GPS activates itself (Drei Austria / Italy)

Edit by @Stefan: Please find the bug report here:

https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp1-gps-activates-itself-when-mobile-data-connection-is-active-or-i-make-a-call/25541/3?u=stefan&source_topic_id=25418

Original Post

since a couple of days the gps on my FP1 activates itself.
i have a privacy-app installed and set it that way, that i get asked before any app wants to use location-information or wants to activate the gps.
but the gps seems to start anyway…

since a friend of mine has the same problem since a view days i thought this might be a FP1-issue?!
does anyone experience the same?
even more relevant - does anyone know a solution for this?
thanks,g.

I don’t experience this.

Do you both use the same privacy-app (which one btw?)? Which apps do you have in common?

i use XPrivacy. The other phone-user has nothing, as far is i know.
i don´t use that many apps… some timetable-route-planning-apps for public transport, offline-routeplanning (and google-maps), randomly a weatherforecast-app.
but for all of them i have dissabled GPS by default and had to activate it each time i use the apps. until a view days ago…

maybe the update to android 4.4 solves the problem… :slight_smile:

There are a couple of system components that can activate GPS, which may escape the attention of privacy apps. Not sure if I recall correctly, but the camera could be one of them (if GPS location info is turned on in settings). I remember this as being fairly persistent until the system had a good idea of the location (i.e. the only thing that made it stop was turning off location access in the system settings). A couple of different system apps run under the same app id (making it difficult to figure out what exactly is triggering something) and XPrivacy by default doesn’t restrict system apps (which also includes Google Play Services, if installed).

Bizarrely, there also seems to be a link to the use of mobile data with some SIMs (e.g. this topic). As this also doesn’t appear to be linked to a specific app, this probably also wouldn’t trigger a notification.

I have exactly the same problem since two days, without me changing anything. I have already tried quite some things to get rid of the gps-signal - the overall settings which permit apps to use GPS switched off - they switch on, as soon as I am using mobile outside of wifi-mode. I have resetted the fairphone, used the save mode - downgraded it to cherry 1.6, upgraded it again to kola.nut, resetted it again - at the point where nothing would work anymore, the gps still did swich on - since it also did so in the completly plain state after resetting, without a single app installed, I am quite convinced it is a fairphone issue.

This made me think of the time & date settings: Do you have it set to “Use GPS time”?

This:

and

and another thread, where it only occurs with a specific SIM (can’t find it now). Not sure whether this is an obscure error handling certain networks, or whether this is somehow intended behaviour.

Hey - thank you for your hints - no, I have not set time and date according to gps but to the network itself, so this should not be the issue - i have not changed my sim, nor anything else, which makes me wonder, why it still happens - if it would be intended, I should at least get, why it would be so, no?

Reading around a bit, it seems this happens on more MTK phones. It also appears to be a combination of MTK phone and carrier, and can appear suddenly. There are a couple of suggestions that making some changes in engineering mode makes it go away until a reboot. I can’t verify anything of this, nor have I found an explanation as to why this would work, but if you want try this at your own risk: open the phone app and type *#*#3646633#*#* into the dialing pad to start engineering mode. Scroll right to the ‘others’ heading, select SWLA, tap ‘Assert Modem’ and finally tap ‘Enable Software LA’ - there will be a network disconnect and reconnect. You may then also need to disable and re-enable location in the general settings.

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When traveling, I noticed it happened in other states, but not in mine anymore, so I’m pretty sure it’s carrier related.

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I have the same problem and I have tried this, too. Unfortunately it doesn’t help. Any other solutions?

i still could not solve the problem…
but at least your threads helped me in that way, that i now can say:
the gps keeps turning on, when i use mobile data!
if i use wifi or no data-service - gps stays off.

so maybe its not caused by a specific app… but why did this problem start in the first place just a couple of days ago?
i have my FP1 since 2014 (without any problem), did not update the android-version (yet) or even installed any new apps (the days, before the gps-error occured)…

does anyone have a clue?!

If this is caused by your mobile operator, maybe they changed something in their configuration.

Hi,

did you find any solution to this problem. Me and my wife we both have an FP1U and are using 3Drei (an austrian operator). We didn’t install any apps or updated the OS.

A few weeks ago the GPS was activated every few minutes. I followed the discussion and came to the following coclusion:

+) did a factory reset/wipe, install Stock Android, installed Fairphone OS again etc.

nothing helped.

I tracked the problem down to the same source as you mentioned above: as soon as I switch on my data connection, GPS is turning on.

A call to 3Drei didn’t not help at all - as expected. I need the data connection, so the phone is actually useless for me without a solution. Would be great if anyone has an idea - simply turning it off is not a solution :wink:

Thank you,
Regards Rene

i have the same austrian provider (3Drei).

i made an online “sim-card update” from 3Drei - but nothing changed.

my friend has orange and the same problem (but as far as i can remember,
orange and 3Drei are the same company/network). since he uses another
simcard, thanks to dual-sim, he tried to use the data-service with the
second provider (telering) - and the gps did not turn on!

so there has to be a problem with 3Drei-dataservice and GPS on FP1.

seems i found the problem - but still no solution…

That’s a tough one! Could you open a topic in #software:bug-reports, where we can make a structured collection of all the details that we have?

I tried but I have no rights to do this.

Rene

Ups, sorry, I levelled you up! :smiley:

still not possible, button “new topic” is greyed out.

Basic is not enough.

@Rene_Sendlhofer I temporarily leveled you up to regular user. Now it should work.

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