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Hi all,
I was just wondering if anyone knew why my Weather tab has suddenly started mis-reporting my location as Oldham. I'm actually a few miles away. Up until recently it always found and reported the location of my fairly small home town accurately, and worked great elsewhere too.
Now however, it keeps defaulting to Oldham. It also sometimes says Rochdale, or occasionally Manchester. These are inaccurate too. Just a couple of weeks ago it always got my location right, but now it hardly ever does. It seems to have suddenly lost its ability to pinpoint my location, so simply defaults to a nearby large town or city, despite the fact I'm miles away from them.
Incidentally, the four dots around the GPS logo (next to the name of My Location) no longer 'gyrate' while updating. They used to rotate in a 'wobbly' orbit around the globe logo in the centre, presumably to indicate GPS activity. Now they just spin in a fixed orbit around the central point (GPS still works fine in TomTom7 and Google Maps etc).
I have Location Service enabled, and allow it to gather data on my location at any time. The problem remains the same whether I'm connected via WiFi or HSDPA, or both.
Does My Location actually use GPS, or just cell towers? Like I said, it worked fine up until recently. I know people have had various problems with the Weather tab, but I can't find anyone with this exact problem on here. Any advice would be gratefully received.
Thanks,
Rob.
Mate, the GPS is the least of your worries. If Oldham is the nearest place of interest to you, you should move home!
elyl said:
Mate, the GPS is the least of your worries. If Oldham is the nearest place of interest to you, you should move home!
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Click to collapse
lol
But on a serious note, weather worked fine for me, until one day I did a hard reset.
Now I have not once had the correct location at home.
Weird ay?
I suspect that your weather location is tied to your local cell.
GF is on t-mob and I'm on O2, our HD2s regularly report our local weather location as being in different places even though we're both on the same sofa, my guess is that it depends on which cell signal is strongest, maybe your local one is temporarily down?
elyl said:
Mate, the GPS is the least of your worries. If Oldham is the nearest place of interest to you, you should move home!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's my point; Oldham ISN'T my nearest town, but the damn phone keeps sticking it on my Weather tab anyway. My phone has never even been to Oldham!
My Desk in work officially sits between Brockworth and Hucclecoat. I get different locations at each side of my desk. It does sound like its a cell tower problem to me.
Yup depending where i am in town i get either north lincolnshire or appleby its very annoying
it doesn't use gps...uses information from the cell tower your phone is currently using. If that cell tower is labelled Oldham, then that's what you'll get.
I get saddleworth most of the time. I got tameside once which would be better
if i am getting hsdpa signal it's correct if i get 3g signal it reports wrong location.
Same here. I often get Poplar when I'm travelling through Hackney.
I experienced the same problem. It's weird that when I use Wifi, the location is about 30 miles away from where I am. But using 3g, it points to a couple miles away which is acceptable
here is one for you.. lmao
If I am upstairs at my computer I get Richmond, if I am in the guest room dirrectly below my desk down stairs, im in Preston. now if I force it to update, im in Smithfield until I get back to my computer and wait 15 minutes were I am once again, back in Richmond...
at leasts yours works, my location hasnt worked in the 2 months i had the hd2 works fine on my hero lolol
nokiaman1978 said:
if i am getting hsdpa signal it's correct if i get 3g signal it reports wrong location.
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Funny, it's the other way round for me - it's generally accurate if I'm getting a 3G connection, but when it's HSDPA (most of the time) it usually shows up wrong (I'm on T-Mobile).
Anyway, thanks all for the replies. Nice to know it isn't a fault on my handset at least. Doesn't sound like there's much we can do about it though.
Cheers,
Rob.
RH Photography said:
Funny, it's the other way round for me - it's generally accurate if I'm getting a 3G connection, but when it's HSDPA (most of the time) it usually shows up wrong (I'm on T-Mobile).
Anyway, thanks all for the replies. Nice to know it isn't a fault on my handset at least. Doesn't sound like there's much we can do about it though.
Cheers,
Rob.
