Hello everybody,
I had severe problems with my GPS signal strength. I read a lot about the time zone influence to GPS fixing time. Therefore, I activated the automatic date & time setting to see, if this setting would improve my GPS fixing time. I had the correct time zone setting all the time.
The funny thing is, I think, it improved the signal strength a lot.
I do not use AGPS (only simple GPS).
Before setting this option, the phone took between 10 and 25 minutes to fix my position. After setting this option, the phone takes between 2 and 12 minutes to fix my position.
This is really a big improve.
Now, I don't really know, if the automatic time & date option is really an influencing factor to the GPS fixing time.
Therefore I'm asking: is it possible, that the automatic time & date option influences the GPS fixing time? Did someone have the same experience?
Thank you very much.
Related
I work and live in different time zones, I noticed the atrix doesnt update the time unless I turn off the wireless and then re-enable it. Is this supposed to be normal?
settings -> Date and time
is automatic checked? how often are you on wifi, and how often on mobile data? I'm not sure it gets a constant check when on wifi.
cegna09 said:
settings -> Date and time
is automatic checked? how often are you on wifi, and how often on mobile data? I'm not sure it gets a constant check when on wifi.
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The time is technically correct except for it is an hour less than it should be. It is set to automatic, im on wifi 20% of the day the rest mobile data. If I turn on airplane mode then turn it back off the correct time is displayed. I think they may have a bug
I travel for business quite and go between time-zones. I also find same issue happening with my new Atrix phone. If I turn the airplane mode on and off several times, time correct based on time zone I am in. Automatic date and time setting checked on.
Hi Everyone,
Atrix did not adjust automatically the time fthis morning. Is anybody else experiencing this issue?
In date and time the 'automatic' settings is checked.
I had to reboot for the time to be automatically updated.
Thank you.
Alarm went off an hour earlier than all the manually set clocks.
No glitch here. In Indiana on an eastern time zone.
I travel for work and the Atrix has worked fine for me in different time zones. My captivate failed to auto-switch one time though - so i think it has something to do with tower signals more then phone.
I reported this at launch, Im in indiana and live in CST but work in EST. This phone has not correctly changed timezones once, and didnt even update to the correct time for daylight savings time yesterday. The only way i've found to fix is either turn on/ turn off airplane mode or cycle power.
No GPS coordinates in photos
Guys, I need your advice.
I am travelling with turned-off cellular data on my i9100 since I am abroad.
I am taking pictures - a lot of pictures. But I just found out that app. 90% of them do NOT have GPS coordinates.
I tried everything:
- checked settings
- restarted phones
- connected to WIFI
- installed GPS Config for rooted phones and set up the location
- flashed ROMs (AOSP, AOKP, MIUI, stock ROMs).
BUT nothing helped. I think that something is wrong with my phone.
Why? Because iPad Mini + iPhone 5 captured GPS coordinates IMMEDIATELY. I mean in 1 second!
The strangest thing is that Navigon gets GPS position really fast on i9100, but it cannot navigate me - it is waiting and connects after app 2 mins.
Thanks for help.
It looks like that stock-based ROM are better - if you wait app. 1 minute, it gets GPS data to your photo.
Good ROM is here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2411990
Otherwise, it is still bad that you need to wait to get the GPS fix.
iPhone really gets it in 1 second.
So buy an iPhone. I've never had GPS problems with the S2 provided I regularly clear then update the ephemeris data (which is basically the position of the satellites at different times/in different locations; in GPS Status - tools/manage A-GPS state - reset data then download new data), and then put the phone in flight mode (obviously with GPS on) & stand outside with good line of sight in all directions to enable it to 'learn' where the satellites are for 5 minutes or so/until you get a good fix. This has always enabled me to get a fast/accurate fix for a couple of weeks until the ephemeris data gets old, then I repeat the process.
I do have iPhone 5 ... that is why I could have compared the GPS results.
How do you reset "ephemeris data"?
I tried GPS config for ROOTed phones, but it does not help.
(I set up the country in the settings.)
Generally speaking - if I am in my country, there is no problem.
BUT: Once I am abroad and have cellular data turned off, then I cannot get GPS in my photos.
I tried about 10 ROMS - but all are the same ===> no GPS if you take photos when you are abroad.
