Related
I have had an XDA IIs for a week and the thing is *riddled* with bugs. A few that come to mind:
Add a new profile to connection manager and then add a 'modem' to that connection. Go and fiddle elsewhere for a while. Often when you come back to change the settings for that connection the 'modem' has dissapeared. (its still there, a soft reset will cause it to re-appear).
Take the unit out of range of your wifi while running an app that does nots of network activity, and you will have to do a soft reset in order to restore network connectivity. This occurs mainly with skype
WiFi Reception is **attrocious** my laptop will tell me that I have a full signal and the XDA IIs will barely register when at the same location. Even holding the damned thing 1 ft from the base station does not cause the signal indicator to head to maximum.
When you use bluetooth, for network access, all the stuff in connection manager gets reset.
Often, after setting connection manager to always use certain profiles, and then encountering a problem, you head into connection manager and find that your selections never stuck
VPN connections do not always stick when set, they dissapear from the menu.
I have tried for ages and failed to make a VPN connection over anything GPRS, WiFi etc. VPN was one of the reasons that I bought the device (access to home and work networks), but it just does not work. Additionally, the instructions with the unit offer no help about how to get it working.
The bundled O2 active stuff is very flaky. Take the end programs applet - it often crashes its self while trying to force an app that is 'not responding' to stop. The built in 'stop app' applet (which they burried in settings) seems to work but...
Getting an app in a not responding state is well easy - just use it normally! Messenger prog is the worst. Usually requires use of 'end now' option
IMAP support is very very bad. Its quite common for an IMAP server to not store mail folders in the root. In decent clients you can specify the root imap folder, not in pocket outlook, it ends up pulling the entire dir struct from your home dir!! I rebuilt the imap daemon on my linux box to compile in a default root folder. This solved the previous problem, but the imap support is not suitable for use away from wifi cause its so damned slow. It does not just look for new messages, and there is no way to tell it to do this. Also, when you send an item it ends up in the default sent items, not the imap sent items. Imho, the main reason to use imap is to keep your emails intact (be able to see what you sent from the mobile device from a desktop).
Outlook 2K3 on the desktop has the same issue btw, but at least that supports rules so you can put it right.
Billy wrote pocket outlook for connecting to an exchange server, which, I suspect only 50% of the devices purchaced will ever do. Pocket Oulook *always* starts pointing at the exchange folder structure, not your POP3/IMAP account, and there is no way to config this. Unessesary taps required. Why can I not DELETE the default exchange folders if I dont need them?
There are a load more issues as well... I currently do around 10 soft resets/day. My basis is that a wait of more than 10 secs means that the device has crashed. Perhaps if I was willing to wait 5 mins all the time for it to get its arse into gear then the number of soft resets could be reduced!
I shall have to create me a site with XDA IIs bugs on it. I suspect that most of these issues are also present on other devices using windows mobile 2003 so it aint just gonna be the XDA. MS will likely fix them, and then O2 will take years to make the fixes available to its customers.
To be honest, I wish I had stuck with a symbian based device.
Has *anyone* managed to get a IPSEC/PPTP VPN connection running either via wifi or GPRS???
Has anyone managed to get skype PPC working **reliably** Mine works OK if I sit next to the AP, but I might as well use the PC version if I have to do that. Moving further away causes skype to give up due to lack of bandwidth. WiFi also locks (no network access period) even though the PPC still indicates that it has a single from the AP. The only fix for this is yet another soft reset.
Some other stuff:
Refuses to connect to a network that is not broadcasting the SSID. In general, when you want to add a new box, you can set AP to broadcast SSID, it will then find the network, after it has connected, you can hide the SSID. For future connections from 'pre-registered' boxes, no SSID is required. Not so for the XDA IIs, refuses to connect to a base station that is not broadcasting an SSID, or in some cases, creates a new connection with the name "" (i.e nothing) (which again refuses to connect).
Right, now, if you have 2 wifi networks listed in PPC settings, it will sometimes sit there for ever failing to connect, do a soft reset and it connects.
