Is your GPS working?

[Icebike]

Well you seem to have solved a problem that virtually none of us have.

Our GPS works fine, google maps lock onto satellites quite precisely, and very quickly. There are some third party apps that tried to micro-manage the GPS and these didn't work well under early versions of Honeycomb, but all of the popular ones work now.

None of what you posted is necessary.
Have you looked at the date on those posts you refer people to? Its old obsolete news.

 

[pacificwing]

Well you seem to have solved a problem that virtually none of us have.

Our GPS works fine, google maps lock onto satellites quite precisely, and very quickly. There are some third party apps that tried to micro-manage the GPS and these didn't work well under early versions of Honeycomb, but all of the popular ones work now.

None of what you posted is necessary.
Have you looked at the date on those posts you refer people to? Its old obsolete news.

If fewer people are having trouble with this, then that is great news. That is ultimately the end result we're all looking for.

I would submit that there are still people having trouble with their GPS. The threads I posted are not obsolete by any means. If you go to the end of the thread, you'll notice that the most recent post was yesterday, and has been steadily active for the last few weeks.

If your GPS is working, then there is obviously no need for you to apply this fix. I'll assume you aren't relying on google maps to test your GPS, and that you're aware that google maps can find your location through your wifi connection without utilizing GPS at all. For educational purposes, I'd be interested to know what your lock times are in an actual GPS analyser app (GPS Test is a good one), and if your ROM installed the lto.dat file where it was supposed to be by default. The information might help those who are still having trouble.

Cheers,
-PW

 

[Douvie]

I haven't had a problem. I've compared A500 with a GARMIN 1490T and the A500 is a fraction faster. Where the GARMIN had a problem with no satelite signal -the A500 would react the same 90% of the time. In 10% of cases the A500 would pick up a signal where the GARMIN didn't.

So as Icebike said no problem here.

 

[ebookof]

My GPS was not working. I tried everything Had the board replaced. Everything works fine now. So, instead of fighting with the GPS, you may be better returning the tablet for repair. Now, the GPS fixes on satellites very fast. If it doesn't on your side, consider it could be a hardware issue.

 

[ewa]

Icebike, your response is shallow and pointless: if you do not have the problem, good on you, but what is your contribution to the discussion? Who are 'we' in "Our GPS works fine" and "you seem to have solved a problem that virtually none of us have"? Did you run a poll and have some statistics from many people to make such general statement? Please share.

For your info: I have a new tablet with the latest firmware:
Android 3.2.1, Kernel 2.6.36.3+, checked June 6th 2012 (today) - there are no pending Acer updates. Not rooted, no modifications of any kind, and definitely no "third party apps that tried to micro-manage the GPS" installed. And guess what... I do have the problem exactly as described. As of June 6th 2012. I trieed a few suggestions posted here to no avail, still trying to fix it.

Well, Icebike, none of what YOU posted is necessary or contributes anything of value to the discussion.
Have a great day.

Well you seem to have solved a problem that virtually none of us have.

Our GPS works fine, google maps lock onto satellites quite precisely, and very quickly. There are some third party apps that tried to micro-manage the GPS and these didn't work well under early versions of Honeycomb, but all of the popular ones work now.

None of what you posted is necessary.
Have you looked at the date on those posts you refer people to? Its old obsolete news.

 

[frnkws]

Icebike, your response is shallow and pointless: if you do not have the problem, good on you, but what is your contribution to the discussion? Who are 'we' in "Our GPS works fine" and "you seem to have solved a problem that virtually none of us have"? Did you run a poll and have some statistics from many people to make such general statement? Please share.

For your info: I have a new tablet with the latest firmware:
Android 3.2.1, Kernel 2.6.36.3+, checked June 6th 2012 (today) - there are no pending Acer updates. Not rooted, no modifications of any kind, and definitely no "third party apps that tried to micro-manage the GPS" installed. And guess what... I do have the problem exactly as described. As of June 6th 2012. I trieed a few suggestions posted here to no avail, still trying to fix it.

Well, Icebike, none of what YOU posted is necessary or contributes anything of value to the discussion.
Have a great day.

Actually you do not have the latest firmware.
The latest is 4.0.3
Some tablets have a problem with updating.
But after I updated to ICS, 4.0.3
Kernal version 2.6.39.4+
My GPS no longer works.

To update your tablet you probably will have to do a manual update.
There are instruction here somewhere how to do it.

 

[Icebike]

Actually you do not have the latest firmware.
The latest is 4.0.3
Some tablets have a problem with updating.
But after I updated to ICS, 4.0.3
Kernal version 2.6.39.4+
My GPS no longer works.

To update your tablet you probably will have to do a manual update.
There are instruction here somewhere how to do it.

Wait, now you too are reporting that your GPS DOES NOT WORK, and it did previously.?

Did you test with GPS Status app, free in the market?

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

 

[frnkws]

Wait, now you too are reporting that your GPS DOES NOT WORK, and it did previously.?

Did you test with GPS Status app, free in the market?

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

Yes I did.
I tried 4 different ones.
I however did not take the tablet outside when testing that one.
The other three, GPS Essentials, FPS fix and GPS test, I tried for about 15 minutes each with not one satellite coming up.
I always used GPS Test before and always got around 9 fixes.

 

[emagin]

I continue to have GPS issues on A500 with ICS 4.3
Either very long startup time (like 4-5 minutes) or nothing at all.
When I run GPS Essentials it sometimes wakes it up, finds sats and then works, but it's hit or miss.

Did you guys see this thread at XDA Developers

I have been looking into slow "cold-start" gps locks & in some peoples cases, complete lack of gps.
In testing, everything I've found so far, seems to be pointing at the lack of Broadcom's proprietary long term orbit data (lto.dat) used by the GPS Daemon on our devices...
These chips are in the a500/a200/a100 devices (101 & 501 devices use an ericsson GPS)

For the sake of not regurgitating a whole heap of info, you can read more about the lto.dat file in plenty of places across the web.
pacificwing recently bought this up in crypted's aGPS patch thread, some discussion on the subject starts around page 30.

The attached, recovery flashable zip will patch your system with a *workaround* to automate the download & update of lto.dat...
It is derived from past work in CyanogenMod for the aries (& other) devices.
It should be compatible with most ROM's, but may need adjusting if your busybox wget applet can't resolve dns. (see notes in the script)