seen the same GPS Test App run on a HTC Desire showing a 10 satellite fix with some below 20 SnR.

The problem is therefore not the Aps, but in how the information is reported from the GPS chip to Android. This will either be Samsung and their libgps.so interface, perhaps Broadcoms GLL library or GPS driver. Or perhaps there's a problem with how the raw data itself is generated, some kind of Rf issue on the chip, or other programming error.

Whatever program you write, you will see the location and NMEA information in one place, and the satellite status information in another. The position will be off in both.

Here's another map, walking. Im yet to dig out the NMEA data... but...

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...52.498655,-1.705413&spn=0.005173,0.01929&z=16
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Just wish Samsung would actually come out and say something, not hide behind giving out instructions on how to use Google Maps when you phone up to find out if the phone you have is faulty or whether its a firmware bug.

If Samsung would just say yes, there's a bug, we're working on it, then we can leave them alone and say, ok, fair enough, anything we can do to help? Any chance of a pre-release so we can see the progress and provide feedback?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
Is there any reason to assume they aren't though?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Rawat:
Well they are avoiding the issue.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
It's just Samsung US, but I guess it's better than nothing:

http://twitter.com/Samsungservice/status/19861814931
[Galaxy S I9000 General] andrewluecke:
What if we've been looking at this all wrong.. How do we know for sure that Singaporian models have the same GPS chip as European?

Because whilst I've seen MANY people saying "JG5 is fantastic with GPS", my singtel branded one has serious issues with GPS on JG5. I am well aware though that it's highly unlikely, but it's possible I'd have thought..
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
When was the last official announcement you heard from Samsung saying that they're dealing with the issues on the Galaxy S?

I've heard of mumblings about captivate and vibrant, but nothing firm about Galaxy S. Even the "fixes" so far, which we have to assume that's what they were, from XWJG1 through XWJM2 and XXJP3 don't fix the root cause.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
Indeed, as a customer, I find the whole 'How to use Google Maps' response insulting and their customer service teams are bringing down the perception of the wider company.

Unfortunately recent history is littered with examples of big companies failing to take the opportunity to make a public statement to reassure their customers that the issue is being dealt with. And yet, its so easy to do.

They have said through unofficial channels and methods such as twitter that a fix is coming, or GPS was in beta and the release version is due soon. But a timetable would be nice.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
That's the thing. I have experience of this from a year ago, when my Nokia N97 had GPS issues - it just stopped working after a while. There was talk of firmware or other fixes, like taking the tape from the gps aerial and laying down some copper wire to improve signal. Then there was suspicions they used the wrong glue.

By the end, Nokia ended up releasing a new backplate for the N97 with some additional shielding for the GPS antenna. Good, but not great.

That took several months for the issue even to be confirmed by Nokia.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Evans_Prophet:
If you wish to run some tests, try to check the temperature as well.Maybe after some time the gps chip gets hot or something (or a bad soldering is affected) and thus performance fails..

There are some apps that can give an idea of the temp (e.g. battery utils).

You can use an a/c car for this purpose as well.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] larryccf:
TravUK - someone earlier had said the optional antenna would require a software driver - is that correct?

i've used optional GPS antennas, from aftermarket sources with 2 different Garmin dedicated units and never thought about drivers and they seemed to work fine

any idea?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ghosty_uk:
i used to use a bluetooth gps box with my old nokia and that never required drivers. as for teh fualt on the SGS, its now a week since i had mine swapped and it still works ok, mind you i have turned the gps off and only put it on when using it.

i did another drive last night, this time using gps test (paid version) as a HUD, and it was fine speed reading was accurate, till i went round a roundabout, it lost teh fix and took a few moments to work out what speed i was doing, but as a whole it worked quite well.

my phone is currentloy encased in a black silicone case (someone suggested this mite alter the performance in a bad way) this has not made any difference as far as i can tell.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Wow, that's really bad. Is this a track as recorded by MyTracks, or a track based on NMEA data logging. If you have both, can you put the other one online too?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Overall I've also very, very good result with my phone. Nevertheless, sometimes it can go totally astray. I also did a test the other day with a speed tracker and the results were so bad... it didn't even come close to my actual speed.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
Sorry I don't know. An educated guess would be no. The logic on the board should simply switch the signal source from the internal to external antenna when its connected. The signal is still fed to the same chip, controlled by the same driver. I cant see what there is that needs adding.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] boomerbubba:
Note that this track was executed walking. Others, including myself, have reported similar awful performance when walking or standing still.

