yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] larryccf:
not sure how you can state that with any certainty

again, what are the odds that my replacement phone would be as crappy as the first one re GPS issue?

i'm not a statician, but odds would seem extremely high against me getting a replacement with the same problem if it were only a few of them experiencing this issue. And i believe there are a few others who have replaced 3 or more phones, still finding the same issue.

if i had to bet, i wouldn't be betting my money that it's only a few - however, you're free to bet your money as you see fit.

what i really would love though, is if an OTA update were to correct this issue for the non-working phones, and put the working phones into the boat we're in. Then we'd hear the howling, from the same folks that tell us we shouldn't complain, or it's not that big an issue yada yada. And they'd probably do it with no shame or embarrassment
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Kilack:
He is just trolling, he claims his gps is fine but goes into threads about possible gps fixes just to tell everyone that his works and there is no problem?

Either he is looking for a fix himself, or just wanting to cause arguments.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Case_:
I've been testing the Arabic JPJG8 for two days now and it's simply amazing. Appears to fix both the lag issues and GPS issues for me. For my account on GPS accuracy with it, see here:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=7603769&postcount=592
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] TravUK:
EDIT: Removed, I was wrong.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] larryccf:
has sjdean rooted his phone?

be interesting what he saw in this firmware
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Case_:
Honestly, I don't really care about whether I can lock 4 satellites or 15 as long as my track recordings are consistently accurate enough to the level of accuracy I'm used to from owning the HTC Magic for a year. And with JPJG8, for the first time, they are. That's what matters to me more - the results, not how I got them. You can take a look at how awful my track recordings were with JM2 or JM5, I've posted them in the other thread as well.

It's the same with the lag. Everybody here (in Galaxy sections) seems to be so excited about his phone's Quadrant scores and it's all most of the people seem to care about. "Just get as high Quadrant number as possible, then my phone will be the best phone ever If the scores don't make any sense - hey, who cares, as long as they're higher than everyone else's!". I don't really care that my phone's Quadrant score is only somewhere around 850, what I do care about is that with JPJG8, all of the lag is finally gone and my phone responds faster than ever.

Guess I'm just too easy to satisfy (now that would be a first, though).
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Kilack:
Well I agree about the quadrant scores, but everyone is desparate to try and speed up their phones because of the lag so of course they will jump all over anything that gives them a speed increase. Quadrant is obviously not giving a realistic score back though.

As for the GPS, well the more you can lock the better, it gives more stability, more reliability etc, other phones manage it and the chipset is capable of it (apparently) so yeah I think we are hoping that it can be fixed of course, you might be happy with what you have and that is great. I am still hoping they bring out a proper fix for it on the other hand, perhaps Im too picky :)
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Case_:
Don't get me wrong - I don't understand the decision to limit fix to 8 satellites max at all and I'm looking forward to Samsung hopefully improving it and making the GPS even better. It's just that even with this limitation, on JPJG8 the accuracy is good enough for me, as opposed to other firmwares. If it can be improved - hey, by all means, bring it on! If not - I can certainly live with this.

It's just that even though I can finally see great improvement in GPS accuracy with the JPJG8 firmware, TravUK's reaction gave me the impression that unless I'm getting a fix to more than 8 satellites, the improvements don't really matter. Well, to me they do.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nicoloco:
I installed the UGJG8 but it seems there isn't the gps fix that you see in the other JG8

Look at my run yesterday :

http://maps.google.com.au/maps/ms?i....884454,151.234446&spn=0.040686,0.067291&z=14

You can easily imagine the real path ...
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dakine:
Lousy track but I love Sydney :)
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] foxbat121:
It's been posted that everytime you flash to a new ROM, doesn't really matter which one, your GPS will work great --- for a few days. So, post back a week after your flash to report if you still get the great GPS performance.

TravUK works for BroadCom who makes the GPS chip in Galaxy S. He must have a little knowledge about what's wrong and what has been fixed. I think his point is that unless you see more than 8 sat locks, you don't have the updated driver. 9 or more sat locks, might not be necessary for real life but the old broken driver will never let you do that.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] appelflap:
I don't think you guys see the positive side of this: create a fix, put it on the Android market for $1 and given the fact that millions of galaxy S's are sold (or at least that's the target), you are a millionaire in no time :D
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Case_:
Not in my experience. My GPS was never working great prior to JPJG8. Never before did I manage to get consistently good results for two days in a row. Hell, not even for two hours.

