Hello again,
Just a question about using a āterminalā. Iāve 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, Iām really not clued up on this - Iām sure itās very basic stuff.
Many thanks,
Eddie
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, havenāt had time to test it yet but I thought some here might be eager to.
Hi @van, The App you link too on F-droid seems to have solved the GPS problems on my phone. I installed the newer Beta version and once enabled the GPS found my position quickly even though I was indoors. I was near a window but I donāt think this has ever happened before. Itās a big improvement from standing outside looking quizzically at the sky for minutes! I went for a run just now and the tracking was much better than before.
Thanks again to you and the developers.
All the best
Eddie
@Slinky
Iām glad you could benefit from this app, hopefully itāll help those who were experiencing GPS issues too.
I have to say though that I didnāt notice much improvement in how long the phone needs to lock the signal, but I only made a quick test so far.
@Slinky hope you like it. Please disable your original EPO updater via the System Settings or the EngineerMode to avoid clashes. Please also post your Fairphone (first/second) and OS version. And of course: Any bugs 
@van, of course, it doesnāt improve anything with the GPS itself, it just updates the EPO files regularly. So, the time-to-first-fix might still be up to several mins. Itās just an easier way to ensure that EPO at least works and keeps working 
@sn0b
Yes, I get it. (Youāre the dev right?)
I thought that having the updated EPO file would help in locking the GPS signal faster thus, by being able to download it properly thanks to this app, I could actually lock it in a shorter time as opposed to the average time I observed so far without the EPO file (which I kept disabled since the phone was never able to fetch it).
Since I installed the app I havenāt had much time to test GPS around so I canāt really say it works better (nor worse) with it, but locking the signal from the window or even outside but without really moving far, I canāt say it changed much.
It must be also said that I havenāt had much trouble with GPS in the first place, unlike some in this thread the locking and precision of the signal have always been good enough for me, without even using any of the enhancing methods described above and in other threads.
Thanks for the tip, van! This app works like a charm, fresh epo files downloaded in an instant (while, in my experience, the āMT GPS EPO fixā app is pretty useless - if FPās own downloader canāt get the EPO file, MT GPS EPO wonāt get it either).
Further to this I drove yestereday without the charger plugged in but there was no improvement, the position was sometimes on the road, sometimes anywhere from 5m to maybe 100m off the road. Several times I had it lose GPS and announce āGPS signal lostā on an open road with a good view of the sky, Iāve not had that before when plugged in. When I reached a town I spent 10 minutes trying to stick with the FP and got lost, I had to switch back to my old galaxy S2 to find my way.
Iād love some initial diagnosis on this GPS peformance is it software related? is it just a poor gps chip? I too would never have bought the phone had I know that the GPS was unusable for driving.
Dear FPer,
to inform people who have problems installing GPS on FP I updated my earlier post: GPS does not work.
Have a nice sunday
Rob Doc
Hey,
I tried now the FP1-EPO-Autodownload from F-Drod for some days (but I can not say if it really speeds up the TimeToFirstFix, but anyway), but the app works like a charm - thanks for programming it!
But two questions still remain for me:
Any hints?
Cheers, Robert
hi @therob,
From my experience I can tell, that without an up-to-date EPO file i never got a fix at all (when not using AGPS). From that point of view, the FP1-EPO-Autodownload is a big help, however, time-to-first-fix may still be several minutesā¦
First of all, I would like to thank sn0b for FP1-EPO-Autodownload and encourage everyone who thinks GPS is broken to try it and give the FP some minutes time when outdoors for first fix. I write this because I was partly disappointed too about the GPS performance, but it seems more of a technology restriction than a FP1 issue.
You can find posts about all makes of devices, including outdoor GPS devices over the web, where users complain about offsets between the true position and the reported position of several hundreds of meters. I found no web page, though, giving a satisfactory explanation. But when one studies GPS design, enough aspects show up which can degrade the result, including multipath reception, varying signal strength etc. A receiver that is only 1/4 āchipā (250ns) off the true signal timing makes 75 metres offset against the true distance from the resp. satellite.
I also experimented with these kitchen aluminium foil āGPS antennasā and found out that I was able to degrade signal strength,but not significantly improve it. So the antenna seems to be well designed, too.
Sorry if someone else suggested the same thing before.
When I read about GPS scamblers/disrupters on the web, I thought that you might operate another device close to the receiver, which radiates in the 0ā¦1MHz frequency band. This might be the car radio or another electronic device which is maybe defective or poorly designed. The GPS receiver basically creates kinda pseudo noise sequences at a 1MHz rate and autocorrelates this with the antenna noise to find the satellitesā signals in the noise. Obviously, third party noise makes this much harder.
Itās really sad that the gps is working so poorly, I can not track my runs and the navigation is really annoying.
I have tried the suggestions of Robin but unfortunately I can not download the EPO filesā¦
Now Iām thinking to buy a GPS for the car and one for runningā¦
My experience is only with OsmAnd, but with this app
definitely car navigation is absolutely OK, without any change in the original GPS handling (no ābetter GPSā, nothing like that).
Iād call it operational and I do rely on it.
tracks recording, OTOH, brings quite erratic pathes, which are unusable to update Openstreetmap for instance. Dozens and dozens m errors.
This may be because of the way Iām pocketing the thing (in an horizontal pouch on my belt: I donāt walk with the FP in hand nor nicely located in a backpack top for instance)
Iād call the GPS chip an average one no more, with a relatively slow convergence and handling never more than 12 sats.
But it does replace my car GPS, and with free and always-updated OSM maps -and now not having this would be terrible 
Next time Iām going to walk in the wild Iāll try the top-of-the-bagpack idea, just to seeā¦
Hello,
i really like the whole concept and everything around and i really like my FP, but my GPS is not working at all. I am not that nerdy, that i want to try to fix it on my ownā¦ is there a chance that this problem will be fixed in the future?
Is it possible to change the GPS chip ?
I am not doing a lot with my phone, besides navigating and running. For that I really need GPS.
What do you think @Robin? Otherwise i sell it again and wait for FP2?
Hmm, my GPS sometimes works very well, other times it doesnāt work at all. I actually believe that this is a software issue (with the A-GPS data etc.) and this can be fixed. I hope this gets fixed in the next Fairphone software update as it has been reported to the support team.
interesting, mine is quite unusable for navigation and I always end up falling back to my old galaxy S2 which was a perfect SatNav replacement. Next time I am doing a reasonable length drive Iām going to see if I can get some video of both phones navigating at the same time.