Hello,
Like some of the other users, I had GPS problems after installing these two ROMs: connecting to the satellites took a very long time, if at all. Below I describe my fix, gathered from searching on the web, including here on XDA, and by using trial-and-error testing. Hope it helps others.
Install GPS Test by Chartcross. This helps monitor the GPS activities. There are other similar apps out there, but I like this one for the purpose of monitoring the GPS.
Install FasterGPS, by Dominik Schürmann. This is to edit the file /system/etc/gps.conf. You could edit it manually, but I like the GUI of this app.
Check if your /system/etc/suplcert/cacert.txt is "MIIDazCC......neEj8Nq/", then under the advanced settings, make sure SUPL_HOST is "supl.sonyericsson.com", SUPL_PORT=7275. Each cacert corresponds to a particular SUPL server. The above cacert is for the Sony server. If the host doesn't correspond to the cert, then you will not benefit from a quick retrieval of GPS info via the internet. Instead your GPS will download the info from the satellites themselves at a very slow rate (50 b/s according to Wikipedia). Your GPS would still work, but it won't acquire a fix quickly. Sorry I don't know what the cert for Google is.
Set NTP server to something close to you. Some people suggest to enter several servers (more can't hurt), some people suggest not to do that (more does hurt, if the previous ones fail.) I imagine that, at the higher level, the ntp pool servers don't usually fail. Thus I choose a single server that is close to me. In addition, I stay at the "country" level instead of going down to the numerical prefix level. (I.e. I don't bother with 0.uk.pool.ntp.org.) I figure going down to the numerical prefix level would more likely expose me to server failures.
Set INTERMEDIATE_POS=1 (enabled), then set ACCURACY_THRES=0 (passing all positions). With this value GPS Test usually reports satellites "in view" very quickly [<= 1 sec]. [Note: "in view" not "fix".] When I set the threshold to something non-zero (even a large value like 5000), it takes several seconds to see them.
Set ENABLE_WIPER=1, which supposedly turns on wifi positioning. Not sure what that does, but sounds like it can help . I assume the GPS system reads info from the wifi to get a rough estimate position. GPS Test probably isn't affected by this, although something like Maps might.
Set REPORT_POSITION_USE_SUPL_...=1. Again this sounds like a useful thing. My trial-and-error testing didn't discover anything conclusive about this. If anyone know more, please let me know.
Set DEFAULT_AGPS_ENABLE=TRUE, DEFAULT_USER_PLANE=TRUE. These are probably already true by default, but I figure it doesn't hurt to be explicit.
Reboot your phone if you had to change the SUPL setting. I had to do this to see the change. Would love to hear your experience on this.
With the above settings, GPS Test usually reports about 10 satellites in view in about 1 sec; satellites signals popping up above 10 db in about 5 sec, and the GPS acquiring a fix with about 4 satellites in less than 30 sec. All this _inside_ my house, which is a timber frame house with tile roof. I get this even with airplane mode on, i.e. no network connection!
If I use GPS Test to download AGPS data first, then the fix could be even faster, at less than 15 sec. And once the GPS has acquired a fix then, within a short time span, it will do so again very quickly (< 5 sec). Thus I have no problem as I switch from app to app and the GPS sensor turns on and off.
If my AGPS data is several days old, I still can get a fix in about 1 min.
Still, sometimes no matter what I do, the GPS would take more than 1 min to acquire a fix. Not sure why this happens, but it usually occurs after I haven't used the GPS in a while. In those cases I might have to wait up to 5 min for a fix.
Notes:
I assume you have root (since you managed to install ROMs )
According to the official ntp pool website,
As pool.ntp.org will assign you timeservers from all over the world, time quality will not be ideal. You get a bit better result if you use the continental zones (For example europe, north-america, oceania or asia.pool.ntp.org), and even better time if you use the country zone (like ch.pool.ntp.org in Switzerland)
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Click to collapse
More about my choice of accuracy threshold: if a threshold is active, it seems like the GPS would wait for the signal of a satellite to be of a certain strength before reporting it as in view. I figure it is better to just grab all the satellites possible, even if there is no signal yet.
The app GPS Status & Toolbox, by MobiWIA - EclipSim is also a very useful monitoring tool. I like the feature that reports how "stale" the AGPS data is. Wish GPS Test had this as well.
Toggling on the GPS from the settings menu simply allows apps to turn on the GPS. This doesn't use any battery. Only when an app starts using the sensor does it take energy. I recommend having this on. Having said that, do make sure you don't have any rogue app keeping your GPS engaged.
