[Q] Weird GPS problem. What happened?

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dccoh

Senior Member
Jul 8, 2010
488
59
Grand Rapids
Yesterday my gps wasnt working at all. It would not lock on no matter what I did. I was on a custom rom and I tried wiping my data/cache, reinstalling maps (just for giggles), and a multitude apps from the market that help deal with gps problems (gps fix, gps status, toolbox, etc).

When all this didn't work I decided to odin back to the last official JB update and still no gps. On a whim I decided to odin back to an ICS firmware and that made my gps work. I have no idea but it did. I then odin to UVDLJC, installed TWRP's most recent and restored my backup of the custom rom I was using in the first place and gps now worked.

While I'm happy as heck that my gps is now working and that it was not a hardware issue I'm extremely curious what happened.

I have flashed many roms lately and I cannot think what a custom rom can do to gps to hose it or if it was just one of those things. I would of thought that when I originally did an odin to UVDLJC that would fix the issue but that didn't. Whatever the flash to ICS did fixed it but what in the heck could that of been?

I figure if I can find out or get an idea what happened then I can steer away from flashing certain roms, or just be prepared that flashing any roms at all can make this happen again.
 

Zza1989

Member
Aug 10, 2012
8
0
Same here.

Hello, ddcoh.

I am currently having the same issue you had with GPS not working. I've tried everything from trying tedious Play store apps to trying many different roms and kernels (clean installing every time) to completely reverting back to stock including using TriangleAway in case that did any help. Nothing worked. I have been thinking about going back to ICS to see if that worked but the last time I tried to downgrade from 4.1.1 to 4.0.4 I ended up soft bricking my phone even though I followed the steps word for word.

Can you tell how you went about downgrading to ICS and then back to JB, please? I use my GPS a lot and I would hate to find out it's a hardware issue.
 

dccoh

Senior Member
Jul 8, 2010
488
59
Grand Rapids
Hello, ddcoh.

I am currently having the same issue you had with GPS not working. I've tried everything from trying tedious Play store apps to trying many different roms and kernels (clean installing every time) to completely reverting back to stock including using TriangleAway in case that did any help. Nothing worked. I have been thinking about going back to ICS to see if that worked but the last time I tried to downgrade from 4.1.1 to 4.0.4 I ended up soft bricking my phone even though I followed the steps word for word.

Can you tell how you went about downgrading to ICS and then back to JB, please? I use my GPS a lot and I would hate to find out it's a hardware issue.

Well I used odin to flash an T999_UVALEM which was a prerooted ICS rom. After booting it up I checked to see if GPS was working and it was.

I then used odin again to flash T999_UVDLJA which is a JB rom and booted it up also and saw that gps was working. Then I just restored a backup of a room I had been using and GPS still worked.

I've been out of town and noticed that after flashing a few roms that gps wasn't working so instead of doing all the above stuff I just flashed a cm10 rom. I believe I either used a cm10 nightly (or maybe 10.1, memory is hazy) or LiquidRom and that got the GPS working by just doing that. Not sure if that will work for you but you could always backup your setup using TWRP's latest and then flashing a cm10 rom and seeing if gps is working and if that fixes it then you could then just reboot and restore the rom you are currently on and that might fix your gps for you.



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