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lars_norlin_hot

Hi all and - especially SONY!

This is my final word on the GPS performance of my Xperia V.

I have a Xperia V that is approximately one year old. The problem is that the GPS in the phone is working but performance not good.

When I use my Xperia V GPS it frequently lose position and/or gives poor accuracy.

The accuracy never becomes better than 10m (33feet) and the GPS frequently loose its position during normal outdoor or care use. (outdoors with clear sky)

I have also compared my own Xperia V with my wife’s (who owns one herself)

My Xperia has only half of the signal level received compared with my wife’s Xperia V when using any GPS Test app.

Attached is a picture of the two phones side by side. (On top of this I have 2 other older SonyEricsson Android phones with better GPS performance.)

This means that when I compare the two I can clearly see that my V has a problem, its nothing that I just have come up with……I have visual facts that my GPS is bad and need a replacement/fix.

Now – here is what I have done.

I have handed the phone in for service to the phone store (Telia here in Sweden)

1’st time – Service company just made a reset and say it passes function control…. (no improvement what so ever)

2nd time – Service company replaced the GPS antenna (no improvement what so ever)

3’rd time – Service company just made a reset (again) and say it passes function control…. (no improvement what so ever)

With every service I have attached my pictures (showing the problem clearly) with the phone and asked the service representant to call if they dont understand the problem......

Every time it takes 1-2 weeks to get the phone back from service with null improvment......

This has made me realize two things

One - I have lost all respect for Sony products and especially for the SONY phone service.

Two – I'm a lost customer ---- Bad loss for Sony to use a service company that I guess don’t really represent SONY.

Service is outsourced....at least here in Sweden.

Attached is a picture of our Xperia V phones side by side showing the difference in GPS performance. The picture is taken 10-15min after start up..

Thanks SONY and good bye ……. you had the chance to fix this but now I'm really disapointed. No more SONY phones for me!

/Lars Norlin

rolle_f

I have the same problem. If I run google maps it shows my position about 100m wrong but with my last phone Xperia S it was spot on. Using navigation with Xperia V really **bleep** because it has problem to show wich road I'm going on.

¨The question is if it's a softwarefault or bad hardware?

faded

same problem for me... O.o

boosook

Well, I'm really satisfied with the GPS in my XV... compared to my old xperia mini pro (which had a terrible gps) it's awesome, but I also tested it against a galaxy S4 in a difficult city with high buildings and put the S4 to shame (the S4 was constantly losing the signal).

So I guess that there are some XV that are good and other that are bad?

A trivial question: are you and your wife using the same software version?

lars_norlin_hot

My guess is that my problem is hardware related. Simply a Bad GPS chip.

Both my wife and I have the same software and we have both had the older software to with the same problem. I don’t think it is SW related.

I did read somewhere that someone with similar problem (he had no GPS reception at all) got a new motherboard in the phone and that solved his issue. My problem is that the GPS is not completely dead and apparently it passes the tests (whatever tests they run at the service place) and there I’m stuck with a only partly working GPS.

Apparently they approve >10m accuracy as acceptable!?

Then it’s the question regarding who is responsible to fix it. The reseller or SONY?

I guess I have to hope that the GPS goes completely dead then it would be obvious that the GPS is bad....

I now have a working solution to this in my car.. I have an external Bluetooth GPS in the car and a small app that allows me to use that GPS instead. I now always have reliable GPS lock in the car far better than the one my Xperia can provide.

MennoB

Same problem here since update to android 4.3. Before the update i never experienced problems with GPS.

After the update I experience the following problems (mostly in Google Maps):

It takes sevral minutes before the device has a GPS fix.
During driving GPS signal is often lost
Device often shows a wrong location (diffrence of +/- 100 meters)

I think this is a software problem introduced with the update to Android 4.3.

Kind regars,

Menno B,

kenosisaeternum

If your mobile is better with 4.1.2 and you need a lot of gps, to work and similar things, better to downgrade, from 4.3 to the 4.1.2. I only didnt that thing (even with a lot of errors 4.3) cause the battery durability is awesome comparable with 4.1.2... Well its pity the other problem, equal mobiles and different behaviour i think you are correct lars (in the last reply that you wrote), i bet you tried to to reinstall with sus, if not give a little try (but i doubt)

whywolf

I confirm - the GPS is nearly unusable for me....

I tried to navigate within the car - clear blue sky ..... "GPS signal lost, ...found,.... lost...."
next time when I was hiking: I walked 40 minutes - still no GPS, then for roughly 30 sec. GPS but it's gone again - blue sky, gret view to the satellites 😉

YES - it's really annoying - espacially since I thought the Xperia V should be far better since it does have the GLANOSS standard in addition to the GPS !?!??

Wolf

flash-bg

That's an old thread but I want to share my progress on this issue. I've extracted the gps.conf file from the 4.1 FW image and overwrote the original file. Set the correct permissions and rebooted the phone. I'm on 4.3 by the way. Stock rom but with root access. I now have dramatic increase in GPS performance - I get 2-3 satellites in doors, about a meter away from the windows. Under cloudy skies I get a GPS fix within 30 seconds. No wifi or data was used, so no A-GPS was in use. The accuracy is 8 meters. That's when I'm close to a building. Will continue testing this.