Thanks, RobDoc, that was a most helpful and detailed information. I’ll consider trying this, at least if things get worse.
For my own part I have noticed that GPS is not FP’s strength - it’s the only thing that worked better on my old HTC. But I have never had those really serious difficulties described in this thread. I may have to wait a minute or (aat worst) two for a fix but then it’s pretty stable. e.g. while driving and using Google Map’s navigator function.
Trying to download new EPO data files can be a nuisance and occasionally I’ve downloaded them manually.
After trying a lot downloading the files via PC and installing manually was for me the best (and only ;-)) way. I won’t use googleplaystore or the fix offered - I only want apps on the phone I hopefully understand what they do (and what not).
Triggered by this post I did a trip without the charger connected in the car. And indeed: GPS-behaviour is much better then. No more fix-loss observed and I’ve not been driving in the fields this time 
Now the question is: what causes this? The current going through the USB-cable? Because it is on the top of the phone, so close to the receiver?
Any work-around for this, as a long trip without charging is a no-go?
I can report that my FP1 now does have working GPS, however it takes on average about 105 seconds (getting on for two minutes) to lock on to the correct location. I’ll try it later without the mobile networks contributing.
As has been said by others, the FP’s GPS is disappointing compared with previous phones (my HTC also locked on in about 15 seconds).
Would be great if this could somehow get fixed in the next update. Is there any way I can contribute to bug reporting or that sort of thing?
This has been reported to the support team. You can always open a support ticket yourself, but due to the multiple reports, I don’t really see that would be necessary. Unless you have specific problems that haven’t been reported here.
I wonder if it can have to do with the charger and thus related to the problem described here: Touchscreen Goes Crazy While Charging
Personally, I have not experienced that charging affects my gps - I use a bog standard 3rd party car charger - from Belkin, if I remember correctly.
It’s an interesting thought that the placement of the usb jack - on top - could add to this. I’ve always seen that as a design mistake, and it’s really annoying when you have the phone mounted on your car dashboard. Moving it to the bottom would be a great improvement.
Whatever the cause (and possible solution) is: if I would have known or even guessed that the GPS would behave so poorly, I would never have bought the phone. No matter how fair it is 
what the… really?? thats very interesting, I always have it plugged in in the car, I’ll try this next time. The accuracy is the main reason I gave up on it, long GPS fix times are annoying but bearable, inaccuracy when driving was a killer though.
I had the same problems with the GPS that have been described in the forum (EPO files did not download, fixing my position was impossible etc). After the Cherry 1.6 update it did not (seem to) work neither.
A couple of days ago I just switched on the GPS on while waiting at a bus stop - and here we go: GPS works all of a sudden. Fixing my position within seconds: no problem. Tracking, navigation: no problem and with high accuracy. It just stops working as soon as I’m indoors.
It sounds too simple, but try the GPS outside! (no need to download EPO files before)
That would have spared me a lot of frustration, hopefully it helps some of you.
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Update: Gravitybox half …
danke, aber …
bei mir gibts da eine Fehlermeldung:
Box “USSD-Code wird ausgeführt” oder so, dann “Vebindungsproblem oder ungültigerMM-Code”
Wat nu?
Franz
Da hat die Foren-Formattierung zugeschlagen; die Zeichenfolge muss *#*#3646633#*#* heissen
After initially being so impressed with the FP1, a couple of recent car journeys has made me realise what people were talking about… the GPS is just terrible. So I’m working through the solutions suggested above.
One thing… from @RobDoc’s list, when I try “Copy EPO.DAT & EPO.ND5 to the folder /data/misc” I get a “permission denied” alert. Presumably I don’t have root access? Could anyone tell me what I need to do here?
Seriously, though… my previous phone (a 2009 HTC Desire) does GPS perfectly without any need for data backup. How does a £300 phone (a very good one in most aspects) get to this stage with such an obvious flaw?
You will need a file manager app that offers you to make use of your root privileges. FP’s default file manager does not. X-plore is one app that does this, but there are of course a lot more.
Even if I haven’t had any really big issues with FP’s GPS myself - save for the delay in getting a fix (1-2, sometimes even 3 minutes) - I suspect that the explanation can be the chipset used (Mediatek). Or maybe other HW parts, e.g. GPS receiver. Which means that it will be very difficult to solve the problems through a software update.
Oh, and there.s a small typo in robdoc’s post: Should be EPO.MD5, not ND5! Probably obvious…
The funny thing is that this happened with Tomi File Manager, which I thought would do the job. Will try X-plore, though…
In a terminal (I do it on a Mac):
adb push EPO.DAT /sdcard
adb push EPO.MD5 /sdcard
adb shell
Now you’re working on the FP directly
su
cp /sdcard/EPO.* /data/misc
rm /sdcard/EPO.*
exit
Hello everyone,
My GPS does work but takes a long time sometimes to get a lock on where I am, and does seem to jump around a lot when I’m on a run. So I’ve been trying to do @RobDoc 's fix. I downloaded xPLORE and can see the folder where the files need to go but I can’t copy them into the folder, it says 'can’t write to file : /system/data/misc/EPO.DAT /system/data/misc/EPO.DAT: open failed: EROFS (read-only file system).
So I haven’t been able to get past this step 2 in the fix. Dow anyone know why I can’t copy these files to the correct folder and how I could do this?
Many thanks
Eddie
Hello again,
Just a question about using a ‘terminal’. I’ve never done this kind of thing before, How do you get to the terminal screen, do you just connect the phone via USB and then open something in Windows, or will I need specific software?
If you can help that would be great, I’m really not clued up on this - I’m sure it’s very basic stuff.
Many thanks,
Eddie
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er, what is EPO updating? Is it specific to FP1? (FP2 does the GPS job correctly off-the-box here)
Today an app that is relevant to this discussion made its appearnace in the F-Droid database: FP1-EPO-Autoupdate
It is an alpha version, haven’t had time to test it yet but I thought some here might be eager to.
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