yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Captivate General] halfhp:
Day #2 of the firmware fix...did another trip with my friend with the HTC Aria...mine was ~20 meter accuracy while his was ~2. Not looking good.
[Captivate General] ooo.stephen:
stock captive gps seems fine...

just got one today, and the stock device's gps locked in ~3 minutes, and using gmaps and a voice nav app, guided me on foot the few blocks to the store, here in seattle, wa in a commercial district. the only settings change made was to allow google to use location data. otherwise, it's all stock settings.

i spent a few days on the forums researching the gps issue, and after testing iphone, palm, and htc gps functionality in the att store, and with friends, i took the plunge. what gave the confidence was that all of these phones had similar 5-10 meter ranges. i dunno if those phones were locating me with only cell tower data or if they locked in any satellites, but the captivate was well with in norm established by these other devices. so, this led me to the following question.

plz forgive if this has been made clear in previous posts/threads, but is it possible that those with gps issues are using rooted devices, and could this conceivably have any effect on the gps functionality? as it stands now, im afraid to root it, which is why you get an android phone in the first place :)

fyi: registering it with samsung it displayed a manufacture date of 07/10/10.
[Captivate General] halfhp:
I've had 2 Captivates so far with the exact same issue. The second phone I left unrooted for a week and it still had GPS issues, so no I dont believe rooting causes the problem.
[Captivate General] SeaborneClink:
So I have both a Captivate and a Vibrant, and I did a little fiddling with the GPS settings from the OP and wanted to share my before and after pictures.

Captivate on Left

Vibrant on Right

Edit: Apparently I can't post images until my account has been verified. So I guess I'll wait until that happens and then I'll post them.
[Captivate General] gordec:
Anyone feels carbon fiber cases can significant decrease GPS signal? I have the Phantom Skinz Chromatic carbon fiber skin applied. I haven't extensively used GPS before these but I subjective feel the GPS is better without the carbon fiber skins. BTW, I use CoPilot. Today all sunny outside, I couldn't get lock at all. This is my 2nd Captivate, the 1st unit I owned had issues with screen won't turn on at times but the GPS on it with CoPilot was as good as most stand alone GPS units. Kind of disappointing the current Captivate I own has a crappy GPS.
[Captivate General] heygrl:
just take out some of the stuff that makes them links like http www .com or space them out.
[Captivate General] larryccf:
yes - CF will and does block radio signals - as it's name describes, it's made of carbon, basically acrylic that's been burnt at high temp and the carbon resulting pulled off as a filament. we used to work with it a lot, and still have some around - discovered by accident, when someone draped a pc over an AM radio in the shop, that the radio went straight to static, no tunes period. then we found out it conducts electricity. It's got some other interesting properties, besides it's strength to weight ratio, but short answer is yes, it most definitely blocks RF signals.

but are you sure your Phantom Skinz is real CF and not faux? even just black plastic will degrade the signal some -

checking phanton's sight, their descript is "NEW - Carbon Fiber Chromatics offer an incredibly realistic 3D carbon-fiber look as well as texture that you can feel. Our Carbon Fiber Chromatics are incredibly durable, yet playable enough to wrap over edges and provide the highest level of coverage. " so i think it's faux CF.

if you use GPS test app, holding the phone with one finger at the top and one at the bottom (ie so your hand is covering or blocking the phone as little as possible) find the position of the phone to the sky, whether back side up, vertical to earth, whatever, that gives the best SNR on anyone of the satellites your phone is viewing

then remove the phanton skinz and put the phone back into that same position and see what happens to those same SNRs -

to check the radio signal, you can go to menu > settngs > about phone > status, and repeat the above and check the signal strength - it should be a negative number, ie -105, -111. In this case, the lower the number, the stronger the radio signal is. Check the phone with the phantom skin on and then with it off, holding in the exact same position both times

it'll be curious to see what you find
[Captivate General] bwolmarans:
After 15 days or so, back to poor performance. Bummer.

EDIT changed accuracy to 30 meters and it works better.

For now. In my van, gets signal. In wife's CRV does not. This is all at 60 to 70 mph on LA freeways.

