Guest evad Posted September 14, 2007 Report Share Posted September 14, 2007 I've been using TomTom today on my way home from work, and initially GPS worked excellent. But after some time, roughly an hour, I've noticed that GPS signal strenght got very weak, and TT only indicated just one bar on 5-bar scale. On top of that, signal was getting lost quite often. So I have restarted TomTom, but it went even worse, and GPS got literally insane! It showed speed like 211 kph and current position was somewhere out of London - crazy! So next step was exiting TT and downloading data with QuickGPS - although I did that already in the morning and data was still valid for over next 6 days. Anyway, once I did that update and fired up TT again - GPS started to work again like a charm. Full signal strength, position fixed straight away, no errors, whatsoever. I was getting worried that GPS chip got faulty or sth, but QuickGPS 'fixed' it. However, I'm a bit concerned overall - if GPS starts getting crazy after just one hour of journey, I don't want to imagine what might happen on long-haul journey, especially abroad where data transfer rates are killing, and downloading QuickGPS data would throw a lot of £££ into phone bill. :( I am going to Stansted Airport this Sunday, and overall I'm going to use TT more often, as I subscribed one month free trial of TT's traffic information, so I could observe the problem closer.. But what are your experiences so far, guys? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest squiggs1982 Posted September 14, 2007 Report Share Posted September 14, 2007 I've been using TomTom today on my way home from work, and initially GPS worked excellent. But after some time, roughly an hour, I've noticed that GPS signal strenght got very weak, and TT only indicated just one bar on 5-bar scale. On top of that, signal was getting lost quite often. So I have restarted TomTom, but it went even worse, and GPS got literally insane! It showed speed like 211 kph and current position was somewhere out of London - crazy! So next step was exiting TT and downloading data with QuickGPS - although I did that already in the morning and data was still valid for over next 6 days. Anyway, once I did that update and fired up TT again - GPS started to work again like a charm. Full signal strength, position fixed straight away, no errors, whatsoever. I was getting worried that GPS chip got faulty or sth, but QuickGPS 'fixed' it. However, I'm a bit concerned overall - if GPS starts getting crazy after just one hour of journey, I don't want to imagine what might happen on long-haul journey, especially abroad where data transfer rates are killing, and downloading QuickGPS data would throw a lot of £££ into phone bill. ;) I am going to Stansted Airport this Sunday, and overall I'm going to use TT more often, as I subscribed one month free trial of TT's traffic information, so I could observe the problem closer.. But what are your experiences so far, guys? Hi Evad, I used the Kaiser's GPS functionality for the first time properly yesterday on the way to Bath. The traffic was pretty heavy so all in all we were in the car for about three hours and I'd have to say that the GPS was very good in terms of time to first fix, on warm fix (as the missus needed a service station break!) and it held a steady fix for the whole journey, generally nearly full bars and this seemed fairly steady. So I was really pleased. What is a HUGE issue, is this problem where fiddling with the external gps settings breaks the GPS, requiring a reset. Paul mentions it here GPS Settings, but I actually think this would have been a bug that would have prevented market release if thought about properly. Now, I'm not in the habit of fiddling with things that I know will make my life difficult, but I have hard reset this bloody thing around 8 times now! First it was the pre-Kaiser release of CamerAware which seemed to change these settings and yesterday, I made the huge mistake of installing Mobiblogr. This has some kind of Geotagging feature. However, I forgot about this and it tried to geotag one of my photos, in the process changing the hardware port from "none" to "7". This totally broke the GPS and I was left TomTomless on the way home tonight! Happily, Bath to London is fairly direct, but that could have been a disaster! Really is a huge problem. Any program that may have GPS functionality can effectively break the GPS. I personally think this is a great device, but this needs to be addressed urgently by HTC in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dolbe666 Posted September 15, 2007 Report Share Posted September 15, 2007 Hi Evad, I used the Kaiser's GPS functionality for the first time properly yesterday on the way to Bath. The traffic was pretty heavy so all in all we were in the car for about three hours and I'd have to say that the GPS was very good in terms of time to first fix, on warm fix (as the missus needed a service station break!) and it held a steady fix for the whole journey, generally nearly full bars and this seemed fairly steady. So I was really pleased. What is a HUGE issue, is this problem where fiddling with the external gps settings breaks the GPS, requiring a reset. Paul mentions it here GPS Settings, but I actually think this would have been a bug that would have prevented market release if thought about properly. Now, I'm not in the habit of fiddling with things that I know will make my life difficult, but I have hard reset this bloody thing around 8 times now! First it was the pre-Kaiser release of CamerAware which seemed to change these settings and yesterday, I made the huge mistake of installing Mobiblogr. This has some kind of Geotagging feature. However, I forgot about this and it tried to geotag one of my photos, in the process changing the hardware