Morning,

I’ve got a Sony Xperia Arc Android phone and I can’t get a GPS lock on it any more. I’ve tried rebooting phone and installed the GPS Status app and done the various tricks in there but nothing seems to be working – occasionally it says that it can see 1 or 2 satellites, so I don’t think the GPS is broken. I’ve also tried leaving the phone outside for ages with a clear view of the sky etc.

The phone isn’t rooted, despite my best efforts (I gave up in the end) so I can’t use one of the more powerful GPS apps available.

If anyone has any suggestions I’d very much like to hear them!

Ta

i had a similar problem with my galaxy s. Found a page that said how to enable the test modes and to perform a reset and change a threshold setting. Worked a treat then.

Google something like – gps basestation mode, reset. (Sorry so vague)

Have you tried turning it off and on again? 😉

I have varying degrees of success with my Android GPS and quite often have to restart it. Maybe try backing up all your stuff and performing a hard-reset?

Try this app….

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chartcross.gpstest&hl=en

I always revert to this to get a fix when nothing else will.

Latest version of Android?

Latest version of Google Maps?

Tried NavFree? (Free alternative to Google Navigation – pretty good too)

Are you trying to get a lock indoors or outdoors?

Try this app….

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chartcross.gpstest&hl=en

I always revert to this to get a fix when nothing else will.

I always try that, and quite often get several statalites quite quickly. What use that is though I don’t know as, as soon as I’m back into Google tracks, Endomondo or whatever, it won’t fix again…

Tried to get a lock outdoors. Latest version of all those apps, and I also have GPS Test installed too – doesn’t seem to help. Think the hard reset is the next step once I’ve backed the phone up although any other suggestions gratefully received in the meantime…

Have you tried ringing the call centre of your network provider?

They usually can help you to feel utterly helpless, suicidal, psychotic and offer no real valuable assistance. Still, might be worth it.

I always try that, and quite often get several statalites quite quickly. What use that is though I don’t know as, as soon as I’m back into Google tracks, Endomondo or whatever, it won’t fix again..

I find that I can be waiting a while (like minutes) for say Google maps, or MMtracker to get a fix when I switch GPS on at a new location. Switch to GPSTest and usually get a fix quickly. Go back to the original app I was trying to use and it gets a fix again in seconds.