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Click to collapse
It'll depend on which cell it's connecting to then. It's probably connecting to an H-enabled tower which is in Glamorous Oldham, and the fallback cell is just 3G/GPRS and closer to home.
i have the same issue, somethings its ok and recognises my location as swindon but in my house it says im in wroughton which is a small village about 5 miles away.
I had a problem like this, but mine was 100 or so miles out.
I found out it was to do with where my time settings were.
I chose manchester (closest major city [and home city for me]) for my time.
So it made the weather show manchester as my location.
now i've changed the time to my location, its the same in weather.
dont know how much use that is to you, worked for me though.
Once I turned off my t-mobile, I noticed my GPS sucks BIG time! Why? I was using copilot live to make my way around on the mainland (in CA) and now I can bearly grab 4 sats, when before I shut off the phone, I could easly grab up to 7+ sats? Because of the low sat grabs, I can't use the program to find my way around.
If I quit t-mobile, is there still a way I can get my HD2 phone to be unlocked to be used on my ATT? I'm not worried about not getting 3g. My wife just wants the bigger screen.
starstreak said:
Once I turned off my t-mobile, I noticed my GPS sucks BIG time! Why? I was using copilot live to make my way around on the mainland (in CA) and now I can bearly grab 4 sats, when before I shut off the phone, I could easly grab up to 7+ sats? Because of the low sat grabs, I can't use the program to find my way around.
If I quit t-mobile, is there still a way I can get my HD2 phone to be unlocked to be used on my ATT? I'm not worried about not getting 3g. My wife just wants the bigger screen.
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Click to collapse
Yes, it can be unlocked to use on AT&T, just be sure to call tmobile and request an unlock code while you're still a customer....otherwise you'll need to use one of the numerous pay sites to get you an unlock code.
As for the GPS reception getting worse, mainly the low number of sats you can acquire, that's probably due to the fact that you need to run the QuickGPS app on your phone regularly to get updated location info...if you don't have a data connection right now then your phone probably isn't getting those updates, and therefore will have more and more trouble getting any sat locks. Just connect your phone to the net using wifi or activesync, and run the app to update the data. You'll need to do this manually this way every week or so, if you don't have a 3g or edge connection for it to auto-update.
Crud. I already had my number ported to ATT yesterday. Augh.
Gotta be something like AGPS being turned off (since I have no carrier on it) and now its pulling less signal. QuickGPS had a few more days on it. It gave trouble the moment it lost a carrier. I don't want to do a hard reset yet, but so far, soft reset did nothing.
starstreak said:
Crud. I already had my number ported to ATT yesterday. Augh.
Gotta be something like AGPS being turned off (since I have no carrier on it) and now its pulling less signal. QuickGPS had a few more days on it. It gave trouble the moment it lost a carrier. I don't want to do a hard reset yet, but so far, soft reset did nothing.
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Click to collapse
yeah aGPS is data-dependent too, but it's never actually affected my ability to get a lock on the usual number of sats. In fact, when I just turned aGPS off manually and opened gmaps, I actually locked 8 sats in less time (like 2/3 less) than it took with it on.
Do you have access to a wifi network the phone can connect to? If so, hook up to the net through that and then see if your lock times and totals improve (after making sure aGPS is on of course).
hi,
is there a way if you can tell me your settings from your hd2? for the gps..
i live in calif. and i want to use the gps thats built in ,,and how do i find out if is enable?..and if is there other settings ,,to it..
thanks
Bit of an odd one. Basically at home with the phone on my home network T-Mobile I simply can't get a GPS fix. This problem has only happened in the last couple of weeks previously its been fine, a fix within seconds.
As some of you may know T-Mobile and Orange in the UK have now enabled roaming between the 2 networks. If I force the phone to roam onto Orange I get a GPS fix with-in a minute. Switch the network back to T-Mobile back to no fix.
If I'm in a different area, network on T-Mobile, fix within seconds. I thought maybe it's quick GPS wrongly loading the wrong area because of an issue in the cell db, I've set quick GPS to never update and now the GPS appears to cold start although quick GPS still says the data it has is valid for x number of days.
I've tried defaulting the phone but exactly the same with defaults and using GPS Test rather than TomTom.
Does anyone have any ideas? Is anyone else having the same issue?
