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Xperia Z3 Compact GPS Not Working

SOLVED
fivesecondmove
Visitor

Xperia Z3 Compact GPS Not Working

I did diagnostics on Z3 compact but gps failed. Followed the instruction but nothing happened. Fix this sony.
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Uliwooly
Expert

@Choccieb

that's probably a hardware issue, get it inspected by your Local support 


@Choccieb wrote:

Tried a diagnostic test outside and it still failed. How can I get the GPS to working again?


sbouju
Visitor

Just got a fresh new Z3 Compact white for replacing my previous Z3 Compact black, and the new one had this GPS problem (not the old) !!!

Has it been solved, finally, and how ? Tried with the under "Go to solution" button, but none of the tricks is working...

Thank you,

Sylvain

time2fly
Visitor

Crowd intelligence does it again. Thanks to many leads in this thread, I may contribute a final conclusion to this year-long mystery:

My Sony Xperia Z3 is suffering from a corroded or detached GPS antenna inside the phone. Forget all the other Sony dumbass fixes, like A-GPS update, Sony Companion or other updates. I feel sorry for all the people who reset their phone due to naive, misleading Sony support, or who paid useless repair money.

If you threw your Xperia into a hole by now, try this:

  1. Install "GPS Test" and watch the satellite bars. The few you see will be red, maybe orange, meaning you have very bad signal reception. If you still detect many satellites, it’s because the AGPS data tells Android where the satellites are, but your phone cannot communicate with them.
  2. Plug in the USB cable WITHOUT POWER - you now have a makeshift GPS antenna! You may have to press the USB plug up towards you, which is what others refer to as “wiggling”. This may also be an indication that the USB plug now presses (or bypasses) the antenna pin inside the phone to the vis-à-vis casing connector.
  3. Now watch the bars turn yellow & green, until you have FIX. Push the USB plug down or remove it, and the bars will disappear again.

Of course this is not a solution, but you may find someone with a technical background who can open your phone and uncorrode (sorry for my German-English - how do you negate “corrode”?) the GPS antenna pin, or reconnect it with the casing pin.

Myself, I will refrain from buying Sony phones in the future, not because they build badly tested phones, but because of their incredibly bad support, as can be seen in this year-long thread. If only a technician had read this post, it would have been 3 instead of 11 pages long.

Let me know if you can replicate this behavior.

FrankSozelli
Visitor

I have read all the post regarded to this problem and finally I got my gps working again!

1.- First I downloaded gps test app,  cleared and updated a-gps , but did not work.

2.- Disabling Google Maps didn't work for me either.

3.- Third thing I did was connecting usb cable (which I never use since I only use the magnetic charger). While connected (didn't even have to wiggle or press it) the gps started working immediately (gps test app),  but when I removed the usb cable it lost connection. 

At this point, and as many believe, I also thought It was a hardware problem due to the several phone crashes.

4.- After this I tried entering the service menu, and purging the gps assistance data as appointed by 2yoten in page 9 of this thread (dial *#*#7378423#*#*, select Service tests -> GPS -> Purge assistance data and then restart the phone). Actually I didn't even restart my phone, and my gps started working again.

Hope it helps!

Regards.

Steve5john
Visitor

Even this didn't work for my phone.

FrankSozelli
Visitor

Sorry Guys, only worked for an hour or so...

It must definately be a problem with the antenna connection inside, since the only way to put it to work is wiggling a connected usb cable.

sbouju
Visitor

Which version of Android do you have, on your non GPS working XPeria Z3C ?

Mine, a new one from China, was not GPS working out of the box, but is now GPS working, once Android updated (6.0.1 now).

sbouju
Visitor

A screenshot of  GPS signal on my Z3C :)A screenshot of GPS signal on my Z3C Slightly_smiling_Face

FrankSozelli
Visitor

sbouju

same android version, 6.0.1

Tags (1)
Steve5john
Visitor


@FrankSozelli wrote:

sbouju

same android version, 6.0.1


Same for me. 6.0.1. Looking to solve this since 6 month. It worked before. Now nothing, nada.