[Vibrant General] mgerard:
Hello all, generally I am a lurker here and find want I need and more on. But today I decided to share the story of getting two Vibrants GPS fixed. I am sharing this to hopefully help someone else who is as frustrated as I was. I am not here to debate what Samsung or T-Mobile should or should not have done. This is not a magic software fix or discovering something hidden. It is just using what was already in place to get the phones fixed and hope this helps at least one person. :) here goes...

My best friend Tom and I purchased our Vibrants on the same day. Both have a production date of 7/17/2010. Since day one my GPS has never really worked. There were a few times I would get a glimpse of it working but then would quickly stop. Tom's GPS has been good, not fantastic but okay. Neither of us use them driving but do use them for walking and bike riding.

As many of us I had high hopes JI6 would be the magic fix but for me it made it worse. Tom's phone was still about the same. My phone is/was rooted and I have tried a number of fixes and ROMs but nothing has helped. Tom's phone has never been rooted.

So a few weeks ago my frustration got to me and I decided something had to be done. Since the phone has a manf warranty on it I decided to contact Samsung to hopefully resolve this issue. And with a little pressure from me Tom did the same to get his working better. I felt Samsung's support was great and explained the problems, they did have me go through some minor testing but I stressed I had also already done those tests but still did what they told me as I know they are just doing their job. Samsung gave me two choices to either return to T-Mobile or send it in. They quickly sent us prepaid two-day air labels and our phones went out for repair.

Little over a week and both phones were back. In looking at the repair emails it seems that Samsung had only tested and reinstalled the OS. Okay, this was a bit bothersome knowing this was all that was done but thought I would see the results. First up Tom's phone. His now worked perfect. Locks on 6 to 8 birds in about 10 seconds. Going on walks it was spot on. Mine, well not so much luck. Out testing I went through two batteries while his worked on every test we threw at them. I called Samsung back explaining how I had tested and the results. They were very apologetic and again offered for me to send it in or return to T-Mobile. They quickly sent me a return label and off my phone went. This time I also enclosed a very detailed note explaining my tests and results.

The day my phone was shipping back the email from them said Problem found: BAD BGA Component. Solution: Replaced PBA. From my understanding the PBA is the main board but I could be wrong. I received my phone back and started testing the GPS. Hot damn! The phone sees 10 to 12 satellites and I get a lock from 4 to 8 in about 10 seconds then continues with locks on about 6 or so while testing. I have since tested it out on a number of walks and it has been quite good. My last test today (which is cloudy and snowy) was about a 4.5 mile walk around the city and included a stop in the grocery store and CardioTrainer even continued to track my walk inside the store. And sitting here at my desk inside my apartment I am getting a lock on 4 birds in just a few seconds after a reboot.

On top of the fixed GPS I have noticed an improvement of battery life. Granted it has only been a week and I don't have exact specs on this but it seems to be working longer. Also I now have GPS turned on instead of always off. Another bonus is my general signal strength on the phone is better. In the back room of my apartment I would always get zero or one bar. Now I get three and in most cases have noticed a 1 to 2 bar increase anywhere I am. I assume this is also helping battery life.

So I hope this encourages anyone else who feels like I did to just use your warranty and get it fixed. Yes you will be without your phone for a couple of weeks but hopefully the end result will be a fixed phone. Also I encourage you to be kind to the rep when you call, in a previous job I use to do tech support for a call center and know that the nice customers always got treated much better than the yelling and screaming ones. And keep in mind it might take a second return to get it fixed as it did mine. Granted if it would have required a third return I would not have been nice.

Note: A couple of the reps I spoke with at Sumsung stressed that the GPS is not designed to work in stand-alone mode. It will always need a network assist and a dataplan will also be needed. I asked one of them why they were stressing that and he told me that so many of the calls regarding GPS were people without datapalns. It did not surprise me that the mobile network is needed. I did do one quick test with data turned off and I get nothing on the GPS.

All previous & post testing was done with JI6 so I had something to compare. But now I am running Nero 5 and still GPS has been great!

So that is it, I hope this helps someone!

-mg