I just tried another test. I roamed onto Orange and got a GPS fix in TomTom, I then set my network back to T-Mobile and the GPS fix was lost! As I switched networks I left TomTom running in the background.
A bit more testing. If I force the phone onto 3G T-Mobile the GPS works fine. My theory is what ever frequency the cell here operates on (some 5 miles away in the 1800MHz band) must be causing the some issue with the hardware
I'm thinking that most people wouldn't be able to experiment to see this, I'm just lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it that I'm in a position where I can switch networks therefore changing frequency within the 1800MHz band and I can stay in the same place to test it. I've had in the past where the GPS would loose its fix for no reason and then just come back while travelling on a motorway I wonder if this was the same thing. Also the chances of someone owning a HD2 using the GPS and being on a cell who's frequency causes a problem is pretty small, and if your travelling you're likely to just think it's dropped for some reason, and oh yes it's back again now so think no more of it.
You are getting confused between GPS and GPRS.
GPS is the satellite system that you use to pinpoint your location (as with TomTom). If your phone is indoors or has a restricted view of the sky, then it cannot receive a signal.
GPRS is a data connection between your phone and the telecoms company. It is basically 2.5G, which way a intermediate step before 3G became set up.
fred_up said:
You are getting confused between GPS and GPRS.
GPS is the satellite system that you use to pinpoint your location (as with TomTom). If your phone is indoors or has a restricted view of the sky, then it cannot receive a signal.
GPRS is a data connection between your phone and the telecoms company. It is basically 2.5G, which way a intermediate step before 3G became set up.
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No, completely understand the difference between GPRS and GPS
I've proven with out a doubt that when using the t-mobile cell serving our house (2g) there is no GPS signal. Use another network still 1800 and there is GPS, use 3g, or move to another area on t-mobile there is GPS.
GPS was working at home while on t-mobile upto a couple of weeks ago, I can only think that the cell has had some work done and has changed frequency.
twerki78 said:
No, completely understand the difference between GPRS and GPS
I've proven with out a doubt that when using the t-mobile cell serving our house (2g) there is no GPS signal. Use another network still 1800 and there is GPS, use 3g, or move to another area on t-mobile there is GPS.
GPS was working at home while on t-mobile upto a couple of weeks ago, I can only think that the cell has had some work done and has changed frequency.
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Silly question, but have you got AGPS activated? Because it can give you a rough location based upon the local cell transmitter info and any GPS satelite signals you may be recieving.
fred_up said:
Silly question, but have you got AGPS activated? Because it can give you a rough location based upon the local cell transmitter info and any GPS satellite signals you may be receiving.
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Click to collapse
I have AGPS disabled. I doubt my operator supports it. I have tried with QuickGPS disabled and enabled but makes no difference.
If I get a fix while on Orange, leave which ever GPS enabled application I have running, running in the background, force the phone back onto my home network (TMobile), go back to the GPS application there's no fix and no satellite signal being received not even a hint.
I've also tried with the SIM card removed and GPS performs perfectly!
Thank you, I thought I was going mad - my GPS has been working perfectly since I got the phone 6 months ago but in the last week has been dropping out or refusing to start at all.
I tried a hard reset, which fixed the problem until I started driving the next day - after a few minutes TomTom lost it's way. Using a bluetooth GPS proved the signal was good, so I was coming around to the idea that the phone was broken...
I have also now read other users that have had GPS problems when roaming, although usually when switching between countries.
Looking on the T-Mobile website about the orange roaming issue it say 'there might be a few quirky side-effects' but I haven't even signed up for the Orange roaming option, sounds like T-Mobile has changed something for everyone?
I have read that fixing the network choice to manual, not auto, can help with GPS issues while roaming - I've yet to test this.
boomboomer said:
Thank you, I thought I was going mad - my GPS has been working perfectly since I got the phone 6 months ago but in the last week has been dropping out or refusing to start at all.
I tried a hard reset, which fixed the problem until I started driving the next day - after a few minutes TomTom lost it's way. Using a bluetooth GPS proved the signal was good, so I was coming around to the idea that the phone was broken...
