Rebooting I900 for faster GPS fix ?

[Guest tmichel]

Dears,

I did notice if I use my Omnia for a couple of days without using the GPS

and without rebooting the phone, the GPS fix takes far more longer.

It is even worst when driving during fix:

for sample, I used my phone for a week without using the GPS

and then, driving, decided to turn GPS on. I did drive 30 minutes

without getting even a fix. Sats came and gone, came back and again gone.

Rebooting the phone, I got the fix in less than a minute.

So, I tough about navigation sw timeout and decided to eliminate it.

In the same conditions than above (and on same itinerary, same clear weather condition),

I monitored GPS fix with VisualGPS. Same GPS fix behaviour.

It seems to me even when not driving and keeping phone in a fixed

position than GPS fix to be fastest if you fresh-reboot the omnia.

My GPS setup is with XTA Disabled.

Is it just an impression or do other user think like me ?

Any trick to reset GPS Stack/Chip before ?

Or is it WM6.1 GPS SW Stack that is getting trouble and need to

be reset by reboot ?

Thanks

Thierry

[Guest Conur87]

I'm not quite sure if rebooting reduces gps fixing time, but it is widely known that if gps fixes once, it is going to be fixed much more faster until you reboot the system.

[Guest X-Ray A4T]

My GPS setup is with XTA Disabled.

That is your problem. XTRA data is only about 40KB but if it is disabled you need to download that data from the satellite at a very slow rate and this is made worse by driving as you keep losing the download stream from one satellite and need to start downloading it from another satellite.

I have XTRA data enabled to download about once a week. I normally get a lock before I've agreed with the warning on the Garmin software.

Unless you are roaming the cost of using XTRA data is very small. It is not like you need to constantly download data from the 3G network to get GPS data, once the XTRA data is downloaded you don't need to download it again for quite some time.

[Guest tmichel]

Thanks for your replies.

I monitored my gps activity another way on yesterday's travel back to home :

start driving, rebooting GPS. With Visual GPS, got fix in less than 1 min and no prob.

Locked on 7 stats. Great.

This morning, without rebooting my phone, took car to go to office. Turned Visual GPS on

and monitored sat. Discovered 2 or 3 sats, sometime getting short poor fix with 2 sats for

efew secs then sync'ing forever. Rebooted phone, started VirtualGPS, 1 min after, I was locked.

Strange....

TH

[Guest X-Ray A4T]

Instead of rebooting try turning flight mode on then off (or phone off then on) as the GPS radio is linked to the phone radio. Turning off the one turns off the other. I find occasionally I get a bad "fix" and the location varies wildly, rebooting the GPS hardware rather than the whole phone fixes this and it is much quicker.

[Guest tmichel]

Thanks for the tip, I will give it a try :-)

Th

[Guest Revhead]

I run IGO8 on mine.

I have found the time varies greatly to get a fix from a few seconds to 30 minutes.

I have done the tweaks doing the rounds and update the XTRA data when linked to my home network.

One thing I have noticed is that if you use your GPS software regularly it seems to take less time. During a weekend away recently I was using it all the time and it only took a couple of minutes to get a lock each time I fired up the navigation.

Then I didn't use it for a couple of weeks and it was back to 30 minutes, XTRA or no XTRA.

MTC

PS thanks for the tip about flight mode. I'll give it a try.

Edited July 7, 2009 by Revhead

[Guest X-Ray A4T]

Hi, I've notice something because my phone crashed a couple of times. I have two different situations where Garmin XT will show searching for satellites. The first is when it appears to not be getting data from the GPS, the signal level is blank and going to the GPS info screen it shows no satellites, it eventually seems to connect, this can take a couple of minutes, and I get a lock almost immediately. Secondly there is the case where the signal level shows 2 red bars, going to the info screen shows a couple of satellites, even inside the lifts inside our offices, once it has sufficient satellites I get a lock, usually in under 30 seconds, often before I've agreed to the warning message (which disappears after about 2 minute btw if you don't want to agree to it.) A subset of the second is when I have no XTRA data. There it can take 2 to 5 minutes to download the XTRA data first before it will get a lock, and if I am indoors or driving this can take even longer or not lock. I have also noticed that if the screen goes blank the GPS gets turned off so if you are not getting a lock because of no XTRA data which you need to download from the satellites, a blanking screen could make you disconnect and have to start the download all over again.

I have tried rebooting and powering down to replicate the no data from GPS but I have not been able to reproduce it.

Ray

[Guest ^nighthawk^]

Hi, I've notice something because my phone crashed a couple of times. I have two different situations where Garmin XT will show searching for satellites. The first is when it appears to not be getting data from the GPS, the signal level is blank and going to the GPS info screen it shows no satellites, it eventually seems to connect, this can take a couple of minutes, and I get a lock almost immediately. Secondly there is the case where the signal level shows 2 red bars, going to the info screen shows a couple of satellites, even inside the lifts inside our offices, once it has sufficient satellites I get a lock, usually in under 30 seconds, often before I've agreed to the warning message (which disappears after about 2 minute btw if you don't want to agree to it.) A subset of the second is when I have no XTRA data. There it can take 2 to 5 minutes to download the XTRA data first before it will get a lock, and if I am indoors or driving this can take even longer or not lock. I have also noticed that if the screen goes blank the GPS gets turned off so if you are not getting a lock because of no XTRA data which you need to download from the satellites, a blanking screen could make you disconnect and have to start the download all over again.

I have tried rebooting and powering down to replicate the no data from GPS but I have not been able to reproduce it.

Ray

I use the GPS_XTRA app and that helps quite a lot, apologies if you are already using it.

[Guest tmichel]

I think I pointed out the problem : GPS WM Mgmt was setup to

communicate with Omnia Built in GPS Chip at 4800 bps but from Apps,

GPS was in autodetect mode. Maybe did the Apps open the WM's

GPS Virtual COM Port at an higher or multiple rate (9600/14400/...).

Anyway, I forced port AND speed from navigation app (COM3@4800)

and I am now getting 5/6 Sats fix in less than 1-2 min, driving or not .... :-)

Looks promizing before holidays :-)

Cheers

Th