my GPS location is inaccurate (defective phone/replace)
I have a known location that I can walk to - remember, I live in the desert at high elevation and I have a GREAT sky view.
When I do that on my Evo, I'm dead at the location shown on Google Maps. I mean, dead on.
I just did that on my 3vo - and I'm off by at least 70 meters.
7 birds, locked and strong signal.
Anyone else testing this yet?
Oddly, when I installed Compass (catch.com, free, Market) and calibrated it, the location gave my house location correctly. Where I did the install/calibrate.
Repeated this test 3 times on a walkabout.
I get the whole GPS works outdoors thing (I worked the system ground station software for DOE/DoD) - but! - with my Evo, I could use it inside my house, and the worst it would do is show me just outside the nearest wall.
This is at least consistent - a good 70+ meters off, inside or out.
And - I'm not 100% sure - but it sure looks slower to lock. Takes a few extra seconds - I think.
My Evo 4G was also dead on with GPS location. +/- 2ft I'd say when I zoom in on a map. I go off-road on trails that are visible by satellite imagery but not known by the map maker, so I know it's not some trick of my position snapping to the nearest known road.
I'll have a chance to test the Evo 3D tomorrow during my 8-mile run in the woods. Will report the results.
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Try downloading GPS Status, calibrate and then try it again, mine is spot on here in and out, I even test the Golf GPS app I use and checked the yardage to the first green and spot on
Try downloading GPS Status, calibrate and then try it again, mine is spot on here in and out, I even test the Golf GPS app I use and checked the yardage to the first green and spot on
Early, if I get perfect results tomorrow with my GPS test (without using any calibration app), I say you should go exchange yours, esp. if GPS is very important for you.
Given that I'm getting consistently over 600 kbps upload in 3G and below 200 kbps download - in addition to this issue - I'm definitely suspicious that this particular unit has that lemony scent.
The HTC GPS solutions I've seen across the forums tend to all fall in as top-notch with occasional outlyers.
Better that this happened to me than someone else - the local guys do trust me, so I'm pretty confident that I'll be trusted that this one is probably defective and ought not be quietly re-boxed and re-sold to do further harm. I _trust_ my local guys, but, hey - you know.
Oh well - these things happen! One of the reasons I like buying locally.
PS - And yes, I did a battery pull - and a factory reset. Even the reset was weird - it did NOT erase one of my downloaded (non-SD card installed) apps - and it did NOT want to wake back up from the reset.
Yes, I was using my GPS for navigation last night and it was not performing nearly as well as the EVO. It also got my phone very hot and destroyed the battery - even more so than GPS navigation usually does. I am talking ten percent in 6 minutes.
Try going for a walk and creating a mytracks map to see how accurate it is.
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headed out for my run. will report back in 2 hours or so. will check battery life as well. On the Evo4G, the drain was about 15% per hour. GPS and 3G radios are on.
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Results are in. GPS locations for my run in the woods were 'dead on balls accurate.'
If anyone is not getting dead on balls accurate location, consider taking it back to the retailer for an exchange.
GPS was engaged for 1hr 8 min, along with 3G so my run app could broadcast my location every minute or so. Starting battery charge was 70%. End charge was 52%. 18% drain for that time frame is comparable to the Evo.
@Early: glad to hear that Sprint was able to identify a problem.
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I get literally the exact same signal as my other Evo did, and the GPS is the same so far. It's a little slower to lock on, but not long enough to where I would need to stop and wait if I were using it in a car. Seems okay in my book.
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Results are in. GPS locations for my run in the woods were 'dead on balls accurate.'
If anyone is not getting dead on balls accurate location, consider taking it back to the retailer for an exchange.
GPS was engaged for 1hr 8 min, along with 3G so my run app could broadcast my location every minute or so. Starting battery charge was 70%. End charge was 52%. 18% drain for that time frame is comparable to the Evo.
@Early: glad to hear that Sprint was able to identify a problem.
18% for 1hr of screen off GPS seems really high to me.
My first 3VO had a GPS that seemed lagged and inacurate. I just tested my replacement 3VO and the GPS is almost real-time and accurate to about 5 yards.
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hmm.... my 3VO's GPS puts me well over 100 yds from my house. It says I am at an address to the northeast of where I actually live. I have calibrated it, and it still doesn't want to give me a correct address. I went outside in my yard and performed the calibration, and it still says I was at a different address. Is my GPS defective? Everything else on this phone is just delightful, IMHO.
More info on the GPS:. So, the EVO 4G had a super GPS - this one has a normal GPS. So it's kind of the same thing as the speakerphone.
With the original EVO I could get a lock just about anywhere, inside even no problem. The 3vo really needs to see the sky, when it does see the sky it seems to be pretty accurate though; 3-4 meters.
I did a my tracks walk and it was pretty accurate. As soon as I walked under a roof though it completely lost accuracy. Might need to buy a convertible for navi.