Also on wide open freeway between Paso Robles and King City could not get signal last week.
[Captivate General] NikAmi:
Those Phantom Skinz are just crappy vinyl overlays. Nothing you do will really make the GPS signal much better. We are all beholden to Samsung to hurry up and put a fix out for this. I, for one, think that it is poor form for them to let a problem as large as this, and on a flagship project no less, to stagnate for almost two months just so that they can package the fix nicely with a larger update. It wouldn't be hard for them to just push out an intermediate update with the GPS fix. Heck, they did it for the USB problems and whatever else was fixed in the recent update.
[Captivate General] iamamp3pimp:
I wasnt having any USB woes personally.
[Captivate General] wgarrido:
What recent update?
[Captivate General] omriasta:
The reference was to the JH2 firmware that was put out. And I am assuming he was being sarcastic about "fixing" USB, since USB tethering was disabled and removed by Samsung (presumably requested by AT&T).
[Captivate General] wgarrido:
That is what i thought. Just making sure i didn't miss something. I almost returned my phone but the thought of going back to my fuze. ....

They wouldn't let me exchange the phone because they knew of the gps problem now.
[Captivate General] nephets0:
Hey guys,

I saw this on Engadget today from the Epic 4G review.

anyone know where this setting is? I've played in the GPS menus and can't find it.

(i've tried stock and the modified settings, i only manage to get a lock on like 4 sats max and the 4th comes and goes)

Edit:

Had a number wrong in the port #. now google maps tells me almost where i'm at... i was standinng at the curb and it was showing me in the street. had my location within... ohh...15-20 seconds...
[Captivate General] heygrl:
That doesn't work. Engadget is clueless
[Captivate General] boomerbubba:
Something you and I agree on!

Few tech journalists have a clue about this issue.
[Captivate General] ptc62:
The problem with this is that the only publicity of this issue has now been squandered.... Other than these forums of course...
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
Looks like someone clued Engadget in on this. Now they have a new article up which correctly spells out the GPS problem on Samsung Galaxy S phones.
[Captivate General] hmose:
Good article but doesn't say anything truly new. ptc62 makes a good point, Samsung/AT&T can take this off the front burner. Understand they are telling folks who want to exchange phones to wait for the update. Past history tells us that might be a long wait.
[Captivate General] waltah!:
I just used these settings and locked in under 30 seconds inside my house. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes outdoors to get a lock. I'll test it out throughout the day to see if it turns lame again.
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
For those upgraded to JH2, make sure you turn off the debug log. Otherwise, you will have a phone with internal storage full in a week or so and you need a factory reset to get it back. My phone saved 1GB worth of log files in 4 days of trying out GPS. There is only 2GB total internal storage and 1.6GB free out of box.
[Captivate General] richierich1212:
Cold start works well, for some reason Hot start doesn't.
[Captivate General] jhnstn00:
GPS settings that work

I saw this with someone using JH3 and it works GREAT for me. Tested it for 4 days now and locks on the move or stationary 10 to 20 seconds using Google Maps or GPS Test. Sometimes inside depending on location. Usually locks to 6 satellites but up to 9 at max. Even though accuracy is set at 120, it gets me within 12 to 20 feet normally.

I am very pleased with my GPS.

Change GPS settings using phone dialer:

*#*#1472365#*#*

Application Settings:

Operation Mode: MS based

Accuracy:120

SUPL/CP Settings:

Server: supl.google.com

Server Port: 7276

Other settings left left at stock.
[Captivate General] waltah!:
I gave up on the Captivate. Went with X10 and I'm digging it. GPS is fantastic and reception is stronger. Once it gets updated I wont have any complaints.
[Captivate General] darkamikaze:
i have jh3 how do i go about doing that D:
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
The procedure is the same as JH2. Check out JH2 thread (post#312 IIRC).
[Captivate General] halfhp:
I'm probably mistaken, but I thought I read that the logging is already turned off by default in JH3?