port from "none" to "7". This totally broke the GPS and I was left TomTomless on the way home tonight! Happily, Bath to London is fairly direct, but that could have been a disaster! Really is a huge problem. Any program that may have GPS functionality can effectively break the GPS. I personally think this is a great device, but this needs to be addressed urgently by HTC in my opinion. Im not sure HTC will see this as a fault due to the phone, rather 3rd party software which HTC will not hold responsibility for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Neil5459 Posted September 15, 2007 Report Share Posted September 15, 2007 No- the fault is with the hardware (or firmware), which seems not to conform fully to the NMEA standards. All other devices with GPS can be 'broken' by incorrect settings, even caused by bad software, but they can all be recovered by reconfiguring the settings (isn't this what a settings CP is for?); the Kaiser goes into a terminal sulk if the settings are altered, which prompts the quetion, why have a settings CP at all if that's the case? The 'External GPS' label on the CP is a red herring, as it controls both internal or external GPS settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Neil5459 Posted September 15, 2007 Report Share Posted September 15, 2007 Evad- are you sure your device has a clear view of the sky, and you don't have one of the 'screened' windscreens that prevents signals getting through? It would seem that your SatNav signal is relying on the settings it receives from QuickGPS rather than 'live' satellite signals, so the further/longer you go from the last aquired signal, the less accurate your 'fix' is. Have you tried using it in a different car, or while walking, etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J273 Posted September 15, 2007 Report Share Posted September 15, 2007 I was trying out camera aware the other day and it was pretty much full bars then all of a sudden it dropped fix and took a few mins to reconnect again. Didnt paul mention there was a GPS bug in the firmware....not sure if its this or not though? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest squiggs1982 Posted September 15, 2007 Report Share Posted September 15, 2007 Im not sure HTC will see this as a fault due to the phone, rather 3rd party software which HTC will not hold responsibility for. I'm with Neil on this one. As you can "break" it by changing the settings in the external GPS settings yourself, it isn't a third party software issue and is a flaw in the design of the device. One, which if you aren't familiar with the foibles of WM devices, may lead you to believe there is some hardware problem and may see a substantial number of warranty returns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kapot Posted September 15, 2007 Report Share Posted September 15, 2007 Here is my latest report about the GPS. I just used TomTom6 for about 1 hour 30 minutes one trip, and another 1 hour 30 minutes for going back. The sky was not so clear, and about 50% not in the highway. I dont connect it to the car charger ;) For the first trip, the battery was down from 97% to 46%, I set the backlight to maximum ! For the going back trip, I set the backlight to the second stop and turn off the phone. When I arrived at home, the battery was 8% Total km around 250 km. Now .. TomTom worked fine :wub: No glitch at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest evad Posted September 15, 2007 Report Share Posted September 15, 2007 Evad- are you sure your device has a clear view of the sky, and you don't have one of the 'screened' windscreens that prevents signals getting through? Yes, I'm sure. Sometimes GPS signal is jumping around when I'm in city centre, around high buildings, but I've got suspicious when problems were still occurring while in open area with little clouds above... It would seem that your SatNav signal is relying on the settings it receives from QuickGPS rather than 'live' satellite signals, so the further/longer you go from the last aquired signal, the less accurate your 'fix' is. Have you tried using it in a different car, or while walking, etc? Today it was behaving well. I will use it more often within next couple of weeks, so I could observe it better... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest evad Posted September 16, 2007 Report Share Posted September 16, 2007 (edited) I've been using TT+GPS quite extensively today from the early morning (like 3am), and I must admit it was behaving very, very well! I didn't have to run QuickGPS at all, GPS signal was always very strong, and overall I was really impressed. I have, however, noticed once something very, very strange, rather not related to GPS, tough - at some point Kaiser just got frozen. Display got standstill, there was no reaction on any buttons or screen tapping. TomTom was still giving voice guidance in the background tough. I've pressed power button to put it into sleep mode, and then I've woke it back up. I'm not sure how to describe the display state after that - I can only recall a grey noise in TV when there is no signal from aerial. But then I've pressed power button for few seconds - like I wanted to switch it off totally. Nothing showed up on the screen (obviously), but then I pressed main d-pad button (confirm 'Yes'), and Kaiser switched off normally! What I suspect is that Kaiser's display ran into some kind of but and got completely locked up, despite device was working normally in the background (TT was giving voice guidance, there was 'virtual' reaction on buttons, etc.). At the time TT was running, with traffic updates over GPRS/3G, and it was connected to the car charger. Very strange - this is the very first time it happened... Anyone had similar experience? Edited September 16, 2007 by evad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kapot Posted September 16, 2007 Report Share Posted September 16, 2007 evad, No, I have not got that experience. Could that be because of the "Traffic update"? ... maybe it was lost connection and tried to re-establish the connection, etc. And combined with sudden drop of signal, plus complex map location ... and other background activities (if any) ... ;) PS: I dont use traffic update btw, dont have the subscription. