Help Getting GPS to work without service

[process613]

So when I bought this phone I was told GPS will work without service. I'm in Asia right now for 9 months and it doesn't. From my research, I think the problem is that agps does a call to verify that local service is available before it will kick the regular gps in. Forgive my crude tech speak, but I imagine there must be some sort of workaround. Is there any way to fake the phone into thinking it has a sprint service signal or is there a way to turn off agps? There must be some sort of hack I can do. I hope someone can give me something, this phone is an expensive brick here. And no, turning on airplane mode enabling wifi and gps location services don't help. I've tried every possible combination, I can't use the GPS without the phone verifying the sprint network.

"you need a network connection to get the api call to work. Once its running you don't need the network for it to keep running. A guy in the Droid forum told me that.

He says that if you turn your phone on in another country the api would not get some sort of response (license) from the network and the gps would not work"

 

[edp]

Goto your dialer and press *#1472365#

this will give you take you to the gps setup. try tinkering with the settings. idk if messing with things in setup will help, but it's worth a try. oh, and if by chance you do find a way to make it work in asia, please let us know what you did so we are in the know. hope you figure it out.

 

[AndroidSPCS]

I'm not sure even if you could bypass the api issue, it would work. The Moment does not have a huge database of maps, unlike the dedicated GPS units that have huge storage of maps and POIs (at least 1 GB or more of maps for the US, for example). Even with a dedicated GPS unit, if you travel out of country, you often have to buy new maps for the area you're going to, and download them to your GPS before you can use it.

If you're in Asia, you're better off just buying a dedicated GPS unit with Asia maps.

 

[MobstaJ]

I was able to get GPS to work recently while I was in Italy. Its a pain in the ass but it will find signal if you are out in the open and give it lots of time to find satellite locks. I used a program called igo for the maps. The key was that you have to have the radio activated for it to find the satellites. Once you get a lock you can then put the phone in airplane mode to conserve batteries and it will maintain lock.

Problem was when u turn the phone off and back on it would sometimes take forever to find the satellites again. All in all I wished I had brought my GPS but it does work in a pinch.

 

[AndroidSPCS]

I don't understand how you were able to make it work. Don't you need some sort of data plan to download the Italian maps? The phone itself doesn't store maps locally, as the map data is streamed to the phone via the cellular network.

How does the igo for maps work?

EDIT: found the link http://www.igomyway.com/android/en/overview.html

The compatible models does not mention Samsung Moment (SPH-M900) as a compatible phone, maybe it's outdated?

 

[MobstaJ]

Igo works fine with my Moment and android 2.1. They probably just haven't tested it. And with Igo street maps are stored locally on the SD card so the mapping still works. There are different maps for each country so you don't have to have all maps installed at once. I think the map I had of Italy was like 20 mb.

GPS satellite signal capture is much faster if you have a tower with aGPS but the moment is able to cold start and find the satellites if you are out in the open and give it enough time. One way to try for yourself to see if you're getting satellite locks is to download the program GPS Status for free and there's a setting so that the screen does not turn off. Let it sit in the open for a while. Again, make sure the radio is powered on with GPS activated. Once signal is acquired you can put the phone in airplane mode to turn off the CDMA radio and the signal should hold.

Once the screen turns off though the signal is usually lost and sometimes it would take just as long to sync up with the satellites again. So I'd say its not worth it. Better off with a handheld GPS.

 

[ovrrdrive]

Goto your dialer and press *#1472365#

this will give you take you to the gps setup. try tinkering with the settings. idk if messing with things in setup will help, but it's worth a try. oh, and if by chance you do find a way to make it work in asia, please let us know what you did so we are in the know. hope you figure it out.

Just a thought, there is a setting in there called "stand alone". I wonder if that would help...