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 theā¦ really?? thats very interesting, I always have it plugged in in the car, Iāll 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 Iām 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.
1 Like
Update: Gravitybox half ā¦
danke, aber ā¦
bei mir gibts da eine Fehlermeldung:
Box āUSSD-Code wird ausgefĆ¼hrtā oder so, dann āVebindungsproblem oder ungĆ¼ltigerMM-Codeā
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 aboutā¦ the GPS is just terrible. So Iām working through the solutions suggested above.
One thingā¦ from @RobDocās list, when I try āCopy EPO.DAT & EPO.ND5 to the folder /data/miscā I get a āpermission deniedā alert. Presumably I donāt have root access? Could anyone tell me what I need to do here?
Seriously, thoughā¦ my previous phone (a 2009 HTC Desire) does GPS perfectly without any need for data backup. How does a Ā£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. FPās default file manager does not. X-plore is one app that does this, but there are of course a lot more.
Even if I havenāt had any really big issues with FPās 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 robdocās post: Should be EPO.MD5, not ND5! Probably obviousā¦
The funny thing is that this happened with Tomi File Manager, which I thought would do the job. Will try X-plore, thoughā¦
In a terminal (I do it on a Mac):
adb push EPO.DAT /sdcard
adb push EPO.MD5 /sdcard
adb shell
Now youāre 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 Iām on a run. So Iāve been trying to do @RobDoc 's fix. I downloaded xPLORE and can see the folder where the files need to go but I canāt copy them into the folder, it says 'canāt write to file : /system/data/misc/EPO.DAT /system/data/misc/EPO.DAT: open failed: EROFS (read-only file system).
So I havenāt been able to get past this step 2 in the fix. Dow anyone know why I canāt copy these files to the correct folder and how I could do this?
Many thanks
Eddie
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
1 Like
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.
8 Likes
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
2 Likes
@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).