I have also now read other users that have had GPS problems when roaming, although usually when switching between countries.
Looking on the T-Mobile website about the orange roaming issue it say 'there might be a few quirky side-effects' but I haven't even signed up for the Orange roaming option, sounds like T-Mobile has changed something for everyone?
I have read that fixing the network choice to manual, not auto, can help with GPS issues while roaming - I've yet to test this.
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Click to collapse
I've had the issue for a couple of weeks I would say. Certainly last weekend I couldn't get a fix for ages when I set off and it wasn't until I was a way away from home that the GPS got a fix. This was before the roaming got switch on, of course it doesn't mean they were not doing something with the cell/network.
I too can get a perfect fix with external GPS or with a GPS nav system, or by changing networks! I've also tried another SIM card in the phone, again T-Mobile and get the same results.
I've attached some screen shots.
1st T-mobile no satellites, you'll notice that there isn't so much of hint of signal.
2nd Changing network.
3rd T-Mobile Orange and GPS fix.
All screen shots were taken with the phone in the same place.
Just come back from a drive just to test the GPS. Basically driven 30 miles away from home fixing the phone to T-Mobile and 2G and the only time I got a GPS fix was when the phone lost signal.
Parked in a layby and switched over to orange and got a fix with in a few seconds! Just can't figure out what the connection with being on T-mobile 2g is!
What Radio version is your phone using?
fred_up said:
What Radio version is your phone using?
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Click to collapse
Have the same issue with various official T-Mobile ROMs.
I had a play with updating my AGPS settings last night using the Google settings from this thread: http://ip208-100-42-21.static.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=544421 when working on Orange couldn't notice any difference, with T-Mobile still not GPS fix.
I left the GPS running over night on T-Mobile, admittedly indoors but somewhere I know I get a fix, there was still no fix 7 hours later.
I live in a rural village covered only by one cell mast. GPS starts and runs fine at home with or without the phone turned on. if I walk over the other side of the hill, different cell mast, the GPS drops out immediately - I can't test if 3G fixes the problem as it doesn't work here. Once the GPS has stopped I can't get it to start again, even switching the phone off to airplane mode doesn't help. Only a soft reset, with the phone still in airplane mode will allow the GPS to start.
Switching the phone back on and the GPS drops, however walking back over the hill to home - back to my original cell mast and the GPS starts again.
I'm pretty sure t-mobile have rolled out a change to their 2G system, but not to all masts? rural ones maybe last done hence why my home cell still works.
How to proceed from here? T-Mobile are kind of hard to talk to.....
One thing I did notice was in Memory Map the satellite view normally flicks across satellite numbers until it finds a signal, if the T-Mobile problem occurs this process stops and it would appear to have frozen the service?
I take back the hard to talk to part of my last post, I emailed support from the website and they phoned me back within 2 hours!
As to be expected they couldn't give any instant answers but I gave this thread as a reference and the problem is to be escalated.
The call centerthen phoned me back and asked if I was happy, also to offer me 30 minutes free calls for next 3 months - very nice thank you.
Good work boomboomer. Hopefully T-mobile will find something. I'd like to know what they find, still can't understand the connection between a GSM network and GPS though. I haven't tried a controlled test with flight mode but will try that later. Out of interest what part of the country are you in? maybe it's just a pocket of cells that are affective? I'm in the BA8 postcode area.
The problem certainly only affects 2G, 3G is fine.
I'm out of the country this week but fingers crossed T-Mobile will find the problem. It's nice to know I'm not the only one with a problem.
I'm quite a distance away, DT2 here.
I've been asked to test the GPS over the next few days and keep a log of when and where it doesn't work, they said their network people will ring me soon.
At least this fault is 'interesting' in the words of their technical support guy, he'd never heard of anything like it, so there's hope they will give it some time.
On the plus side they've also given me a free month of internet, so I can't fault their customer support focus.
Incidentally, do you have SPB shell installed? This was the only change I'd made on my phone at the time this problem started.
boomboomer said:
I'm quite a distance away, DT2 here.
I've been asked to test the GPS over the next few days and keep a log of when and where it doesn't work, they said their network people will ring me soon.