EDIT: Nevermind, looks like it is still enabled by default.
[Captivate General] gordec:
I was in my car with a friend who also has the captivate.his gps using google navigate locks in <10 secs and works perfect but mine will not do anything.I'm beginning to think that it might be a harder issue.but then again with how many people complaining, it's hard to imagine this many phones have bad gps hardware.
[Captivate General] hmose:
And we will never rule that (bad GPS Hardware) out until we look at the very much ignored NMEA sentences coming out of the hardware. Like looking in the gas tank when the car will not start.
[Captivate General] Joe1981AL:
Ok, just wanted to put my 2cents in on the subject of visible / locked satellites.

I keep seeing the "Today I saw 10 but I normally only ever get 7"....

First off it depends on how many satellites are actually visible line of site horizon to horizon. I decided to do some research on how to determine this, and found a link to Trimble Site Planning tool.

I used it to determine that right now there are only 8 satellites visible in my sky, that is in a 360 degree horizon to horizon view. See image below for my plot for todays visible satellites for Columbus, GA.

Which when outdoors a few minutes ago I saw 7 and locked 5 which is good considering I was standing at the door of a metal building limiting my sky view to one 180 degree horizontal / vertical limiting myself to a south facing view.

Yes I know the GPS in this phone has issues, otherwise I wouldn't be doing any research on this right now. Just good to know what you are looking at, if you are into GPS and mapping, something like the Trimple Site Planning is a sweat tool for examining almanac data.

I did attach several images for my area, one for full day, then 11:30 - 12:30 ones showing what time each sat is visible, how many sats should be visible, and one that shows an overhead view of eachs sats movement in the sky. Also look at the 1 hr snap of the world map, I'm in US, Georgia so not only are the satellites 12000 miles above they are a few thousand surface miles away as well.

*Now Non-Expect Speculations*

All these patches and fixes help improve lock and maybe even some tracking, but more than likely the lib, kernel, or firmware for the chip control how the chip calculates your position. All our fixes just send startup commands to the chip to change properties or give it data to assist satellite acquisition. The tracking issues I've seen does worry me as well as the sudden disappearance of satellites, some that have 30+ CNO and then are GONE 2 seconds late without any movement of the device.

Now time to go to lunch and play with it some more :)
[Captivate General] Joe1981AL:
Still playing around, done so much not sure what has helped the most but everything does seem a lot better now.

It does seem that the GPS uses a combination of jupiter.xml and a file called secgps.conf which seems to be created from the settings used in LBSTestMode (1472365 Menu).

As far as I can tell I'm able to track all visible satellites, earlier today that was locked on to 12 sats even some at 16 SNR and others at 43.

I just ran a test and looked at skyplot in the Trimble Planning and looked at the same pane in GPS Test, I was tracking most sats visible and the ones I weren't were out on the edge of trackable range and possibly blocked by buildings.

I'v editied the epic-4g jupiter.xml and using that, changed settings in LBS Test Mode, and even dropped a lto.dat into /data/gps since I didn't have one there, which if it doesn't update itself then it will just get old...

lto.dat can be obtained from http://gllto.glpals.com/7day/latest/
[Captivate General] yokozuna82:
I tried these GPS settings but before I did the whole *#*#1672365#*#* I turned off BOTH aGPS and GPS then changed the settings to what we all know already supl.google.com sucure socket to off and 30 for accuracy and msbase to...ended all programs with a task killer and turned the phone off. ..then turn it back on and turn on both agps 1st and 2nd GPS and used my GPS program (copilot live) and I got a lock within 3-5 secs. ..it may work for you too just try
[Captivate General] yokozuna82:
Correction I didn't mean you have to use copilot thats just what I used but even Navigation worked just as well
[Captivate General] bluetoothless:
Rather than editing software to disable GPS logging, would a quick temporary fix be to purge these logs/cache? Don't know enough say that following dialer command to access GPS settings, but does deleting GPS data eliminate logs, or just info for hot start?
[Captivate General] bosbrucec:
Unlike the GPS issue this thread is about, there's a *REAL* fix for your problem.

And it's *EASY* - Just go to Settings->Location and Security, and select "Use wireless networks."