That's assuming there even IS this "new driver" - for all we know there might not be such thing (and TravUK might or might nor know something we don't). And once again, my point was that obviously you don't need 8+ lock for the GPS in Galaxy to work just fine, so you don't really need to worry about how many satellites you can lock onto - it becomes irrelevant. But I'll stop repeating myself over and over, obviously there's no point in it...
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pepitodequetequejas:
Tranks for the photo trav (i saw yesterday , i cant see now) , can you explain this (european or korean galaxy S?)?
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Case_:
Photoshop Galaxy.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RyanZA:
The phone really does feel smoother with the lagfix (even on JPJG8!). It's not just a quadrant number, I can easily tell if the lagfix is working on my device just by moving around applications.

That said, I was using stock JPJG8 for awhile, and it's smooth enough to not even need the lagfix. :D

As far as fixing onto more than 8 satellites... I live in South Africa. I rarely even fix onto the full 8, it usually hovers around 6. Even if the device could lock onto 50, it wouldn't change anything for me. Pulling out this 8 satellite fix as the cause and solution of any GPS problems seems a bit false to me.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RyanZA:
Uhhh.. wait. Maybe that is the problem? Because my device doesn't actually have more than 8 satellites floating around to lock onto, it has no problem dealing with the 6 it can. In Europe, there might be 15 or more satellites floating around, and the device gets confused switching between the 8 strongest. This means that it can never get a constant lock as it is always changing satellites.

If this is the case, then your 8 satellite lock being the cause of GPS problems doesn't sound far fetched at all!

I could be way out on this, but it is logically possible.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] foxbat121:
Whether or not you can lock to 8 satellites is not why SGS have GPS problem. It is just a sympton of SGS software problem, not the cause.

So, let's say currently all the SGS with various firmware out there use GSP driver version 1.0. BroadCom and/or Samssung has determined that this driver is crap and can't really perform aGPS fast lock nor get consistent accuracy. One of the side effect of this driver also manifest itself as incapable of lock on to more than 8 satellite.

Now, let's assume Broadcom has already found the cause and fixed it. Released driver version 2.0 which address all the known problems associated with GPS chip.

How do you tell which driver your phone is running? There is no way to extract this driver version info. So the only way to tell if you have the new fixed driver or not is to see if you can EVER lock on to more than 8 satellite.

And for those who claim their GPS works perfectly, please post some "My Tracks" google maps so that we can see exactly how good your GPS really is. Not that we don't believe you:)
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Case_:
Again - I'm not saying that the lag fix doesn't really do anything. I have no problem believing it does. But the majority of people only seem to care about the Quadrant number and take it as a representative number of how much faster their phone will be and how less lag they will experience. Which is just wrong, of course - Quadrant is just a simple benchmark and obviously can be fooled into giving way higher result than it should, with no relation to lag at all. And there's also too many people who jump to conclusions that it's the RFS' fault without having enough evidence that it's actually true. Occam's razor is not always the best practice to follow. Often is, but not always.

Anyway, sorry for the OT...
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] boomerbubba:
That would be a rather dumb assumption, since we know from posts here by TravisUK that the new Broadcom drivers are not released into the wild.

AFAIK, the drivers would be pushed out within a firmware release to end users. We don't deal with Broadcom. Samsung does.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sjdean:
Although if one guy is telling the true in saying JM1 is on Kies now, then this is quite worrying. What's the point of releasing JM1 if that don't fix the issue???
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sjdean:
I've used XXJF3, XWJG5, XWJM2, XWJM5 and XXJP3.

Think XWJM5 is better so far. But still pants.

What do you wanna know about the firmware?

My phone is also rooted.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sjdean:
What's the fix?

:D
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sjdean:
Look, it's really quite simple. The more satellites a system can lock onto and hold, the better quality of fix you can get.

I've put together my own GPS monitor which shows you not only the satellites the device can currently see, but the satellites the device has seen over the duration whether active or not.

It's quite surprising when you do actually see a full complement of 12 satellites, but you are lucky to see 8.

It may be that that's another bug. Certainly, the system seems pretty instable in actually achieving locks, plus it would appear the backend NMEA data reports show more locks and fixes than the front end.

Im pleased you don't need more satellites, but if you can see 10 satellites, why should you not be able to lock onto all? This is especially useful in "urban canyons" where signal can be lost behind tall buildings. Instead of trying to work out where the next satellite is, why not use one of the existing 12 it refuses to lock onto?

The biggest issue IMHO is the inability to lock onto < 20 SnR sats.

Cya

Simon
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sjdean:
Sounds feasible, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was doing this at all.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sjdean:
Problem with this. Just because we think 8 satellite fix is a problem, doesn't necessarily mean that it is a problem, and that it will be fixed.