Another one: you have two connections in the 'configure wireless networks' dialogue, one is 'connecting' other is 'unavailable'. The one that is connecting is obviously not gonna connect despite 100% correct settings, so I select 'remove' it does not dissapear!!!
If I had written this software, the user would see a dialogue box thus 'This network is connecting/connected, are you sure you wish to remove its settings?' Selecting yes, would either terminate the connection attempt, or terminate the connection and then remove the damned setting with no further agro!
In network settings, I often get some *stupid* status info. It sometimes says that my home network is 'available' when I am at work. Clearly it isn't, wifi does not travel 10 miles!
And some more:
Sometimes bluetooth fails to start complaining about insufficient driver space. I write windows KMD's all the time, I suspect its somet daft like a lack of available stack space, or stack recursion. Soft reset cures
Also, sometimes when I try to start bluetooth, I get a daft message saying that the licence for the bluetooth stack has expired!!! It then starts BT and all is OK.
All pretty in-excusable bugs for post beta software. This is MS's 4th attempt now at a mobile operating system and its still a bag of sh1te!
A PDA is supposed to be a productivity tool, not something that you have to put 4 hours into to save yourself an hour. When I pull the damned thing out I want it to do **exactly** what it says on the box.
Bugs in software are inevitable, but this just was not even tested - there are *obvious* bugs that should have been detected in QA and delayed the relrease date. I suspect most users will trip over these issues in the first few hours of use. The workaround for most is a soft reset - the blooming reset switch will be worn out in a week!
My advice: AVOID until they fix some of the bugs. Does O2/MS have a route for bug submissions? I'll write these up as formal bug reports with reproducers and send them off.
If it were not for the appeal of skype/skypeout (only with 10 metres of base station otherwise wifi dies, reset required!) then it would have gone back by now. Not of merchantisable quality imho.
I write C/CPP/Java software for a living, if I let something this bad out the door I'd loose my damned job!
And some more:
- If you reconfig your shortcuts (so you can find stuff!) Then the applets 'camera' and 'O2' always seem to copy themselves back out into the root of StartMenu-->Programs again.
Go into the find applet and get it to do a search that takes some time. Wait for it to get going and then click stop. PDA hangs. It does come back eventually (2-3 mins later), but remains sluggish until you do a soft reset. Trying to suspend while its hung just switches the backlight off!
Wish there was some kind of formal bug raising email address or somet.
Nigel
Agree with you
Got the Orange m2000 variant and have same issues!
wifi has week signal (got 3 overlapping base stations in one open plan office) and can only get 25% signal.
can get vpn connection to work but after a few mins gets bored and drops!
phone reception is poor
bluetooth keeps crashing
going to send back to orange and get a new nokia 6230 and dell pda. cant rely on phone which crashes 10 times a day
Richard
how did you get the VPN to connect at all??
My WiFi connection is marked as 'connects to work' which means that the VPN profiles setup under 'work' should be offered to me. I would expect that after I have wifi up and running, clicking the icon at the top would show:
'Work - Wifi'
Unfortunately, it refuses to show anything other than 'The Internet - Wifi'. If I could get it to connect to wifi using the 'work' profile then perhaps it would show me by VPN connections underneath so that I could connect these too, but it **refuses** to do so.
BBB
(BuggedBeyondBelief)
Nigel
More issues
Hi
I have been adding new bugs to my original post as I find them. Here's a couple more:
Sometimes (no real causer for this) When the WLan auto disables its self (set to 5 mins), I will head into the Wireless Lan manager, tick the 'Wireless lan ON' box and click OK.
It still stays disabled!!!
I then head back into the wireless Lan manager, and find that my tick did not stick, same result if I try again. The only way to get the Wlan back is to restart the damned thing.
Additionally, if I go into tools-->network cards from the wireless lan manager, it says that the Wlan is 'connected' it IS NOT connected!!!
This problem shows its self more when the 'Wireless lan Manager-->Settings Tab-->Auto Turn off WLAN if not connected' option is ticked but it will also do it without this.