Vehicular driving tracks captured seem much better but still imperfect. Which I surmise to mean that that low-level drivers or firmware are doing something to buffer/interpolate/smooth/predict the reported coordinates. Such smoothing algorithms seem optimized for rapid motion. Intuitively they are going to be influenced by the weight given to prior/subsequent raw GPS data, and that weight will be great when the motion causes sampled coordinates to be far apart geometrically. Even driving tracks tend to go haywire sometimes when the vehicle is stopped. And they tend to veer off-road on turns and curves.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
I'll keep that in mind and do some more tests based on that when possible, thanks.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
With respect to your last observation, I noticed something today: I was recording some tracks and saw that when I was driving too fast while making a turn, the track tends to have a deviation in the direction of the way I was directing before taking the turn. As if the track made a slipping curve (if you know what I mean - my English is very average :) )

You can see that also on the track that Simon made of his 6 mile drive yesteday. For example here:

I don't know how Simon drove, but I bet he wasn't coming from Queens Rd. I bet he headed in the opposite direction.

BTW from the distance between the points one can infer that Simon was driving pretty fast there. Shame on you Simon :)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] :
http://twitter.com/samsungukmobile/statuses/20315093058
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Aha! Great!!!!... saves a lot of work and guessing :)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] BronzedDroid:
For all we know, the fix that will be availible through Kies might be nothing more than a finished version of one of the leaked firmwares, in which case it probably won't help much.

On the other side, it could be something entirely new. I choose to believe the latter.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beards:
Take my word for it...... A lot of people have been involved in getting this right.

It's a re-write. ;)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ghosty_uk:
thanks for the info i have tried this and keep getting the error "there was an error while sending your track to google my map. please try again later." no matter when i try i get this error
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Can you export your tracks? If you can save your track as a .kml file, go to maps.google.com, select "my maps" in the left column, then select "create new map" and click "import" and upload the kml file. Make sure you are logged in to Google.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
Harumph.

Getting jealous now that you know something we don't.

I usually get that first time I try, but another upload and it works straight away.

I guess make sure you actually are signed up to Google Maps first then try again. If not. I don't know.

Also, in response to appel, yes, I believe you can export maps.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Case_:
You can export tracks as KML, GPX or CSV.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] :
The UK Samsung tweets about a GPS update appears to be an update to Google Navigation and not the core GPS functionality if I'm reading it right.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
You can be right. Jul. 29 tweet: http://twitter.com/samsungukmobile/status/19838609573
[Galaxy S I9000 General] larryccf:
is anyone going to try the optional antenna to see if that elilminates RF interference from the equation?

or has that already been eliminated?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
I've contacted the developer of OruxMaps about the Galaxy S and the fact that I immediately got a fix with the measurements change I mentioned before, and this was his reply:

Interesting to know that Android tries to turn of the GPS after +2 secs if it doesn't get a next fix...
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Rawat:
I'd love for Samsung to give us some honesty, and be straight-forward with us, their customers. Like when 3 said that they are working on the Hero 2.1 update, and it'll be a bit late cos they're a small network, and are priorotising iPhone 4/Galaxy S.

http://phandroid.com/2010/08/03/three-uk-htc-heros-eclair-upgrade-awaiting-final-push-from-google/
[Galaxy S I9000 General] boomerbubba:
I seriously doubt this. I have tried several apps, and I have never noticed the GPS icon in the notification bar disappearing on its own. which is what would happen if the GPS is actually turned off. It does revert from showing a lock (solid) to searching for a lock (pulsating) when the lock is lost.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] PsiIion:
Considering that they mention an update trough Kies it doesn't seem like it to me.

Or can Kies do app updates as well?
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Kilack:
I have noticed quite a few times that when I go into a gps program the little satellite icon never appears in the notification bar at the top and the gps program never finds anything. If I go into settings I can see the gps is enabled but its like its not actually, if i untick and tick then the satellite icon appears and the program immediately starts working again..

No idea if this is related or yet another issue with the GPS :)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Kilack:
Indeed that is how it should be. The bigger the company though usually the worse support, they just have to many layers between the customer and themselves, as we have seen with samsung, the frontline customer support have no idea about gps issues and seem to think you are talking about google maps if you have an issue.

