yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Vibrant General] ideohazard:
I took my phone apart a few months ago to do this fix because I was having bad gps drift, inaccurate info and often no connection. As far as I could tell, I'd done the fix correctly, but I still feel like I have similar problems with gps. Can anyone think of a way to test that actual good contact is being made between the metal tab on the mainboard and the antenna contact on the back-inside cover?

Is over-bending it a possibility or even an issue? In theory replacing the cover would push it back down.
[Vibrant General] djf8:
Bending the tab only fixes the problem temporarily. You'll either have to solder it or place a small piece of something inside the contact to keep it from going back down. I used a tiny piece of a rubber band as a spacer.
[Vibrant General] ideohazard:
I see, I must have missed that when I'd read the OP. I will give it a try again soon.
[Vibrant General] AmunReify:
Worked great for me. Got 7 sats in my house now. :)

Before this fix I never got a fix in my house. I put some copper wire between the contacts to improve my signal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnB_woTwO0c&feature=player_embedded).
[Vibrant General] ColorNapkin:
Don't know if you still need it but here's the post linking to it:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=12214565&postcount=208
[Vibrant General] Henchmin:
Holy ****, I did this and now my gps is working wonderfully. Instant lock outside and even inside after a few seconds.

Just a little copper wire made a HUGE difference. My GPS has never worked, can't believe Samsung was this cheap on copper.
[Vibrant General] Waldos:
So the best is to put a copper in the middle?
[Vibrant General] rblancrt:
i would not use copper personally

After having just done this and seeing how small the parts are I would not use any conductor that could possibly get lose in my phone in the future.

I can't say that my GPS improved because it was working fine anyway. I had to open the phone to replace the back speaker. But I definitely know that my wife's phone has this problem.

My advice is please be careful not to bend the bezel. I cannot get mine back on completely straight and it's going to drive me crazy.

Edit: No just my inexperience. Got some help and my bezel is as good as it was before. Still I say I would not use any conductor in the GPS connection.
[Vibrant General] Waldos:
Im doing right now the fix.

What is the final position of the antenna? (the pic on the OP, 30°, 25°, 45°?)

and how much is the separation? (1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm?)

Thanks for your this great thread!
[Vibrant General] Herer:
Great post, useful.
[Vibrant General] arquillos:
Thank you KWKSLVR and all the rest!

I´ve got a Galaxy S i9000 dated 2001.03.14.

The GPS was working (more or less) till 4 weeks ago. It suddenly stopped working.

I tried all the sw patches without success.

So I tried this fix using a small plastic part I made (+- 3mm x 0.8mm) and I have the piece inserted between the two parts of the connector.

Now I´ve got my GPS working again nicely :)

Thank you very much!
[Vibrant General] paulodeleo:
Just passing to thank for the great guide!

But I did the mod some months ago and still suffer of gps problems the same way as before. Every time someone says that this mod changed radically the gps performance, I think it's a placebo effect. Now it makes clear sense for me that Vibrant gps hardware is broken regardless of the antenna, and in software level too, even in eclair/froyo.
[Vibrant General] ioancr:
Works on ICS!

Hi and thank you!

I finally decided to do it. I had to do it twice because of, I think, a modem incompatibility (

no luck - no locks - with KA7 :( I loved it though for battery and signal). The first try I placed a tiny piece of alluminium. Since I had no luck, and wishing to use a safe material, the next day

I did it again, this time with plastic (resulted angle 30°). On KA7 modem I had only "in view" satellites, no locks. Tried the samsung gps restore, couldn't get position fix. Fortunately, I thought maybe it's a modem issue, I've flashed the JK6 and got EXCELLENT almost instant results! Accuracy 3,6 meters with WiFi and DATA OFF, 7-8 constant locks (I.'ve turned the gps off two hours after, it was still locked and accurate ).
[Vibrant General] achapa45:
It Works !!

Thank you for this :).

I have never been able to get a lock at my workplace so I decided to give it a shot.

So after about an hour of surgery( I was being extra careful ) I was able to get a lock.
[Vibrant General] theodork:
So my phone has always been able to get decent locks with my favorite 2.2 roms (like bionix), but I had my phone opened up to check something else out and decided to look at the GPS contact discussed in this guide.

In my particular case it look like the contact was in perfect condition, but I decided to very carefully bend up it up just a tiny bit more, a tiny bit more pressure might help a tiny bit right?