Install NTPSync, by Dominik Schürmann again. This helps set your clock. Not sure if this is necessary, but it gives me a good feeling that my clock is accurate
gps
its still not working
zivalarasa said:
its still not working
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Click to collapse
After running GPS Test out in the open for, say, 1 min, does it report any "in view" satellite at all? Any satellite have signal > 10db?
GPS Test
HHest said:
After running GPS Test out in the open for, say, 1 min, does it report any "in view" satellite at all? Any satellite have signal > 10db?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GPS test runs and doesnt find any sattellite. It ran for around 10 minz
zivalarasa said:
GPS test runs and doesnt find any sattellite. It ran for around 10 minz
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assume you had GPS working at some point prior to installing the ROM? If you've done all the steps (particularly steps 3, 5, and very importantly 9), then I'm afraid I'm out of suggestions.
spelling?
On the off chance... perhaps you have a spelling error?
I find it quite easy to spell "sonyericsson" wrong, especially the ericsson part. Now I have a way to memorize it: "Eric" (that's easy), "Eric's" (as in something belonging to Eric), ericsson = "Eric's son"
I could swear at some point while setting up my phone I was asked to set the desired GPS accuracy. There were three options that varied by accuracy and battery consumption.
I can't remember where those settings were...
It's possible it was on my old phone (gnex w/ cm10.1), but I don't remember.
I have never seen this. I think it was your old phone. The old maps use to ask this for location improvement.
Hi!
I am creating a Tasker profile that automatically logs my location when I turn off my car so that I can find where it's parked in case I forget. In general, the task works correctly if a strong GPS lock can be obtained, but in situations where a precise location is not possible, it seems that %LOC is not set, and a %LOC value is used.
My task has two main actions.
1. Get Location (Source: Any, Timeout: 15sec)
2. Variable Set (%LOC to %LocCar)
When a strong location can be obtained (in less than 15 seconds), everything is great. But in situations where a strong lock cannot be obtained (covered/underground parking), the Get Location action will timeout and I get a %LOC value that is no where near my car. Seemingly the last %LOC set. I could potentially make the GPS timeout much longer in order to give it more time to get a good lock, but by the time it does, I will have walked quite far from my car, making the task pretty useless.
The interesting thing is that if I open Google Maps, it has a pretty good idea of where I am, even in bad situations. There is a faint blue circle around my position (implying the possible inaccuracy), but it still has the blue circle centered very close to my actual location. So it seems that Android will not update %LOC unless it is very certain of its accuracy, but even an "inaccurate" location is good enough (and better than nothing). Is there a way to get Android to set %LOC even if it's unsure of its accuracy? Or can I get this information some other way? (Google Maps seems to know where to put it.)
Thanks!
You're Welcome, Me!
So you know how you ask a question out loud, and then you come up with the answer yourself? Well, I managed to do just that, which is great! I'll post my findings so others with the same issue can have a solution option that should work for them as well.
So I've been aware for a while that finding your phone's location is just as much a WiFi +cellular task as it is GPS. Google even had a snafu a few years ago where they were tracking people's WiFi network names and accidentally got some extra info out of them... Anyway, your phone looks at the nearby WiFi hotspots and cell towers to help figure out where it is. That's what the "inaccurate" location boils down to (as far as I know). And that's why you can specify during Get Loction to look at GPS, Net (WiFi+cellular), or Any. So if you choose Any, it will try both options. But %LOC is just for the GPS result. %LOCN shows the Net (WiFi+cellular) result. So if you don't get a GPS lock in time, you will likely still have a decent Net location.
So how do you know which is more accurate? There are accuracy variables, but we are actually interested in which is more recent. (If GPS was very accurate on its last lock 5 minutes ago, it still isn't as relevant as an "inaccurate" but very recent Net lock.) The time of each lock is stored in Unix Time, which is a variation of the Julian Date (a way to track time without confusion of time zones or leap years). Unix Time is basically how many seconds have passed since 00:00 Jan 1, 1970. So to figure out which is more recent, simply compare the two values. The larger is more recent, and therefore a better value. The time values are stored in %LOCTMS (GPS time) and %LOCNTMS (Net time).
My next step will be to incorporate a check to see how old each is compared to right now (%TIMES). If they are too old, then there is no point to storing them.
Hope this helps someone out!