GPS issue I noticed today

[jaxterzz]

I haven't needed much use of my GPS lately, but today I was using it more since I was exploring my city's downtown area. I hope this problem doesn't continue but I noticed that whenever I was inside a building ie. restaurant/shop my GPS wasn't able to locate where I was. "Location unavailable." But the moment I walk outside onto the streets my GPS was able to pinpoint me no problem. My carrier is Telus here in Canada. I'm not sure if this is a carrier issue or my phone... :S

 

[vferrari]

Presuming you are serious, seems like normal GPS behavior when you don't have a line of sight to the gps satellites. Cell tower and wifi triangulation can only do so much once you've lost the sat signal.

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[jaxterzz]

Ummm. Of course i'm being serious. I was eating at a restaurant with a friend tonight who had an older HTC phone and her GPS was able to find her location instantly inside the restaurant. We did this side by side using the maps application and my phone couldn't lock on my location. This happened twice tonight since we ate dinner at one restaurant first, and went to another place for dessert. Both times my GPS wasn't able to find me while hers could while indoors. My older blackberry never had this problem also. I mean this isn't a huge deal, but it's what I noticed.

 

[vferrari]

Sorry if I came off as condescending in my reply (not intended), but the basic info you provided in your op did not provide any perspective that you understood that a basic gps system is satellite based and therefore will be limited (even eliminated) inside structures that attenuate the satellite signal. Location determination using a phone handset uses basic gps augmented with a combination of cell signal and wifi signal id's to enhance the gps derived position accuracy including when the gps sat fix is degraded because a reduced number of "visible" satellites are available to provide a fix such as when you are inside a structure. So, yes, the performance of the enhanced positioning could be dependent on how well your carrier implements these features in their infrastructure.That being said, I have actually had the opposite experince than you regarding unenhanced gps sensitivity indoors (i.e., without using available cell and wifi enhancements) and have found it to be superior to my previous handsets. All I can suggest is that you turn on location enhancement features in your settings options to see if that results in an improvement (if you haven't done so already its Settings>More>Location Services>Check Use Wireless Networks). If you are still not satisfied, then see if you can do an apples-to-apples comparison of gps performance with another GS4 owner to ensure your phone is not defective. HTH.

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