Put everything back together and phone was working solidly. Can't say that my GPS performance improved any, so I guess the amount of contact it made previously was adequate.

A few days later i accidentally drop my phone. Nothing super harsh, it just slipped out of my hands, and it fell to the floor. I had a case on it so there were some small scratches on the outer plastic metal bezel.

However, now my phone could only intermittently see satellites and view, but never connect and always report 0 DBM for all the satellites.

Opened the phone up again later, and turns out the metal tab snapped.

I've got a tiny square of folded up aluminum foil in there now as a stop gap, and its actually working quite well.

So I guess the lesson here is, if GPS does allow you connect to satellites, and you open up your phone and the contact doesnt look smashed in, you might just want to leave it alone =D If it wasn't making proper contact, it wouldn't connect at all...
[Vibrant General] gradash:
i am looser (((

i breake off this tab when bending it, then i put drop of solder... too big, then i try to cut a little

with knife, and broke whole contact from board... ((( now there is nothing to solder...

help... what i can do ?, except changing board :(
[Vibrant General] lpd_cheng:
I haven't tried this hardware fix: I know how clumsy I can be, and it has been 25 years since I did any circuit board assembly or micro-soldering.

After three custom roms with no gps, I read somewhere on this thread to disable wifi when first getting a gps fix. Dang - it worked! Doesn't make any sense, but I think it bears repeating.

Meanwhile, I'm loving my new ICS- Passion V12!
[Vibrant General] gradash:
i solved my problem !

i put a drop of solder on antenna contact (see attachment), and this drop touches broken contact (there is very little copper dot remain (0,01mm maybe)) and GPS works perfectly :) i have 2-5 sec lock, and 7 sat in sight, 4-5 in use - INDOOR.
[Vibrant General] KWKSLVR:
Glad to see that this is still rolling. The SGS is a device that doesn't seem to ever be close to dying!
[Vibrant General] drk421:
My GPS is now working great! I'm able to get a lock after clearing it after about 20-30 seconds, and after that a lock in about 2-3 seconds.

I actually soldered a wire between those two contacts after breaking off the gold springy contact by accident.

I used some 30AWG wire from radio shack about 1 inch long and soldered it to both contacts. Works way better than bending the pin up.

EDIT:

I'm also running Passion V13 w/ cleanup.

The only software change I did was use Fasterfix to set the server to "us.pool.ntp.org"
[Vibrant General] flapane:
I went from NO lock at all to the first lock ever. (see http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=22706043&postcount=97 )

So thanks a lot for your guide :)
[Vibrant General] xavier13:
I have to give this a shot. If I break my phone it gives me an excuse to get a new phone.
[Vibrant General] rasse3:
I broke my antenna one month ago, But I soldered it, and it worked fine... But now the it has again bent to down. Is it possible to get spare antenna or something, or should i solder it again and put more tin? Where can i get new antenna?

My temporary solution is some paper to get antenna up, but this is not a great solution, it works but not great.
[Vibrant General] tiuk:
Maybe you could use copper wire in its place?
[Vibrant General] mmlbbntr:
Well this fix worked a treat for me. Originally I just added some tape at the back, but then had issues again. I got frustrated and ripped the black tape that is there to cover the antenna, to see if I could find a problem with the antenna. But from what I gather, the antenna is just a thin, flat bit of copper. I assume that black tape served no specific purpose, I just replaced it with some other tape cut into the same shape.

Next step, when I finally had access to the internet, was to seach this forum thoroughly again. No regrets here. I undid the 7 screws, lifted the plastic casing out, and gently jammed a bit of kitchen roll in that U shaped connector, to pry it up. With time it might get compressed and lose its purpose, but less risky that soldering, so I'm sticking with that for now. So, a few observations :

- Number of locks DRASTICALLY improved. GPS went from utterly useless to pretty responsive, what a change... Many thanks to the people who shared this information.

- First logical observation : holding the phone upright, or even better, tilted downwards, yields better SNRs and easier GPS locks. Logical since the electronics somewhat shield the antenna when you hold the phone flat, screen facing up.

- Now, interesting observation. I wonder if people have noticed this too. Holding the phone facing up, in the exact same angle/position, I get a good 5dB in SNR variation depending on how I hold the phone. If my hand holds the phone in its entirety (big hands), fingers covering the part of the case when the antenna is, the signal is measurably less good than if I hold the phone from the bottom part only. A few questions :

- Have others noticed this too?

