GPS Issues?

[zagpoint]

Nah, it is not the satellites or the bad weather in Northern Cal. I had my iphone and nexus 4 side by side and did the tests. My iphone was always instantaneous locking to the satellite and the nexus 4 kept at 'searching for gps'. But I am happy now that the nexus 4 is behaving.

 

[jinjin12]

With my long description, I may have made the RMA process harder than it really is. Also, some people only waited a few hours between the time they first called and when they got the email from the specialist, giving the link to reorder. And then it shipped for them the next day. And I'm sure UPS will pick the old one up from you. So.. it's really not hard, but you just never know about the wait times in between those steps.

But if you're happy with how it's working, you certainly wouldn't go through this process. For me, sometimes enabling and disabling location access helped, sometimes it didn't. I think I was almost always seeing the crosshair icon notification when I ran GPS test/GPS status or navigation app. Also, turning off data enabled didn't work for me. But strangely enough, GPS for that "old" phone has been working better for the last two days, and I haven't changed anything. I really don't know what the variable is, but I'd sure like to know, just in case the poor behavior comes back again on my new phone.

This is a crazy thought, but I wonder if satellites weren't working well where I am, and now they've improved. I'm in northern CA, what about you? I know that isn't really possible, but I'm just trying to come up with what could have changed. Another possibility would be that a "fix" came from Google, but that would have shown up as some kind of update that we would have to install. So I'm a little baffled. Maybe my "old" one is still working poorly, but I just haven't been looking at it much in the last 2 days since I got my new one. And when I just happen to look at the "old", it's at a time when it's working. But it sure wasn't like that for the first 10 days...it was pretty solidly bad!

it's not the satellites... i have my brother's old iphone 3g right next to my nexus to test....it's like night and day. sad part is that 3g is an old ass phone. anyway i'm in NYC. btw that fix from google might not come for months, or years, or maybe never at all. never trust those customer support cause they just try to deflect you and say things so you can get off their backs.

 

[taj7575]

it's not the satellites... i have my brother's old iphone 3g right next to my nexus to test....it's like night and day. sad part is that 3g is an old ass phone. anyway i'm in NYC. btw that fix from google might not come for months, or years, or maybe never at all. never trust those customer support cause they just try to deflect you and say things so you can get off their backs.

It seems google doesn't seem to understand that some people want good quality hardware on their phones too...

 

[sga999]

Thanks, Jinjin12 and zagpoint. I was just forgetting....I had 2 other Samsung devices (tab and player) that had worked well when my first N4 did not. So I have no idea why that old N4 would have improved. I'll look at it more today and see if it reverts to bad behavior. But then I may go ahead and send it back tomorrow. If they test it and find no issues, they will be upset that I sent it back. All I can say is that it was bad, pretty consistently for 10-11 days! Oh well, this may be a mystery that is never solved.

 

[zagpoint]

I don't think there is one. I have not seen any trace of it after playing with it for a couple of weeks.

 

[taj7575]

is there any fm radio in nexus 4? because im getting one by january.

Nope, sadly there isn't. Check out the Note II, some versions have an FM radio.

 

[rpgo]

Hi,
I've had my Nexus 4 16GB for a day and I have the same problem. I've narrowed it down to the following:
After the phone has been in sleep mode for just over a minute, when coming out of it it will fail to get a GPS lock in GPS apps (e.g. status pull-down menu says "Searching for GPS"). GPS status apps will show 17-21 satellites in view, but it won't get a lock.

Using the app GPS Test (from Google Play), if you make sure no other GPS apps are running, and use its clear A-GPS data command in settings, it will get GPS working again (within seconds!). (Sometimes I've had to do it twice, but it always works.)

Next time the device goes to sleep for over a minute, it will stop working again without fail. But, I think it does randomly start working again too.

I've organised a replacement device with Google though I'm not convinced it's a hardware problem. Any input from anyone?

 

[sga999]

Hi,
I've had my Nexus 4 16GB for a day and I have the same problem. I've narrowed it down to the following:
After the phone has been in sleep mode for just over a minute, when coming out of it it will fail to get a GPS lock in GPS apps (e.g. status pull-down menu says "Searching for GPS"). GPS status apps will show 17-21 satellites in view, but it won't get a lock.

Using the app GPS Test (from Google Play), if you make sure no other GPS apps are running, and use its clear A-GPS data command in settings, it will get GPS working again (within seconds!). (Sometimes I've had to do it twice, but it always works.)

Next time the device goes to sleep for over a minute, it will stop working again without fail. But, I think it does randomly start working again too.

I've organised a replacement device with Google though I'm not convinced it's a hardware problem. Any input from anyone?