The closest thing I came to version numbers, was this from the jupiter.xml logging

LBS_I: @(#)Broadcom LBS ver. 2.1.0.0 79560, 2010/Jul/16, 17:30:49

$463697I @(#)Broadcom GLL ver. 2.16.4 79560, 2010/Jul/16, 17:30:49, //depot/client/core/rel/v16

I can't remember what version of the software this was on. Maybe JP3.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Evans_Prophet:
Well its interesting that the gps refresh rate is currently around 1hz (JG5). The advertised chip capacity is 2hz - something which if implemented will also result to much better accuracy.

Can you run the following application to check the refresh rate?

http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.moisisv.android.apps.gpsrrm
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RyanZA:
Nearly every phone can see more satellites than it can lock onto, and their GPS is fine. My GPS has been perfectly adequate for navigation too, and produces fairly straight tracks that the maps programs can deal with. However, I am in South Africa, where far less satellites are actually in the sky that my device can see. People in the EU seem to have the most problems, and they also have the most visible satellites.

When watching the GPS locks, the SGS jumps between satellites much more than other phones. This is probably some new (and not tested well enough) algorithm for doing GPS fixes. The real issue (totally speculation from watching SNRs move, and my SGS jumping to different ones as they go higher, compared to other phones where they stay on the same satellites) is that the driver is much much too keen at jumping to different satellites.

So in areas with less satellites, there are less satellites for the GPS to jump to. These are the people saying 'GPS is fine, it works alright enough'. In other areas with many satellites, the GPS jumps so often that the fix is all over the place and the algorithms cannot smooth it out quick enough. These are the people who can't use the GPS at all. (Is there any way to check if Portugal has an unusually large number of visible satellites and currently very sunny skies?)

I first dismissed this issue as some people having hardware problems with their phones. After learning more about how simply amazing the real hardware in this device is (it is years ahead of everything else), I'm 99% sure this is a software issue. The fix would probably be something as stupidly simple as my EXT2 lag fix. It's a shame the GPS drivers are not open source, so we could set the 'aggressive' settings of the GPS down a notch.

Before you guys dismiss everything as speculation (and it could very well be wrong), the lag fix was made with this same speculation. ;)
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sjdean:
I think without a shadow of doubt you understand this issue very well. Yes, the SGS GPS does jump around quite a lot. You'll even see Satellites randomly drop off from the display as if its even having trouble seeing them.

It probably isn't too important to lock 8 satellites, but when you're stuck with f fluctuating and instable signal, you just want it to lock onto as many satellites as possible.

This falls into two areas, the flaw in not locking onto anything < 20SnR, and not locking onto more than 8. I would suggest the < 20SnR would yield better results and while you're at it, no harm removing the line from the code that problems says "for i = 1 to 8"

Certainly the NMEA data reports a greater lock, so there is a bug in the Samsung firmware IMHO.

I thought Satellites orbited the earth and weren't just geo stationery objects, if that's the right turn of phrase.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] foxbat121:
That's point I was trying to make. But others are claiming the new arabic fimeware already contains the GPS fix.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] boomerbubba:
For my part, I doubt that the satellite locking, as reported by all the utilities that capture this from the Android API, is the core of the problem. I think that data itself is buggy, and I would not recommend believing that what the Android API reports is true because the bug is probably at a lower level, in the drivers.

Further, the U.S. variants (at least the Vibrant) exhibit poor tracking performance that is quite comparable to the I9000 tracks posted here. But the symptoms of the reported satellite locks are entirely different: We typically see 10-12 satellites, and lock on 0-2. Further, the satellites that are shown as locked are the ones with the weakest signals! And the Android will think it has a lock with only 1 bird reported used, which I believe is impossible.

So my bet is that the Android listener that reports the satellite locking is reporting Potemkin data that may not mean much at all because it is dependent on buggy drivers. This may be related to the poor tracking accuracy, but it may not be. I doubt that it is the root cause of all problems.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] AllGamer:
I noticed the pattern too, most of the people complaining about GPS problem are from those areas.

In Canada we don't have that many Satellites in the sky, thus the GPS don't need to keep jumping around to the "nearest" satellite

That is another thing i noticed, it Doesn't care if the satellite signal is weak or strong, it will try to lock to the nearest satellite to get a fix.

That is also true when i use my HTC Athena
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] boomerbubba:
I believe that rumor has already been debunked by TravUK, who is familiar with both the Arabic firmware and the Broadcom development efforts.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Kilack:
I ran it and its at 1hz.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] foxbat121:
I know that and they also didn't trust TravUK at all.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] RyanZA:
All I know is that in the JF series of firmwares, my GPS was useless and could not get a decent lock. Navigation was impossible, it kept saying that it had lost gps signal. On the JG firmwares, with the arabic firmware being the best, I can use navigation without a problem.