- What is the cause behind this? Fingers acting as shielding? As far as I know I don't have Wolverine hands, so I'm just surprised they could affect the signal measurably...

Again - thanks to those who share their knoweldge, providing solutions to flaws Samsung should have anticipated and dealt with.
[Vibrant General] jakebriggs:
I just did this, and my GPS works great! I did the copper wire fix, I got a 1 millimetre bit of copper from a solid core cat5 ethernet cable and jammed it under the springy connector.
[Vibrant General] hmyhmy:
please help me My Gps on SGS2 did not work and I don not know why? there is no even one signal

when I open gps status there is nothing downloaded or nothing show up. also when I type *#*#1472365#*#* no showing any thing

what is the problem by your opinion ??
[Vibrant General] KWKSLVR:
In my opinion, it's just a result of really weak hardware.

I don't know anything at all about the SGSII. As a starting point, I suggest backing up your apps/data and then wipe your phone and start over. You could have an application conflict.
[Vibrant General] ioancr:
After a month when I performed the fix, I can firmly confirm that it is a software problem too. I get the best GPS so far on ICS ExRom 1.2 with Icy Glitch 14.5 kernel (accuracy 3-6 meters, yet some deep sleep issues). On other ICS roms I had varying results (the next best rom for GPS is ICZen). Perhaps it's just my phone (idiosincrasy :D). I'm still testing though (especially gps.conf parameters).
[Vibrant General] Decepticaons:
my GPS works fine after i reboot and before i let it go into deep sleep. Does this mean that I can eliminate the hardware as the cause?
[Vibrant General] idiotshere:
gps module in galaxy s and all based on it devices is simply crap, all the software and wierd fixes are just a way to take your money for full version

best thing you can do is try to use/port files responsible for gps from nexus s but do not think that some kid knows how to setup the gps better then googler - it is just impossible
[Vibrant General] nighthawkca:
This made my gps useable now! It's still not great, but it's MUCH better than the useless thing that it was. (My phone is from July 2010) When I opened the case, the top of the copper contact was practically flat on top of the bottom part. I bent it up gently until I thought it was enough and then went a little further. After putting it together I was able to lock on 7/12 with 7 meter accuracy. Today I rode my bike while My Tracks was recording my track and it worked very well and the track is not jumpy.

But it fails after a deep sleep and it seems like battery usage is excessive after using the gps. So it looks like I need a reboot before and after using the gps.

I had previously flashed the phone from stock froyo to CM7.2 RC1 with the overstock kernel and since then have gone to ICS with AOKP Milestone 4. As other folks have mentioned, you can bandaid the hardware problem but there are still software issues to deal with... I've read this whole thread and am still not sure how to proceed with trying to fix the software issues on ICS, any suggestions?
[Vibrant General] Xdogg:
This worked great on my vibrant. I ended up having to solder mine, no big deal. I usually get 11 in view with 6-9 locks and 25-75 foot accuracy. still not perfect but better than stock. i couldn't even use GPS it before i did this mod.
[Vibrant General] drago10029:
Thanks just tried it and :D two thumbs up.

The method I used was slightly different. I used a solid piece of copper and lodged it in between the copper pin on the phone. It has the same effect as soldering but does not require a solder :)

Im not using the "wireless network setting", in my case or sensor aiding. My results are as follow... (note: I used google maps locate me for testing on accuracy)

1st attempt: 15 seconds and it kept slightly moving around the vicinity I was in.

2nd attempt: same results as above.

3rd attempt: 7-8 gps lock, it located me exactly! give or take a few feet. and after a few seconds it began to hover again in my vicinity.

4th attempt: 30 seconds lock, it was about 100+ t from my location.

I am using s.gps.zip, running bluefrankenstein fishman mod 2.2 and modem t959UVKB5, Kernel 2.6.32.9-Bali_v1.8.8UV

Im gonna try again with KB5 now.

---------- Post added at 11:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:02 AM ----------

KB5 killed my gps lol, gonna tryout other modems and see what happens :)
[Vibrant General] tanke234:
I made this tutorial and it was fine for my gps. But I'm an idiot because I did the tab for the other side (I did not know it was the wifi) and broke it.

Now the wifi works for me pretty bad. Signal reaches half or less that arrived earlier.