I have 9 posts in this thread about GPS problems with my Nexus 4 (starting on Dec. 11 and going through Dec. 23). You'll see that my description isn't exactly like yours....clearing A-GPS did not ever work for me. When I was "stuck", I seemed to stay that way (almost always, I'd say). But! After I ordered a replacement device, the original one magically got better. I know, that doesn't make any sense. It was failing for about 10 days, then it started to work. I talked to a Google rep about it, and she said that "fixes" could have come through. I tried to tell her that I had put no fixes on except for the 4.2.1 update, and the problems had occurred both before and after that update. She said there were other fixes that would happen that I couldn't see. Maybe she was talking about some kind of "Google services" that get updated, just like apps do? I never understood, but I let it go.

My replacement device was not as good as the original in several ways....worse yellow tint, wiggly volume rocker, lower volume. So I decided to keep the original and send back the replacement...now that GPS seemed to be working on the original! By the way, GPS was working fine on the replacement also.

So...I realize this description of my situation doesn't really help you at all. Let's just hope that the replacement you get will have this "magic fix" applied, and you won't have any more problems. I'd really like to know how mine resolved itself, but I don't think I'll ever find out.

 

[rpgo]

Hi,
Thanks for that. Yes, I read your posts before replying, tbh I reckon it's the same problem. Clearing AGPS data doesn't seem to work for me with the GPS status app, unless I follow it up with disabling and enabling location services. But disabling and enabling location services by itself didn't seem to work; neither does restarting the phone. Those are just rough observations because I haven't tried them all that many times.

Anyway I love this phone and don't have much to lose by trying a replacement device (I already asked about keeping the original if the new one is the same!)

Thanks for the update and I'll post back about how I get on.

 

[ppeklak]

Because if it can find a router it recognises it will help. But beyond that I've had problems on previous phones where I can put the phone out on a table for 15mins and still no lock, turn on WIFI (but no routers in the area) and bang almost instant. I put it down to bad coding.


Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

WiFi won't help when you're in the middle of nowhere.

 

[zagpoint]

Just a quick update to my previous posts, my Nexus 4 GPS has been behaving just fine since it magically started working. I recently took a long trip under its guidance and it was working as expected as well. As I said, previously my tmobile prepaid service did not have data (so turned off data service was what appeared to have fixed the GPS issue). But now that I have data and the data service is enabled, it still works as expected. Just weird!

Judging from the traffic on this thread, it does not appear that GPS issue is prevalent. Hopefully folks with this problem will get a fix by getting the replacement from google (and make sure update us on what happens)...

 

[rpgo]

Like you, my replacement arrived and the GPS on my original phone has started working perfectly!

I'm starting to think one of the GPS apps I installed did something funny and caused the problem. As long as things keep working it doesn't matter anyway.

 

[dalvik]

This is the persistent bug in Jelly Bean coding. I've had the same thing happening with my Gnex (actually 2 of them -one was a replacement). There was a whole discussion about that in GNex thread here and on XDA dev forums not all phones were affected though. It started working by itself after a few days. It has nothing to do with the hardware. If your device can see the satellites and lock on them but few hours later can't, it's the software. I've ordered Nexus 4 from amazon (yes yes i know i overpaid.. But it seems to be permanty out of stock...) this will be my third attempt to own a nexus device. I hope I won't have that many issues as I had with the Gnex.

 

[drosan1]

finally found the fix after searching the web for over a month. The fix is so simple, its almost stupid. Guess, its MapQuest.
Check out the solution
Solved – Searching for GPS Issue on Nexus 4 or Android Phones | AskStudent

I am a person who travels quite a bit. Sadly though, with my most recent phone being a Samsung, that travelling aspect was a headache most of the time. It has the worst GPS pickup every.

Before I ramble on, let me get to the point - one of the reasons I went for this phone and not another samsung was because I perceived this to be a phone with not only good hardware, but reliable hardware.

Today though, I ran into some problems. On 3G/HSPA+ (and I was getting good coverage), I was trying to lock onto my location, but my phone just continued saying searching for GPS. This was indoors though, so I thought it wasn't a big deal. But I entered my car, and it still couldn't lock onto my location.

Is this a problem with anyone else? Could it just be that I may have some faulty hardware? Just curious guys, thanks.

 

[jinjin12]

+1 thumbs up bro.... honestly i thought you were bull****ting me but i decided to try it anyway and omg...it REALLY WORKS! wow! i've tried several maps apps and and gps apps like "gps test" to try to get signal and they all suck. But Mapquests really works wow!. i don't know how they do it but what this means is that google maps, gps test, and all other nav/map apps really suck a coding but i originally thought it was a hardware problem with the gps. But since mapquest can get a signal so nicely that means that everybody else has poor coding when it comes to getting gps signals! hooray for Mapquest. thanks alot once again bro!