Seems to be partially caused by poor wifi signal and having previously run an app that hammered the network.
Sack of [email protected]!
Nigel
u seem to be having a mare!
I've no probs with WiFi at all, none of the issues U raise have occurred, WiFi works fine all over my house (I'm tapping this in upstairs & my router is downstairs) & I've got the settings set for best battery life rather than strongest signal. In the hotels I've stayed in recently I've also had faultless WiFi!
A couple of the users @ work have had trouble wiv GPRS overriding WiFi but I put this down to TNBTK!!
I've also seen the lost modem settings problem(also cured by soft reset).
Bluetooth performance has been a touch hit & miss but fiddling in the advanced settings seem to help!!
I've not tried VPN as I'm actively moving us away from this @ work towas web based services. Just a thought though, isn't "connecting to the internet" what you'd expect to see? surely you are using an internet gateway to VPN onto your network?
One other issue I've had is a logon problem with MS sharepoint, I'm hoping to cure that next week by playing about with authentication on the server.
I'v got a route in to some technical contacts at O2 so I'll ask bout the bug reporting for U tomorrow.
Hi
Aye, fun and games at the moment, just like my hardware to do what it says on the box!
Have you tried Skype? I have a feeling that you too will suffer the wifi lock-up problems if you give skype a go at the extreme of your wifi reception. I dont think its skype's fault though, but rather just the XDA not liking what skype gets up to! I am not gonna complain if it drops the wifi connection, its the lock-up that requires the reboot that winds me up.
Most of the time, my wifi is OK as well. Many of the problems I have had are related to use of skype, and having setup the auto-off wifi setting (which is now off again).
You have an XDA IIs? Perhaps mine has old firmware? I certainly dont believe that this is hardware related. I intend to come up with some repeaters for the problems I have, at the moment, they just occur 'when they feel like it'.
>A couple of the users @ work have had trouble wiv GPRS overriding WiFi >but I put this down to TNBTK!!
I have had this with bluetooth, but not with wifi. I think this connection occurs while on bluetooth when using ports that are not passed by default by ICS on the windows host box.
>I've also seen the lost modem settings problem(also cured by soft >reset).
This one really winds me up cause there is no way such a bug should have got past QA.
>Bluetooth performance has been a touch hit & miss but fiddling in the >advanced settings seem to help!!
Apart from the stupid messages about kernel space when trying to start BT, and the daft popup box saying that the BT stack license has expired, the BT on the XDA IIs is one of the more stable implementations that I have seen. You would think that since BT is now around 5 years old, it would be 100% stable these days.
>I've not tried VPN as I'm actively moving us away from this @ work >towas web based services. Just a thought though, isn't "connecting to >the internet" what you'd expect to see? surely you are using an internet >gateway to VPN onto your network?
It seems that there are two main connection methods in PPC, work, and Internet. The Proxy and VPN settings are not available when connected using a profile that is associated with 'internet' they are only available when connected through a 'work' profile. Again, the documentation is very lacking in the manual. O2's idea of a 'work' connection is WAP to O2 active!! A 'work' connection can be made to allow internet connections by checking the checkbox under proxy servers.
The various guides that I have found all suggest using the same profile for 'work' and 'internet', and setting the checkbox under proxies to allow internet access.
The layout of the whole connections applet in PPC is just a mess - completely unintuative!
Anyway, whatever the correct method, I've tried the lot and cant get the VPN to connect!!
>I'v got a route in to some technical contacts at O2 so I'll ask bout the >bug reporting for U tomorrow.
Cheers!
Nigel
Just got a reply from O2 About Above Bugs!
Hi
Ammused the hell out of me since its obviously a standard reply! There are not hardware problems, they are software problems so exchanging the hardware when the software remains the same aint gonna help!!
Nutters....!
I like the unit, I dont want to return it, I just want then to be aware of, and then fix the bugs and release new firmware promptly. O2's idea, is that if user sends in a bug report that refers to the *software* the unit runs, offer said user a new unit with same software - must cost them a bl00dy fortune!!