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lozzd Posted September 16, 2007 Report Share Posted September 16, 2007 Ah, interesting, so the display crashed and went all garbled? I get this a lot in certain applications on my Wizard. I'm not sure if its related to overheating or hard processor work or something I get it a lot in Metro, and in Calculator(!) No idea what it's linked to, but turning the device on and off fixes it usually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Neil5459 Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 There was a message in the 'Annoyances' thread, that when using HSDPA data, the Kaiser got very hot, and the screen became scrambled. Maybe the GPS receiver is causing the same phenomenon? The GPS can get very hot (I have a Trinity, but it does get hot- never lost the screen though. My previous FS N560 did sometimes overheat with the GPS on, and scrambled the screen till it cooled down) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest evad Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 No, I have not got that experience. Could that be because of the "Traffic update"? ... maybe it was lost connection and tried to re-establish the connection, etc. And combined with sudden drop of signal, plus complex map location ... and other background activities (if any) ... :) PS: I dont use traffic update btw, dont have the subscription. I've just came to the office, after over 1h30m journey (Monday blues), all the time with TT & traffic updates switched on. No problems, whatsoever, this time. No display lock-up, either. GPS itself also worked great, but once I've entered city centre with tall buildings around, signal strength was dropping down intermittently, but with no affect to positioning itself. In terms of battery getting hot - this is true, and this is because of 3G/HSDPA background activity (as someone pointed it out already in 'annoyances' thread), not GPS. When traffic updates are switched off, and no 3G connection is needed - battery's temperature is rather low and stable. Regarding traffic updates itself - there is one month free trial, then sth around £30/year. Just register at tomtom.com, and then activate service straight in TT. So far I could say it works 'so so'. It wasn't showing usual traffic jams on my daily route, then it showed a jam on A40 eastbound where there was almost no traffic at time... Well, I still have nearly a month to test it properly, so will see... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jwexqm Posted November 12, 2007 Report Share Posted November 12, 2007 Just to say that I replicated the original poster's reported bug this weekend on a road trip. One minute there was a 4 bar signal with good tracking fidelity and then it suddenly jumped to 1 bar, apparently still with a fix, but travelling at 200mph somewhere else in Europe. Restarts of TomTom didn't cure it. Feels like a GPS firmware bug to me. I'm running an Orange Kaiser with radio 1.27.12.29 if that's of interest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Noger Posted November 12, 2007 Report Share Posted November 12, 2007 Just to say that I replicated the original poster's reported bug this weekend on a road trip. One minute there was a 4 bar signal with good tracking fidelity and then it suddenly jumped to 1 bar, apparently still with a fix, but travelling at 200mph somewhere else in Europe. Restarts of TomTom didn't cure it. Feels like a GPS firmware bug to me. I'm running an Orange Kaiser with radio 1.27.12.29 if that's of interest. Exactly the same thing last Tuesday. Worked fine on the way down to the meeting. On the way back was doing 600mph over Ireland ! A Soft Reset sorted things out however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest geordiekid Posted November 12, 2007 Report Share Posted November 12, 2007 I've got a problem with the GPS Photo option... whenever I take a photo (say, in West London, Hammersmith), the location data that is attached to the picture is wrong. The snaps I have been taken, once uploaded to Flickr show the image has been taken in Thurock - miles away! I've tried using Google Maps first, checking the GPS does have the right location, and then taking a photo... but they still come back with Thurrock (or wherever) as the location. Any suggestions? gk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Droid8000 Posted November 30, 2007 Report Share Posted November 30, 2007 Exactly the same thing last Tuesday. Worked fine on the way down to the meeting. On the way back was doing 600mph over Ireland ! A Soft Reset sorted things out however. I've had the same happen to me, twice. A trip north to Bradford was fine, but the trip back insisted I was 165 miles north than I was. It also happened a few weeks ago, again only on the return trip (this time from Leicester). The only common thing between them was that the return trips were after 7pm UK time and therefore in the dark. QuickGPS wouldn't fix the errors, neither would a soft reset. Each time the gps was back to normal by the next morning. I seriously though I'd broken the GPS chip the first time, because my wife's MDA Compact III was working fine, sat next to me in the car. Both of us running the same version of TomTom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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