What I can do? : ((
[Vibrant General] ideohazard:
Although risky, you may want to just try the solder fix as explained on OP. At this point, I can't see you doing any more damage to the wifi connection.

---------- Post added at 06:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:12 PM ----------

I've tried a few things so far as far as the gps fix goes, seems like something has finally worked.

First fix - Lifted up copper tab, did not insert any support. Initially seemed better, but got worse quickly.

Second fix - lifted tab again, inserted tiny bit of plastic coated wire. I believe this came from a twist tie. This did not seem to improve signal at all. My thought process was that if the wire came loose, I wouldn't want potentially conductive material bouncing around inside the phone.

Third fix - removed plastic coated wire from 2nd fix, inserted small length from paperclip. Assumed that signal is not strong enough. Length of Twist Tie from 2nd fix never came loose in a month of use. As extra step, cleaned copper connectors on both sides with rubbing alcohol. Presumably metal paperclip is an electrical conductor but the GPS still could not see any sattelites. It stayed put for an entire month of use.

Fourth fix - I took an old ethernet cable and tore apart the plastic rj45connector. It contains 8 tiny copper plates which pierce the wire when crimped. Took one of these copper plates and bent (mangled) it into a U shape. Placed this around the Vibrant's copper U spring GPS antenna. I broke off the little hump end of the antenna in the process, however, this did not seem to be a problem. This did not initially work, however flashed YAGF2 again and seems to have done the trick.

In all prior cases I had also run YAGF2 with no success.
[Vibrant General] sjancura:
I am an admitted noob, but started running Passion and then switched to Euphoria 2.1. Tried the Kiss 5.1, then 8.2 before settling on 2.2 (3.1.1). GPS works pretty well after lock before deep sleep. Takes about 2-3 minutes to get back to a lock.

I have had to do all the hardware fixes. First just bent up the tab which worked for about a week before losing performance. Then broke the spring tab trying to bend it again. Now permanently (I hope) fixed by desoldering off the entire broken spring, then put a ball of solder where clip was then a smaller flatter buildup of solder on the contact on the plastic cover. Had to add a bit more solder two times until the two solder balls touched with a bit of pressure giving an average of 7-9 birds locked between 25-40 SNR usually with 10-13 sats in view. I am not the best with a soldering iron, but going slow with a 15w iron gave me great results!

Love the Vibe, but getting a new Nexus so I have another working phone so I can mod the Vibe even more. I have no programming experience, but I am determined to learn Java then Android as I really love what these forums contribute to owners and I feel I can contribute in the future. Guess I am a lawyer who is actually a repressed programmer.

Thanks to all who give so much for the love of doing it!
[Vibrant General] gane.shaw:
Thanks ! It just works !!

Great details and covers all bases.. can't thank you enough. :D

1. Did the connector fix. Booted... no GPS lock... tried it outdoors ...no lock !

2. Switched off WiFi. Ran Samsung GPSRestore... tried again ...no lock

3. Gave it a few min.. reboot.. next attempt LOCKED in 2 minutes - indoors.

4. Tried outdoors .. locked in 30 secs.

5. Now I get a lock under 10 secs anywhere ... never got 1 before for months !!

Posting a pic that I thought will help others attempting this.
[Vibrant General] gmiller777:
Hardware GPS Fix Worked on my Vibrant

After trying what seems like a million ROM's and Software fixes I finally broke down and tried the bending the little contact trick. Can't believe I wasted almost 2 years with this phone frustrated and at least in my case it was the hardware. GPS locks now very quickly inside the house and outside. I'm running CM9 and Subzero 80 kernal. Just my 2 cents as I was about to chunk the phone and buy a galaxy nexus.
[Vibrant General] hkmiller:
fixed via solder method

Tried the contract bend method yesterday but still did not have any GPS. Tried to use the method to insert a piece of copper wire but broke the contact, so had to resort to the solder method. Made a perfect solder dome, and now works like a charm. :D

Prior to this fix, I was ready to do factory reset.:(
[Vibrant General] hkmiller:
Well it quit working. Will need to look into software fix.
[Vibrant General] hardnrg:
Just wanna say thanks to KWKSLVR for this thread. I've had my Galaxy S for about 1.5 years now, the accuracy was usually around 30m and you could see it jump around a bit when using running/logging apps like MapMyRun, sometimes quite severely and producing very inaccurate distances/paces. It was so bad that I started using my bluetooth GPS when running.