See O2's reply below:
Dear Nigel,
Thank you for contacting O2 Customer Service.
Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience that may have
been caused by this matter and thank you for your patience.
I am sorry to know your handset has become faulty within 14 days of
purchase. However, we if you wish to get a new phone, please return your
faulty phone in it`s original packaging using the returns label
provided. If you do not have the original packaging please reply to this email
and I will arrange for a jiffy bag to be sent out to you. Returning
your order is free as the postage is prepaid, however can I ask you
obtain proof of postage as this will assist us greatly in the unlikely event
that your order does not reach our warehouse.
Any money you have paid for your order will be refunded once we have
received your order, however this process may take upto 21 working days.
After this you can order a new phone. There are two ways to order a
product from O2 Online:
You can order directly from our website by clicking on the link below:
http://shop.o2.co.uk/shop/
Alternatively, you can contact our sales team on 0870 225 7879. Who are
available Monday to Friday between 8:30am and 9:00pm and at weekends
between 10:00am and 6:00pm. Calls are charged at National Rate.
Please ensure you have your credit or debit card at hand when ordering.
Before placing your order, please spend a few moments familiarising
yourself with our Online Mobile Terms and Conditions, accessible via the
following link:
http://shop.o2.co.uk/cgi-bin/o2uk/jsp/otherPages/Info.jsp?infoPage=Terms:Shop
Isn't it time to see what you can do with O2.
However, you can also visit your nearest O2 store to get your phone
repaired.
On visiting your local O2 store please take with you proof of purchase.
You should have received this when you originally placed your online
order, if you have not retained this then please contact us again
requesting "proof of purchase".
You can find your nearest store by calling 0800 22 44 77 or by clicking
on the link below:
http://www.o2.co.uk/business/buy/storefinder/0,,130,00.html
dont seems to have the problems you have stated additional i have very good signals over the macdonalds.... (a free wifi service for now) in Singapore and tried with hotels wifi do not seem to have any problems... even installed WiFiForum a Wifi sniffer compitable with IIs and seriously speaking... after installing the WiFiForum i seem to have better phone signals... the best sniffer ever.... For VPN never tried... note: i have pocket skype and it works flawless.... dont get the "locked to network" problem
problems?
sounds like a bad unit. I'm new at this and am really wanting the blue angel early next year but reading a lot of bad press. I still have my sharp gx 1 and am looking for a good upgrade, the blue angel seems to have just the features I want...but so many bugs I'm seeing. from yellow tinged screens to connection and software problems. Thing is...is it a new product issue, or a design issue in general, and does anyone know when these bugs will be fixed? I really don't want to jump and buy one on contract and then have problems...don't know what to do. suggestions?
wifi signal
If you will take down the wifi speed of the access point from mixed a + b to just a, it will improve the signal for the XDA and the coverge will be stronger.
Very very few AP's have A and B. A works on 5.4GHz. B and G is the usual combination since they are both on 2.4GHz. I get no increases in performance by switching my AP to B only, and besides, doing such a thing means that access via my laptop gets well slow!
Modern devices should be able to work with multimode AP's with zero issues. Unfortunately, it seems that not one manufacturer of WiFi gear can read, they all interpret the standards as they see fit (I believe on purpose) thus locking you into their AP and their client side cards if you want a reliable network. WiFi has been around for eons, it should work by now, its hardly rocket science.
And as for the abortion that is bluetooth....!
Nigel
Nigel,
Don't know if this is going to be useful or not - but I've managed to get VPN working on the IIs after reflashing with the newer i-mate ROM.
O2 seem to do some wacky setup that defines your 'work' connection as a connection to their O2 Active WAP service - this seems to screw up VPN connections somehow.
Anyway, it's pretty easy to setup once you start with a clean-ish ROM - but if you have problems/questions let me know.
Also, with regards to wifi - does you unit get a better signal when docked/connected to the mains? I'm not quite sure that the power-saving options are being implemented properly on the IIs's...