Even though I really like the galaxy despite its issues I would be hesitant on making my next phone a samsung after now having seen their customer service (or lack of) in action. It would have to be a stunning phone to make me come back and next time I'd be reading these forums for a couple of months before buying it hehe.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] boomerbubba:
Hmm. I have never had that experience. But then, I run a U.S. Vibrant variant. As an aside, the symptoms it shows for satellite locking within low-level utilities such as GPS Test are also different from the symptoms reported on this forum for the I9000.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
I don't think it's a issue. It's up to the programmer to keep the GPS enabled in a certain way, otherwise it turns itself off. It's a safety measure against bad programming habits.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Such as ??
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Kilack:
What do you mean its not an issue?

The GPS is ticked ON but for some reason android thinks its off.

Seems like an issue to me. I shouldnt have to untick it and tick it etc to make the gps work.

It doesnt happen all the time just randomly, just like other things with the gps, sometimes it works well, sometimes its horrid but definitely an issue for me at least.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] ghosty_uk:
i have noticed this also, the gps it ticked but it is not being used, i think there mite be some sort of sleep mode on it to

a, prevent the phone getting to hot

b, to stop it wasting the battery power

i also notice this woth my old touch hd, the gps is always set to on but only actually starts working when a program calls for it.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Kilack:
Yeah I can understand that the tickbox is just to enable gps not make it active but something seems to be going wrong because I can try using several GPS apps and none of them can seem to turn it on sometimes until i untick and tick the box.

As I said its not very often luckily but still annoying when it happens, something not quite right somewhere...

Too many weird things around the GPS for me :).
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
I can't help but feeling but this advice from the developer smells a bit funny. No request in two seconds so shut down the GPS chip? WTF!

Even if it were true, even in MyTracks I continually see a GPS lock. I get a stable GPS lock even though the track is miles out.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] theholyguy:
on my samsung it works good with COPILOTE in switzerland alpes :) now a off the topic... if GPS is more important to you than phone calls why the hell you buy s phone e not a good GPS device? :)
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Tulips:
Why the hell you buy s phone e not a good GPS device? LOL

I think you are missing the point bigtime... Why the hell is the gps this bad? If they ar selling a phone with 4" SuperAmoled and only 2" of them work? Then you say: If the screen is more important to you than phone calls why the hell you buy a phone, not a good 50" SuperAmoled TV?

OMG yey :rolleyes:
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
wtf? I would say OMG, read what is written. I haven't read the api documentation yet, but I think a programmer should provide some procedures to keep the gps enabled when he want to use it in a program. Infer the rest for yourself.

What about the principle of charity around here? Sad.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] TravUK:
The Galaxy S has the BCM4751 GPS chip in it, state of the art. Quite a few dedicated GPS systems have the earlier model, the BCM4750, or the same GPS with integrated host, the BCM4760.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] Beowulf_pt:
We're dealing with Samsung and the foggy GPS bugware circus here. If an anti-pattern applies, considering the previous succession of firmwares and their effects, I think the adequate one should be this.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
You don't even own a Galaxy :) or have you bought one yet? If not, I would advice you to not buy one, because it would be a great tragedy. You would be blaming Samsung for everything, even for dialing a wrong number :D
[Galaxy S I9000 General] keyo:
I havn't had a chance to read every page on the thread.

I bought a galaxy s on Sunday. The gps is awful, the skyhook fix only fixed it temporarily and it's only an agps fix to begin with. Most of the time it's so bad it's on the wrong street.

Should I try and return the phone or get a replacement? Samsung is doing a really poor job at fixing this, which makes me think it is hardware related.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
All we can do is speculate. I would say, try it for as long as the return policy allows you and see if the GPS is really that bad. All I can say is that I have a GPS that is performing 90% of the time just perfect.

It also depends on how you want to use the phone. If you just incidentely need a gps, you can always use a cheap bluetooth GPS in case you are feeling very uncomfortable with the internal GPS. (Not that this is something that you want to, but it can be something to take into consideration when you are making up the balance before you return it)

Just my 2 cents
[Galaxy S I9000 General] sjdean:
No you cant.

Android isnt designed to read from a bluetooth gps and use that info in the navigation progeams.

There is a bluetooth gps program in the market, but this just displays raw data like gps test, it doesn't pipe the data anywhere else.
[Galaxy S I9000 General] appelflap:
Ah, didn't know that. Thanks for correcting.