So far, my experience with the E3D's GPS has been on par with my E4G's. Sitting at my desk (indoors), it's able to get a lock in about 20 seconds, comparable to E4G. Outside, it can get a lock in about 5 seconds, once again comparable to the predecessor.
One thing that I noted was that my GPS experience on E4G was MUCH improved on CM7 than the stock ROM. On Sense, I could rarely get a lock in a moving car. Really frustrating if I'm on a highway and the GPS lock gets broken. This was a consistent problem on Sense, and when I switched to CM7, it never happened again.
Last night, I discovered that my compass was all over the place. It apparently has no idea where NORTH is, because no matter which way I face, it points to a different direction for NORTH. I tested this outside, free of stray magnetism. Don't know what's up with that...
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I had something similar, my GPS works fine but yesterday when I used my Golf GPS app and the screen would go off, it would not show the proper yardage to the hole when waking the screen up, took a while to get the yardage back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by novox77
So far, my experience with the E3D's GPS has been on par with my E4G's. Sitting at my desk (indoors), it's able to get a lock in about 20 seconds, comparable to E4G. Outside, it can get a lock in about 5 seconds, once again comparable to the predecessor.
One thing that I noted was that my GPS experience on E4G was MUCH improved on CM7 than the stock ROM. On Sense, I could rarely get a lock in a moving car. Really frustrating if I'm on a highway and the GPS lock gets broken. This was a consistent problem on Sense, and when I switched to CM7, it never happened again.
Last night, I discovered that my compass was all over the place. It apparently has no idea where NORTH is, because no matter which way I face, it points to a different direction for NORTH. I tested this outside, free of stray magnetism. Don't know what's up with that...
I'm next to a window on the 8th floor of a building and I have 4 floors above me. I'm getting a reading that's off by about 300 yards. Maybe more. Tomorrow I'll try to get a clear view of the sky and try again. I sure hope I don't have a defective one.
I used Google Maps. I assume that's what we are testing our GPS position with. For a split second is identified my location correctly and then jumped back to the incorrect one. I'm gonna be bummed out if my GPS is no good
How do I calibrate it?
Edit: Just downloaded GPS Status. I only get signal from 1 satellite where I am sitting. It needs 3 to judge your true location, right? I guess that would explain it, right? Again. Will test more tomorrow. I really, really, don't want to have to return mine.
That's one thing my Palm Pre was always really spot on about was the GPS. I'd hate to lose that.
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Last edited by ArmageddonX; June 27th, 2011 at 12:53 AM.
This thread made me want to test my 3vo, I'm sitting in my bedroom and it still had me within 10/15 feet of my location, my bedroom is in the back of the house and the arrow had me in the back yard so it's pretty damned close lol.
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My first 3VO had a GPS that seemed lagged and inacurate. I just tested my replacement 3VO and the GPS is almost real-time and accurate to about 5 yards.
Hmm... mine never gets closer than 10 meters.... ever.
-edit-
Running GPS Test, side by side, I notice that my E4G is much MUCH faster at instantly locking 7 to 9 satellites for signal, and it's a good 10ft more accurate. The E3D is about 8 seconds behind it in locking in, and sits around 24 ft. up to 60 ft. randomly. Hmmm... something tells me the GPS isn't as good in the 3D....
Note that this is in an old renovated army barracks building made of brick and steel beams. I have 1 to 0 bars of signal in here. Not bad I'd say, honestly.
Last edited by Thefoodman52; June 27th, 2011 at 01:24 AM.
Inaccurate GPS and compass eh? It's good this is coming out. I hope mine won't "pull this kind of crap."
Is there a list of "common problems" yet? Wiki/thread?
Mine was simply a bad phone - got it replaced, now there's no issues.
And common problems threads tend to turn into common complaining, often over simple things that can be fixed, but lets everyone get lazy and not read or try the fixes - just get together for beeyotch sessions until the trolls come along. I hate those threads (most mods do).
We do have an official support FAQ linked from the official forum guide sticky tho.
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I'm going to do more testing when I get home. However, Mapquest seems to have my location perfectly while Google Maps consistently has been about 300 yards in the wrong direction. Granted, I am 8 floors up in a hospital and I have another 4 floor above me, but I am right next to a window. GPS Status says I'm getting at least 2/3 Satellite signals. So I'm going to try to test this more when I have a clear view of the sky directly above me. I will update this post when I know more. Thank you everyone for the suggestions here, hoping my unit is fine.
E3D doesn't appear to have a widespread issue with GPS. As Early stated, he had a one-off defective unit.
Compass issues are nothing new and definitely not limited to E3D. I shouldn't have brought it up in this thread, so if others care and use the compass, please start a new thread for that.
