Pixel XL GPS is not accurate

[tpd15]

Hi,

About a week ago my GPS stopped being anything close to accurate. When I open Maps it seems to locate me pretty well but as soon as I use it to navigate it's not able to get a good lock, and places me all over. Sometimes it's within maybe 100 feet, sometimes a mile or more off.

I have location set to high accuracy, and I didn't change anything knowingly to make it do this.

Any tips on what I can do to get this thing working correctly?

Thanks,
Toby.

 

[B. Diddy]

Does this happen when you're in a fairly open area, or in the middle of a city with lots of tall buildings around you?

 

[tpd15]

I'm out west, CO & WY, and not really been into a city with it. So it's definitely open spaces. Been into some towns with maybe 3-story buildings, and still does it there. Meaning, I'm not surrounded by 30-story tower buildings.

 

[B. Diddy]

Does the same thing happen in Safe Mode? https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2852139?hl=en

 

[tpd15]

That's it!! GPS works perfectly in safe mode. Ok, so obviously something got installed or tweaked that f'ed it up. Is there a function that tells me in chronological order what was installed or updated? Can I roll back to some particular date?

Thanks
Toby.

 

[B. Diddy]

Great! If you go to the Play Store's My Apps section, select Installed, then tap the sorting button at the upper right and select Last Updated.

 

[tpd15]

So I checked where you said and I have about 50 apps that have updated (set to auto) since my GPS started gkitching a week ago. Seems like an uphill task to disable those.

However, there's no need! When I rebooted out of safe mode (normal reboot into regular mode) it worked fine. WTH?! Also, the default text messaging app decided to make itself default again and I got a bazillion new txt notifications. Weird.

Anyway, I changed back to my regular messaging app (Textra), the notifications went away, and GPS is working fine, too.

Any explanation of why booting out of safe mode might clear things up?

 

[B. Diddy]

Glad it's working correctly now! Before trying Safe Mode, had you already tried a reboot? If not, then maybe it was the simple act of rebooting that corrected the problem, and not going into Safe Mode.

 

[tpd15]

I did a few regular reboots prior to that and they didn't change anything. It worked fine after rebooing out of safe mode.

Interestingly, the gps has been fine today but the phone was having a hard time getting cell signal. My wife was right next to me with good signal and we're both on Vz. So I booted to safe mode and had excellent signal. Then rebooted back to regular mode and my signal stayed good.

What the heck is up with this phone?

 

[B. Diddy]

I wonder if some app you installed causes this issue once it starts up. Perhaps Safe Mode prevented it from starting up immediately after the normal reboot, since it had been disabled in Safe Mode, but then it ultimately started, thus interfering with cell or GPS signal. It might still be worth uninstalling apps one by one to see if you can pinpoint a culprit. Tedious, I know, but there often isn't any other method, unless you already suspect an app, like a 3rd party battery-saver app.

If it isn't too huge, maybe you can show us a list of your installed apps, and we can see if anything jumps out.

 

[Rukbat]

Use an app like App Backup & Restore to back up all your installed apps before you delete them. Then just delete them all - and restart the phone. (You can restore them easily.) If that doesn't fix the problem, just restore all your apps - the problem is elsewhere.

If it fixes the problems, restore an app and see what happens after an hour. Then the next app. And so on. (It's tedious, but that's why a repair shop would charge you a lot to "repair" the problem if they did it the right way.)

As far as the GPS is concerned, install GPS Status & Toolbox, so you can see how many satellites the phone can receive (and decode), and how bad the DOP (dilution of position - a measure of GPS accuracy) is.

Considering that both GPS and cellular have been affected, it sounds to me as if something is causing RF noise, and that could be hardware, as well as software. Restarting can stop that for a while (especially if it's temperature-connected).

Oh, and with today's GPS receivers, being in "the canyons" of a city is no problem - the buildings reflect the signals. The only problem is a higher DOP when you can't see more than two or three satellites directly. (Back in the day, being in a wooden house would eliminate any GPS signal strong enough to receive. Not any more.)

 

[B. Diddy]

Oh, and with today's GPS receivers, being in "the canyons" of a city is no problem - the buildings reflect the signals.

Good info -- but for what it's worth, I still do notice some issues with GPS precision when driving through parts of downtown San Francisco and navigating using a Pixel 2 XL.

 

[Rukbat]

Issues as far as accuracy? As I said, if the signal is being reflected, that can add a nanosecond or two to the time it takes the signal to reach your receiver, and since GPS is basically a "time measurer", that's definitely going to affect accuracy. And if you get into a shadow situation, where you have less than 5 satellite signals, the software is making educated guesses, not measurements. It's still a lot better than it was a decade ago.

 

[B. Diddy]

Yep, accuracy. In the Financial District of San Francisco, where the buildings are pretty tall (but nothing like NYC or other big cities), it'll often think I'm on the next street over.