At least this fault is 'interesting' in the words of their technical support guy, he'd never heard of anything like it, so there's hope they will give it some time.
On the plus side they've also given me a free month of internet, so I can't fault their customer support focus.
Incidentally, do you have SPB shell installed? This was the only change I'd made on my phone at the time this problem started.
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Click to collapse
I didn't get chance to do any testing today at Heathrow as ended up being a bit rushed. I wouldn't say your not a million miles away. 22miles ish, the Cell that covers our home is in Dorset which is pretty useless when you have to call 999 because you get connected to Dorset who then can't pass you to Somerset and you end up being in a situation where you have no way of contacting Somerset 999 not great in this day and age! But I'm not going to get started on that one on this topic.
It's quite possible its a regional problem.
No I haven't installed SPB shell, I have tried it with a defaulted phone but still had the same problem.
I'm out the country now until Friday, but will do some testing when I return on my return journey. I'll fix the phone to 2g T-mobile and keep an eye on where the GPS drops out.
Oh dear, just got a call from T-Mobile technical networks - they don't support GPS as part of their service and won't be spending any time on the problem, case closed. They did say the problem seems to be with HTC devices only, blackberrys are not effected so it sounds like they have heard of the issue eleswhere?
Looks like it's a network switch required to solve the problem, shame that as I've been with T-Mobile for over 7 years.
boomboomer said:
Oh dear, just got a call from T-Mobile technical networks - they don't support GPS as part of their service and won't be spending any time on the problem, case closed. They did say the problem seems to be with HTC devices only, blackberrys are not effected so it sounds like they have heard of the issue eleswhere?
Looks like it's a network switch required to solve the problem, shame that as I've been with T-Mobile for over 7 years.
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Click to collapse
Hmm, T-Mobile sold me the phone for use on their network, the phone is sold with a GPS, that now doesn't work on their network surely they need to spend sometime working with HTC to resolve the problem.
I do have a case open with HTC under the ref 10gbc410001235 they were supposed to be taking it up with tier 2 but as yet I've not heard anything back. I'll have to follow it up when I'm back in the UK. It might be worth you also logging a fault with HTC quoting my ref. at least if 2 people call in with the same problem they may start to think it's not just one crazy with the issue!
My other half has a HTC Desire, I haven't checked the GPS on her phone. Not sure if they use the same chipset, of course one is WM the other android. I wonder if its a problem for all HTC phones or just the HD2?
So I had to go to China for 3 weeks for work. I had an ATT phone to use over there but I took my NS4G to use on wifi and for google maps. For some reason I could not get a lock on GPS no matter what I tried. As soon as I landed back in Chicago I pulled up maps and it locked right on. I was running open Soju but tried a stock rooted rom and MIUI while I was there and never could get a lock. Any ideas as I will probably be going back and not having maps sucked to navigate. I was sure my GPS took a crap on me and the phone was going back when I returned but it works great back in the states.
I noticed MIUI had a erver address that I assume is for agps. If I changed that to a china server would that work?
I went to China last month and had the same difficulty in getting a GPS lock. As soon as I bought a data package (around 300mb for 1 week for about 20+ Yuan. The china mobile prepaid simcard costs around 50 Yuan with some preloaded credit), the GPS locks very quickly.
I'm using the GSM NS i9020t so I could use a Chinese sim card, I'm not sure if an ns4g can do that.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium App
Thanks I wondered if having data off was the problem. Can anyone explain what GPS exactly uses the data connection for? Why can't wifi do the same thing? I thought about buying a NS in Hong Kong but my ATT phone doesn't have a sim card but I wasn't aware of the pre-paid sims. Thanks for the reply.
Most phones use A-GPS there are some that can serve as a standalone gps but I am almost sure that the nexus needs to combine the gps signal with cell tower position to get a gps lock
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
I had the regular nexus s and I just came back from china last week. The GPS was working outdoors for me in airplane mode. Beijing, Xi'an particularly. But it took longer than normal to get a lock ....like 10-20 sec I figure? Some time pollution was so bad that even the GPS had could figure out my position in Xi'an.
