Is your GPS working?
- Thread starter Yzlvr
- Start date
johnhwyman
Member
- Apr 26, 2011
- 4
- 0
It is working OK for me. Took about 3 minutes to find satelites the first time, after that it only takes a few seconds once I'm outside.
Mine is broken as well. Earlier I did a test with the gps test app in my house. With wifi on it tries to get a signal on a few satellites but never locks in as soon as you turn wifi off the gps stops working altogether. i just jumped in my truck took the tab for a ride along with my phone acting as a hotspot hoping that after a few minutes google maps would lock in a signal but it didn't. I checked the gps test app again and it was only looking at 3 satellites and the signal was very weak with no chance of locking in. I'd say the GPS is definitely broke on this one. I constantly get searching for signal as well.
it's later and I think I now have mine working. It took about 10 minutes to lock in but I've noticed if you do any app switching while using the gps it has to find the satellites all over. I's quicker then but it takes a bit and it doesn't work without a wifi connection. If you notice the circle by the clock once the center fills solid it's locked in.
it's later and I think I now have mine working. It took about 10 minutes to lock in but I've noticed if you do any app switching while using the gps it has to find the satellites all over. I's quicker then but it takes a bit and it doesn't work without a wifi connection. If you notice the circle by the clock once the center fills solid it's locked in.
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robdroid
Member
- May 4, 2011
- 141
- 13
Just picked up the A500 today, after reading about all the GPS issues that was the first thing I tried after basic setup. Happy to report it works fine, even from inside the house during a thunderstorm. Did take some time to acquire and lock on the first time so I installed 'faster fix' and set it for North America - tried Google maps anddound my location in under 30 seconds the next time.
EDIT: Cold started A500 this morning and it took about 60 seconds to acquire 3 sats, but another 6min or so to lock on with reasonable accuracy. Once running for 10min or longer, it finally gets a good lock on 5 sats and fixes my position to within 16ft.
Tried Both the Huawei Ideos S7 Slim and Samsung Galaxy Tab within the last two weeks- both locked on up to 7 sats from the same desk I'm running the A500 from, both were faster to acquire and lock on too.
Hopefully Acer will address the seemingly underperforming GPS in the A500 in a future FW update, cause I'd rate the rest of the tablet (not including the GPS) as 5 stars, the GPS by itself gets 1 star!
EDIT: Cold started A500 this morning and it took about 60 seconds to acquire 3 sats, but another 6min or so to lock on with reasonable accuracy. Once running for 10min or longer, it finally gets a good lock on 5 sats and fixes my position to within 16ft.
Tried Both the Huawei Ideos S7 Slim and Samsung Galaxy Tab within the last two weeks- both locked on up to 7 sats from the same desk I'm running the A500 from, both were faster to acquire and lock on too.
Hopefully Acer will address the seemingly underperforming GPS in the A500 in a future FW update, cause I'd rate the rest of the tablet (not including the GPS) as 5 stars, the GPS by itself gets 1 star!
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robdroid
Member
- May 4, 2011
- 141
- 13
It works fine as standalone with no wifi or tethering- it just takes longer to get the initial fix without wifi the very first time you use the A500's GPS.
If there is wifi available- it will try to get your general location via wifi so as to know which satellites to look for first to speed up the GPS's initial fix. Once the A500 knows your general location and guesses which sats to look for- the initial fix can happen in as little as 60 seconds or less with or without wifi cause the timeserver info has been cached from previous sessions.
For example- last night I cold started my A500 in my house- within the first min it was viewing 6-8 sats. It took about 2 min to get a good fix. Within 3 min it was using 6-7 sats with 8-9 in view.
After that- I cleared the GPS cache with "GPS Status & Toolbox" https://market.android.com/details?id=com.eclipsim.gpsstatus2&feature=search_result then shut down A500 and rebooted. Once rebooted, it took 3 min or so to even see 1-2 sats, finally got a 3rd sat after a while- then got my first location fix after about 5 min from cold start. And that's even with wifi assist. Went downstairs to let the dog out and do some other things- came back upstairs and looked at the A500- it had now found 8-9 sats and was using 8 sats consistently from indoors. Total time from cold start was about 15 min at this point.
Once again turned off the A500, rebooted- went into "GPS Test" app and had a initial fix in about 60 seconds (because the sat info had been cached from my previous session).
EDIT- Added Screen capture from indoors...
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