Since I've done that, I get approximate location very quickly (as long as I have cell reception or wifi).

But the GPS signal is another story ... despite trying everything (except the root-required time server changes) on these forums sometimes helping with *static* GPS lock, even after a lock the Captivate loses the signal *far* more easily than any of my 7 other GPS devices. And losing a signal once it has a strong signal, to me, sounds like just an antenna or GPS receiver HW issue that is unlikely to be fixable in software/firmware.

Since Samsung refuses to give any hints as to how it's supposed "fix" is going to address this problem, not to mention no firm date, my Captivate is unfortunately going back to AT&T within the 30 day period in a week. :( I'll go back to my LG Incite for a month (not nearly as good a toy, but as good a phone, and better GPS despite lack of cell/wifi location assist). Then I'll wait and see if Samsung *really* fixes the problem. If they don't, I'll wait for the next amazing Android device to come down the pike (Maybe someone will make an AMOLED screen that is more readable in direct sunlight? That and the GPS issue are my only big complaints with the Captivate)...
[Captivate General] bosbrucec:
cell / wifi location != GPS location

He was right that aGPS may be disabled by default, but incorrect in presuming that is the only GPS issue with the Samsung Captivate.

Turn aGPS on with (Home) Menu->Settings->Location and security->Use wireless networks.

This lets you get a very rough lock with cellular towers in view or a slightly better but still rough static lock based upon wifi hotspot triangulation.

This may be all that some people need, as it gets you approximate location within most buildings.

That said, it is pretty much useless for doing things like *navigating*, where you need a location within 10M or the navigation app gets thoroughly confused as to where you are.

Which brings up another problem with this thread... Lots of people report varied successes and failures with *obtaining a GPS lock* ... And I've seen some of the tweaks make a bit of a difference (some huge regression, others a slight improvement) in GPS lock time. But the fact that, even once locked, the Captivate will lose it's GPS signal *far* more easily than any other of the 10 GPS devices I've owned the last 15 years to me indicates a real hardware problem and most of the tweaks (and likely Samsung's fix) are just changing certain aspects of the problem rather than truly fixing it.

It's a shame because this is an all around great phone except for this issue.
[Captivate General] UberGoat:
I have had no luck so far with fixing the GPS issues on the Captivate. I really hope Samsung releases the fix in early September or I am really tempted to return the phone, although I love every part of it except this one issue.
[Captivate General] JRd1st:
All these settings are a bunch of crap. They may work for a while but they don't solve anything. I'm going back to stock settings.

To be sure, are these the stock settings?

Under Application Settings

Tracking

S/W Test

Standalone

Hot start

On

On

50

Off

Off

Under Supl/CP Settings

Custom Config

w-w-w.spirent-lcs.com

7276

On

Supl

Thanks in advance and I REALLY hope the touted "update" works.
[Captivate General] -=HOLLYW00D=-:
7275 was the stock port number for me.
[Captivate General] JRd1st:
OK, thanks. I actually had that one written down but forgot to look. lol
[Captivate General] aksma:
Can somebody please help me answering the following questions, i have tried all the above settings but no use., the GPS still does not work.

1. Is this GPS issue is a Hardware issue or a Software issue?

2. Will this be fixed if we root and install a new ROM (like froyo)?

Please reply. I appreciate your help.
[Captivate General] UberGoat:
I would like to know this too.

Also do the JH2 and/or JH3 firmwares actually fix the GPS issues? My understanding is that these are the firmwares Samsung will give us in the U.S. soon but right now these are international versions. Is this correct?
[Captivate General] iamamp3pimp:
We honestly do not know at this time. Jh2 is working solid for me as long as I have it om the dash.
[Captivate General] bwolmarans:
And the issue with of Email and Calendar not parsing phone numbers and urls correctly as well as my BB in 2006 did correctly ... hello mcfly, Samsung and Google, maybe you should hire some RIM developers.

Oh and the selecting text joke. It's a joke, right Google?

But did I mention it has a really big, bright screen?
[Captivate General] bosbrucec:
key words : *on the dash* ...