This also goes for my Motorola xoom in airplane mode. It picked up my position like in a split second. This is without any data or wifi. Just only in airplane mode.
This is a AT&T Atrix with a fresh darkside ROM on 0.1.9 kernel....
the GPS was working perfect over back home and would lock on within few seconds...
I just came on vacation here for a week and now it's taking FOREVER (from a minute to never) to get a lock. at times it'll 'see' 6-11 satellites and still can't track...
any ideas with this?
Clear data and cache for Google Maps, Mapdroyd and other such software.
Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk
I reset AGPS on gps status
if i clear cache, i might loose pre cached maps as i ached it for walking around town
I was in Paris over the summer with the atrix. Unfortunately I felt similar issue. It takes about one minute or more to lock on to GPS. Sometimes I had to reboot the phone. Problem is I find that all phones that have GPS chips built in usually
have very cheap chips inside. Thing is I believe that phone manufactures put low end chips to save cost. Plus they rely on the fact that you are using data all time with google maps. With data, GPS can lock on very fast since it can talk to the cell towers and find out where it is. But there isn't really anything you can do since your traveling and obviously not paying for roaming. If you can get a WiFi hotspot that will make your GPS lock quickly again. Other than that you have to just wait in an area with a lot of open sky.
bummer... my dad's iphone connects well, but he bought data plan with it...
around eiffel it picked it up rather quick (open space I guess) but around buildings it was worse. much worse than downtown miami back home...
I was hoping on relying on that alot lol. too bad I gotta use maps now. omg, so old school (haha)
When the A-GPS is deactivated, which I guess it is, since you guys deactivated data (because of expensive roaming) it takes longer.
The GPS needs to "download" the Almanac and that takes time!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Almanac
But once this happened, it should lock back on much faster. The case here might be that our phone relies on data/ A-GPS, so the Alamanac doesn't get stored.
Can someone with a stock-ROM confirm this?
It acquires a lock much slower because it can't use A-gps like it does in the US.
To tackle this you would need to connect it to WiFi in france, change your ntp server to a european one with FasterFix or manually, turn on gps and get it to lock on once.
After that time it will download a-gps cache relevant for European locations and things will go much faster.
Well using the wifi at the hotel. I downloaded the newest a-gps data with gps status. it's 0 days old...
at times I'd see 4-5 sats today, but still had trouble. but my dad's iphone (and my and their ipads) trac with GPS right away.
I even turned on data to check if this was the cause and it didn't help. that test cost me about 700kb which probably will cost me 10 bucks
Had the same issue in France and England last month
I was in Paris and London with my wife a few weeks ago and I saw the same thing happening in both cities/countries. I have an unlocked (free by AT&T) Atrix and I was using prepaid SIMs from Orange France and Orange UK so I had 3G data in both countries. Before I left for Europe I had pre-cached Google Maps of Paris and London as well but found out I didn't need to since it was pretty easy for me to get a data connection in both cities.
Anyway, when I tried to use GPS while walking around town it would sometimes take several minutes for it to get a lock on my position. Several times it took so long I just used the map itself to find my way around instead of waiting for the GPS to locate me.
Anyway, it's a bit off-topic from the original post but if anyone is about to go visit either of those cities/countries I would highly recommend getting your phone unlocked so you can buy a prepaid sim when you land. You can walk into an Orange store in Paris and for 10 euros you get your prepaid account setup with a remaining 5 euro credit and then you pay for a 10 euro "recharge" to your account which you can then use to get unlimited data for one month. In London you can get a prepaid "Dolphin" sim for 10 pounds and then another 10 pounds will buy you 250 MB of data (it's not unlimited in the U.K.).
no Agps. /thread
You can modify /system/etc/gps.conf to make gps start faster for the certain region, as I did (I have AT&T Atrix, but live in Russia). Here is my contents of gps.conf:
Code:
SUPL_HOST=supl.google.com
SUPL_PORT=7276
NTP_SERVER=ru.pool.ntp.org
XTRA_SERVER_1=http://xtra1.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
XTRA_SERVER_2=http://xtra2.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
XTRA_SERVER_3=http://xtra3.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
I think you can use europe.pool.ntp.org for France.