Strange.. I've never had any GPS problems, either with my Note 2 or my Note 4.
Just a note.. Stand alone GPS units, (Like the Garmin Nuvi or Magellan Roadmate for instance) have much larger satellite antennas because the whole unit is dedicated to one task. Mobile phones squeeze a lot of other hardware into the case, so to keep phones small and thin, the GPS receiving antennas they use are tiny and far less efficient.
To make up for this inefficiency, instead of using regular GPS (Like the Nuvi), cell phones use what is known as Assisted GPS (A-GPS).
With A-GPS, the cell towers do much of the work. The cell towers have GPS receiving capabilities.. They get the GPS lock then pass this satellite data over to the phone by way of the cellular network. This allows the phones to get a faster lock when first turned on, and it helps out when the phone is shielded from the GPS satellites.
With no GPS signal, the phones location can be determined through cell tower triangulation.
While it's not certain, it is possible that bad GPS performance could be related to the carrier's capabilities.
For more info on how Samsung uses AGPS, see:
Differences between A-GPS and GPS | Support | SAMSUNG Australia
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