I believe that samsung tweaked some settings and it has made it better. The driver is still the same, but the defaults are more sane - I think. Other people have also noticed that the JG and JM firmwares are a bit better.

As far as satellites orbiting the earth, they are mostly geosynchronous orbits...

If the satellites went all over the place, then they wouldn't be terribly good for finding out where you were in relation to them. :D

Plus, Canada is very far north. South Africa is in the south. They can't see as many satellites.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] boomerbubba:
Don't know or care much who "they" are, but IMHO he is one of the most credible contributors on this matter, and was a contributor on XDA before this issue ever arose. There are obviously things he can't talk about, and his posts are carefully worded to avoid that. But I absolutely believe what he has written on this subject.

I would just ignore whatever "they" say and move on. There is no point in trying to persuade them of something like this. I have no reason to believe some spun-up Internet yarn about how the Arabic firmware already fixes the problem.

I am more interested in the substance of a solution, and TravUK has provided some data points there. He has at least persuaded me that there are identifiable problems in the Samsung firmware and Broadcom drivers, and that developers in both companies are working on that issue. So while I am skeptical about corporate BS, and whether the Samsung hardware implementation is perfect, I do believe that much about the firmware -- and I believe it more because I read it here, rather than from the twitterings of some marketing dweeb.

I got much of my basic life training as a journalist, and I trust my instincts here. I consider TravUK to be a credible source. "They" do comprise a credible source at all.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sjdean:
Then why do we bother with almanac and ephemeris data telling us the path of satellies?

Im actually reading that GPS isn't geosynchronous...

"The current GPS configuration consists of a network of 24 satellites in high orbits around the Earth. Each satellite in the GPS constellation orbits at an altitude of about 20,000 km from the ground, and has an orbital speed of about 14,000 km/hour (the orbital period is roughly 12 hours - contrary to popular belief, GPS satellites are not in geosynchronous or geostationary orbits). "

http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] TravUK:
Well to be fair I was asking for proof, as I was sceptical as weither or not it had the fixes. There have been so many previous claims that it was fixed, only to be proven false a few days later. I know that fixes have been made, but I have no idea when they will apear, or what impact they will have. :(

EDIT: And another thing... with regards my credibility, I do work for Broadcom, and in that regard I will say what I can, which is very little, but I am also a customer, and in that regard I'm subject to just as much error/bs/lucky guess as the next man.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Case_:
The GPS satellites are not geosynchronous. It's a very common misconception, though.

Well if by "others" you mean me (which you probably do, given that I'm pretty much the only one that somehow fits you description of "them"), then this is definitely NOT what I've said. I never said the Arabic firmware "already contains the GPS fix", I merely said that my GPS finally works acceptably with this fw. Those are of course two very different things. And I actually confirmed that the JPJG8 firmware does NOT contain the fix (aka "the new driver") TravUK and we all seem to be expecting.

And I've also never said anything close to "not trusting TravUK at all". The closest to this is that I've just said that he might know something more about the issue or he might not, meaning that working for Broadcom doesn't necessarily mean being privy to this kind of information (which is basically just stating the obvious). Also, as we all probably know very well, hearing some rumors within the very company you work for does not necesarilly mean it's true ;) Other than that, I've absolutely no reason not to trust TravUK - why should I have?

So, assuming you really meant me, either please read more carefully or stop putting words in my mouth (especially by refering to me as "others" or "they"). Thanks.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] TravUK:
Indeed :)

I dont want anyone to trust me as being any more or less credible than the next man. I have said I work in graphics, not GPS, so anything I do know is already second hand. I reported back here that issues were reported and being addressed, I've also reported that some fixes have been made. Even though I know some details of the bugs and the fixes, I, like everyone else still need to wait to see if they really make our phones into a good GPS device.

Beyond that I'm just making it up (but at least with the experience of being a processor architect and driver developer).
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Kilack:
Should we read anything from the fact that you are still holding onto yours though? :)
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] TravUK:
If I'd returned my phone and bought something else, you might have read something into that :) But I'm holding on to it purely out of cautious optimism.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ml78:
Has anyone (with root) done some simple diff check on the /system/lib/libgps.so file between different firmwares?

that should determine if any work has been done on the gps driver between firmwares so far.
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] appelflap:
Yeah, already did that for JM2 and the newly posted JH1... No differences
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ml78:
Good, than one perhaps can assume that Samsung only added some "smoothing" fixes so far, and that they are probably waiting for an updated driver from Broadcom before any real "fix" is rolled out, or the GPS is broken and panic will follow ;)

/M
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andrewluecke:
Probably because the drivers within the kernel are the real problem...
[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] appelflap:
I'm pretty sure they haven't fixed a thing in all the firmware versions yet.