For driving, the phone's GPS has usually been ok, but the sporadic/inaccurate positioning occasionally made the current position jump off to a side street or parallel road.

Today, I took a different route to work via a small town, as a trial run to see if I can essentially take another person to/from work, and the GPS was so bad that over about an hour's journey, it got a GPS locked position about 7 times for about 20 seconds each time! The journey was only supposed to be about 40 mins but I had to guess the way as CoPilot Live and Navigation just wouldn't show my current position. I ended up using Navigation and manually scrolling the map around to follow my position, lol.

I use GPS navigation in my car almost every day, as I have the Live Traffic add-on for CoPilot which reroutes me around accidents/delays even on familiar routes like my commute back home from work. So, having crap GPS in my phone is pretty devastating, I was so annoyed this morning as I back-tracked, U-turned, missed turns, all through morning rush hour - I seriously considered calling my carrier to request a replacement phone.

So, I thought I may as well try this hardware fix (that I'd sort of got by without doing until now) and as luck would have it, I had the required #00 (or w/e) size philips screwdriver in my laptop bag at work. Figured out how to pry the plastic back off eventually and bent that little bastard contact up.

Hey presto, 5m accuracy in about 20secs.

Excellent solution, I appreciate you taking the time to start this thread and provide all the information :)
[Vibrant General] ikuto1:
Thank you!

I never got around to doing this mod and like most of you applied all the software fixes. The Galaxy S (T-mobile version) does everything I needed after I found the perfect custom rom and always thought it'd be perfect if the GPS had worked. I was ready to give it up for maybe the Galaxy S III but not anymore. I want to say thank you for this hardware fix. I bent the contact up and my GPS now works indoors where it would never get a lock. Outside it picked up 11 satellites! I should have done this earlier. I'm still using good old Axura 2.3.1.3 with KB1 modem. Time to invest in a longer lasting battery!
[Vibrant General] imilleson:
Dude thanks for the pic! I am so excited to try this Hardware fix! I love the vibrant but the GPS limitation is my pet peeve!
[Vibrant General] KWKSLVR:
I'm glad this fix is living on and still working for people! I gave my Vibrant to my mother running Bionix 1.3.1 w/ TouchWiz and that sucker is still kicking it strong!
[Vibrant General] T313C0mun1s7:
Yea, I myself have moved on and have had a Galaxy S II for quite some time now. I am running Darkside Evolution 3 ICS.
[Vibrant General] hupcus:
My Hardware fix GPS

Hi guys, I ws trying to fix my GPS for ages and i tryed all known ways, from Hardware fix to sftware fix, different ROM etc. UNTIL TODAY!

All I did was, use a bit of tape to isolate small connector or whatever is it. Please see picture. Green arrow will show you that "connector".

see the picture here (please erase spaces between. I had to do it this way because I am new here and I can post pictures after 10 posts)

i47 . tinypic . com / acq0ex . jpg

Hope that nobody mind that I used picture form first page of this post.

After I place a small piece of tape over connector I IMMEDIATELLY got 12 satelites inside and lock on 4 of them in 30sec.

Outside it took 5 sec.

Hope it will help you same as did to me and please keep me posted if it is working for you.
[Vibrant General] T313C0mun1s7:
Let me see if I understand you. You put a piece of electrical tape over the unused external antenna connector?
[Vibrant General] denny_1986:
i tried doing this but couldn't pry open the phone. It's too tight and i'm afraid i'll snap it! Any tips?:o
[Vibrant General] T313C0mun1s7:
See if you can find a card half the thickness of a credit card as a tool, that makes it much easier.

My old Library card was this way, and Subway sandwich loyalty cards used to be like this. I am sorry I can't come up with any recent examples that you might have available, but look around and you will find something.

They also make a tool that is not too expensive if you want to order it and wait.

http://goo.gl/lsFjM It is currently only $1, and it includes two pry tools and two screwdrivers.

http://goo.gl/PPrxQ This one is $3 but adds a microfiber cloth, a screen lifter suction cup, a guitar pick style pry, and a #0 Phillips to the kit above.
[Vibrant General] denny_1986:
thanks!

going to try the credit card method now
[Vibrant General] selmandeli:
Hi, I can't see the picture You posted (I did erase the spaces between).