I'm happy to report, after coming home from the Hospital today my GPS is working perfectly. It must have been the added 8 stories of elevation throwing off my reading.
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Okay, so when I used the Compass app (from the market) it said that I was at a different address. However, when I went into google maps, it still gave me that address, but on the map it was pretty darn close. I'm going to use GPS Status + Toolbox to see if I can't get this more accurate.
has anyone swapped and gotten a 3d with a better radio? mine is close to unusable at my house whereas my old evo was pretty decent. almost out of time to swap, thanks.
has anyone swapped and gotten a 3d with a better radio? mine is close to unusable at my house whereas my old evo was pretty decent. almost out of time to swap, thanks.
EarlyMon (a fellow moderator) had an Evo 3D with a defective radio. He got an exchange, and all his radio woes were gone. He actually had Sprint do some RF diagnostics and conclusively proved that there was a defect.
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Might as well give it a try. I swapped mine because of dust and it was surprisingly easy. I didn't even have the box with me.
Yeah, I didn't bring the box and original packaged stuff cause I figured they would attempt to repair first. But the guy took my phone and started to activate a new one. He did ask if I had the box with me, and I said no. He said, "no problem; now you have two chargers."
I exchanged my phone for a completely different issue. But yeah, it was quite hassle-free.
I was curious after reading your posts. My data (3g) has been horrible almost since I picked it up a couple of weeks ago. I realize that some have dust under the screen, early the radio. When i call sprint corporate store about the data issue I get the "we have had an outage that has affected our area". I have done a factory reset, data restore, the proxy fix mahes the speeds worse. Mostly market won't connect, emails won't load dolphin hd won't load webpage and speeds as well as bars are almost non existant. My question: How can Ii tell if it's the phone or thenetwork. Oddly enough a young lady in Tennessee in customer support is having very similar experiences with her 3d. I was going to take it to the tech (franchise store) corporate store doesn't have tech. What do I need to ask to be checked and how can I find out if there is a REAL network issue?
Well, I just did a three-way comparison of GPS accuracy and lock time with a Sprint HTC Hero, a Sprint HTC EVO 4G and a Sprint HTC EVO 3D. They all locked on in around the same amount of time which was around four or five seconds and this is inside a house too. The accuracy between the Sprint HTC Hero and the Sprint HTC EVO 3D was very similar and accurate within four to six meters most of the time, again inside a house. The accuracy of the Sprint HTC EVO 4G seemed SLIGHTLY, and I do mean slightly, higher than the other two, but really we are talking about maybe a half a foot to a foot in terms of the placement of the blue arrow on Google Maps, which is negligible in my opinion. As for the compass accuracy, all three handsets were quite accurate in my testing. I did have to calibrate the Sprint HTC EVO 3D because it was the first time I had used it with Google Maps.
As a special bonus, I did a data download speed test between the Sprint HTC EVO 4G and the Sprint HTC EVO 3D and both were around the same speed at between 650 and 700 kilobits per second, which is normal here this time of night. During the day, the speeds usually creep up into the 800 to 1000 kilobits per second range periodically.
i only had an issue with GPS one time. I use mine to track my runs, and one day it was pretty inaccurate; I'd say it was scattering about 10 meters from my actual location. What this does is it causes my app to think I ran farther than I actually did (it just assumes I ran in a really zigzagging pattern, caused by the error of the GPS).
Before this incident, I had successfully proven that the GPS was capable of getting my location right to within 1 meter.
I was really concerned, obviously, so after the run, I rebooted the phone, and went out for another short run to test it. After the reboot, it was perfect again.
For 2 weeks afterward, I'd reboot my phone before my run, and I never had any issues. But lately (last 2 weeks), I've stopped rebooting, and so far, I haven't seen that issue again.
I turned on the gps but when I launch telenav the indicator arrow never moves and in the upper left corner it was so showing a no satellite image. My families evo and evo shift work perfectly so it is not the location. Also google maps arrow bounces around because it is using the wireless network and not gps even though it is turned on.
Try a battery pull for a full minute. If that doesn't work, suggest you have Sprint perform an RF test on your phone. It is quite possible that you need to replace your phone, as I did.
GPS worked perfectly over the weekend when travelling from Lake Michigan to the jimmy Buffet concert.
FYI. This is my 3rd 3VO and I have not updated Google maps beta or any other HTC OTA update. I've also used GPS Status to clear and update the AGPS.
The OTA may have been pre-installed if you exchanged the phone after the OTA was released (June 28th IIRC). Check About System > Software information. If your software number ends in .7, you have the OTA. If it's earlier than that, you don't.
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Sprint continues their EVO line of Android Phones with what is certainly a first for them - a 3D phone. The HTC EVO 3D boasts 3D technology on a beautiful 4.3-inch screen and get this: you don't even need glasses to enjoy the 3D experience!
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my GPS location is inaccurate (defective phone/replace)