This is precisely why I'm convinced there's a GPS hardware problem ... while lots of the settings discussed here and elsewhere can radically affect initial signal lock time, none of them help one bit with GPS signal stability once a good lock is obtained, and the Captivate needs to be on the dash or better located than most GPS devices to keep a stable signal.

I've had 10 GPS devices in my cars over the years, and all but my very first and this Samsung Captivate will keep a lock once obtained anywhere in the car.

My Captivate will usually keep a lock on the center console as well as the dash, but if I put it on my lap, it usually loses location quickly, even in wide open skies. All other recent GPS devices I have would keep the signal just fine there.

Mine's going back... If the Froyo update works some magic, I'll get another. Or maybe I'll live with my old LG Incite which has better GPS (though no aGPS) and is as good a phone/calendar device (with SPB Mobile shell), though not even close for games or typing/swyping ... and buy the 7" Galaxy Tablet about to come out for *real* internet browsing...

Cheers,

Bruce
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
No one knows except Samsung. It affects all different models of Samsung Galaxy S.

Nope. There is no ROM out there with working GPS yet.
[Captivate General] foxbat121:
I've tried JH2 and JH3. Not much difference in real navi usage compared to stock. It does fix some small bugs (like can't lock on to more than 8 sat). The real problem with the GPS is inaccuracy and lags behind when you drive. Both of which can show its ugly head when you use Google Navi while driving. Nothing worse than the moment your phone tells you to take the exit when you already passed that exit 10 seconds ago:(
[Captivate General] ewingr:
There is a very interesting thread here that indicates it is software, and it seems pretty logical.
[Captivate General] heygrl:
Of course it's software, the other day when my GPS wouldn't work it kept giving me "Data connection lost" message. Today, it worked FLAWLESSLY every time I opened up the maps application but the pointer was off when stopped. It worked all freaking day long and took 3 seconds to get my location (warm start)
[Captivate General] chudy:
gps fail

i just dont see how samsung will fix this in software. the gps on this thing (and every other galaxy s device) is such a fail.

last night i compared it to a droid 1, g1, nexus, and iphone4; all in the exact same locations at the exact same time. all but the captivate behave the same and get lock within seconds. captivate just sits there spinning its wheels doing nothing.

what really killed me is seeing the super low SNR numbers in gps test app. ****ed up agps config (which is all the thread addresses) is one thing and easily fixable but once it finds the satellites and then displays SNR numbers 10-15 lower than any other phone means there is something really wrong with the gps implementation.

using google navigate in the city is just hopeless. it keeps jumping and recalculating. none of the recommendations in this thread nor any of the patch files (epic 4g files included) changed things much. the low snr numbers just give a ****ty accuracy.

for the time being ive returned the phone to amazon and will re-buy if/when this is fixed.

i just can not believe that samsung would let this slide and that none of the operators raised stink about it; for anyone who relies on gps all the time this is just painfully obvious.

what a shame, the phone is a killer android device otherwise. i hate having to go back to my iphone4 :(
[Captivate General] 02CWRX:
I noticed today that my stock phone will lock to 8 sats and keep up perfectly fine using GPS Test and not drop anything. But, as soon as I try and use Google maps, navigate, or any other GPS program, it constantly drops the lock and searches again.

Of course, I have no idea what that means other than it doesnt work right. My Blackberry will lock in Google Maps and the My Location feature reports to within 3 meters. With my Blackberry, I can also walk across my lawn and watch it move. My Captivate wont report less than 10 meters in Google Maps even when its got its best lock, and as soon as I move it looses it.

These pictures were taken tonight running an errand with airplane mode on to try and see what the GPS alone would do with no network assistance. Notice the times. The drive was about 40 minutes and it never dropped the lock the whole time, reported speed correctly, etc.

Driving:

After I parked:

~T.J.
[Captivate General] ph00ny:
Out of curiosity, i ran the google nav from DC to northern VA to see how bad the gps issue was. I had maybe two inaccurate location readings but one of them was probably due to the ongoing construction of the mixing bowl and maybe the map wasn't completely up to date.

I'm running the stock ATT firmware as is