LG V30 (AT&T) stopped locating itself

[anon(166548)]

This is almost certainly something self-inflicted, I'm just hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

Prior to the cruise that we just returned from, my wife's LG V30 (AT&T version, running Oreo) was quite happy to locate itself in "Battery saving (Networks only)" mode.

After the cruise, Google maps will not calculate a route unless location is set to "High accuracy (GPS and networks)" - it used to be willing to do this.

Google maps also shows a grey dot instead of the usual blue dot (again unless I set location to High accuracy).

Furthermore Life360 tells me (when I try to locate her) that her phone is "No network or phone off).

Her timeline shows the various places we went to on the cruise, but the are no entries in the timeline since we returned, other than the couple of times I turned her GPS on to force it. On the other hand, my phone's timeline shows our movements during (foreign SIM) and after (AT&T SIM) the trip.

I have confirmed her V30 has data access (i.e. it doesn't accidentally have Mobile data disabled), and location services is on (but in battery saving mode).

2G is not disabled (we never toggled that on the trip).

Her APN still looks correct. The AT&T SIM remained in the phone for the duration of the trip (not sure if when you roam on another system you get a different APN, but anyway it's currently correct).

During the cruise we switched the V30 switched back and forth between flight mode, data roaming on, and data roaming off, depending on whether we were connected to a land system (data roaming on) or the cruise ship system (data roaming off). It also had auto date/time disabled because I wanted to be able to set the correct time the night before we arrived in the next timezone.

I'm sure that all of the above confused the phone. My V35 (Amazon version on AT&T, running Oreo) does not have the same problem (but I had a foreign SIM in it the whole time, still toggling data roaming for land vs. cruise ship).

Since there's no single app that is confused, clearing app cache is probably not going to help. And since it's an AT&T phone, I can't clear the system cache (sigh).

Any suggestions on what to try to clear this up? Factory reset is my last resort.

Thanks.

 

[B. Diddy]

If you open Google Maps, does it show the correct location in general (even if it's a grey dot and not blue)? It's normal for Google Maps to ask you to improve location accuracy once, but if you cancel out of that dialog box, it shouldn't ask you again (at least for a while). Is that what you mean by not calculating a route unless it's set to High Accuracy -- i.e., it's asking you to improve location accuracy?

 

[anon(166548)]

Thanks for the response B. Diddy.

I get a blue dot if GPS is on, then if I revert to battery saving mode, the dot goes grey within a minute or so. In this state, Locate me still does something (moves the map to show the grey dot, although if I drive somewhere else the dot doesn't move).

At some point later it changes to no dot, and hitting the "locate me" button does nothing (if I happen to have the map displaying, say Australia, it stays there). It also (interestingly) does not ask me to improve location accuracy like it used to.

If I tap on a location on the map, then ask for directions, it would normally (even in battery sever mode) calculate the routes, but with no dot it just says "Waiting for location..." followed by "Finding best route..." (which never completes). On the other hand with a grey dot it calculates a route, but with a broken cloud symbol, saying "Offline - No traffic data" - which is odd because the phone definitely has data for other stuff (with Wi-Fi on or off), and in fact Maps is showing a bunch of red and yellow so it definitely has traffic data - I compared to Maps on my (working) phone and the traffic colors match pretty well, so the (bad) phone clearly has valid traffic data.

I had a flash of inspiration last night, remembering there is a "clear network settings" feature. Using that did not fix the problem though.

Is there some other process I can do a force stop and clear cache & data on? Doing that in the Maps app doesn't fix the problem.

 

[B. Diddy]

This might be in a different menu, but to go to Settings>Location and tap Menu>Scanning (or Improve Location Accuracy) and see if Wi-fi/Bluetooth Scanning is on or off. See what happens if you toggle that on/off a few times.

 

[anon(166548)]

Wi-Fi scanning was off (which seemed odd). Turning it on (and off/on a few times for good measure) did not help unfortunately.

 

[B. Diddy]

When you say you tried the Clear Network Settings feature, is that the same as Reset Network Settings?

It's looking more and more like a factory reset may be indicated.:-\

 

[anon(166548)]

Yeah, Settings > General > Reset > Network settings reset

I've been staring at settings on a V20, V30, and a V35 and with all the tiny differences in names (and where each setting appears) I'm going cross-eyed

Mike

 

[B. Diddy]

This probably isn't it, but check to make sure Maps and other apps have Location permission.

 

[anon(166548)]

They do.

Thanks for all the pointers, I think a factory reset is in the cards :-(

 

[anon(166548)]

As expected, a factory reset cleared this up.

 

[B. Diddy]

Ok, glad that issue was finally resolved (although a bummer you had to go to that length). I hope your other similar issue also resolved!

 

[anon(166548)]

Thanks, I appreciate the help.

The other issue (on my V35) is "worked around" for now (leave data roaming enabled). There's a suggestion in my other thread to ask for "tech support" and have them push network settings to me - haven't tried that yet.