Chris.
Okay got bored reading your essay but that bit about the network cards dissapearing when u added a new connection is true! I could only get it to show once I hard reseted and also it used to turn on for a short while when I turned wifi on.... on the Wi fi strength meter I believe its a graphical fault rather than a strength problem also the strength will be affected by other thins i.e. more than one person using the wifi point. I have sent my XDA IIs back to my company in detest about the dissapearing network cards! and I got told in anouther post bluetooth is shot! and an update while be made (Cause i can't connect or see virtually any blutooth devices in range when my mates phone detects 20+) Oh and anouther thing about Wi Fi Strength... Your phone is small and theres less power so naturally u will not be able to pick up as strong as a laptop will in regards to the signal thats why they say blutooth only extends upto 10 meters on mobiles but upto 100 meters on a PC thats deliberate due to power consumption and stuff
Check out this wifi scanner it finds hotspots really quick and shows the signal strength and stuff I use it but be sure to EXit from it before using wi-fi as for sum reason it stops u using wifi untill u exit.. its still a quality tool tho and its freeware! I picked up sumones wifi router in there home (it was 3 floors up) from nearly 150 houses away!!!! Naturally i couldnt connect tho
Click here to download it I found 16 Wifi Points in my local ASDA! and 20 from work to home (1 mile)
XDA VPN woes
Chriscole
I'm a newbie and piloting the xda IIs for the bosses so forgive my naivety. I have had no joy with the VPN setup to connect to the email servers because like you, the wap gprs keeps getting in the way. i am at a loss how to get the VPN setup tp connect using the mobile gprs instaed. Anychance you could post the steps you applied to get this feature to work for others benefit? Also wher can i get i-mate Rom.
Answer gratefully anticipated.
olori :?
I'm a newbie here and after playing one of the games on my xda IIs it freezes and i have to do a soft reset. I've only had it 4 days not sure i want to try anything else on it
VPN and GPRS
Just a thought. I've tried several times over the last couple of years on several platforms to get a VPN connection over GPRS on O2 and I've always failed. Could it be that O2 block the socket on mobile.o2.co.uk? What I'm trying to point out is that this is not an XDA specific problem. I've tried using a laptop, a Clie PEG UX 50, and iPaq 5450 and an old palm VX over time and I've always failed.
I would definately recommend updating to the latest O2 ROM ...... BUT ...... make sure you use corporate mode (code 0506) so that the rubbish O2 software doesn't get installed.
Still testing but it seems far more stable.
bugs
Is there any way to take the o2 stuff off after the new ROM has been installed?
If you don't mind reinstalling any additional software/ringtones etc then you could just do a hard reset to get onto corporate.
Otherwise a search on this forum should reveal how to edit the registry so that the O2 rubbish doesn't load on startup.
HTC Touch HD Seems to have a problem with the way this device is handling GPS.
I have Tom Tom 7 installed and when I try to use Tom Tom 7 it looks for a valid GPS signal and then shows "No GPS Device" It will then find a valid signal and then again shows "No GPS Device" this changes every 10 or 20 seconds.......
If I use quick GPS first before I start Tom Tom (even though Quick GPS hadn't expired) it works fine!!!
Confused!!!
Please help!
Thank you
bit odd, mines fine, the only thing that is probably different is i turned off A-GPS, try turning that off, im assuming you havent been playing with its settings?
try a different GPS enabled program and see if that has the same issues.
dazza9075 said:
bit odd, mines fine, the only thing that is probably different is i turned off A-GPS, try turning that off, im assuming you havent been playing with its settings?
try a different GPS enabled program and see if that has the same issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have turned A-GPS off and it has locked on almost immediately and seems to be keeping the signal so far - There's a first!
I'll give it a bit of a test drive tomorrow and keep my fingers crossed...
Can you give me a quick understanding of how A-GPS is supposed to work (or not)
Thank you for your help.
Andy-- said:
Can you give me a quick understanding of how A-GPS is supposed to work (or not)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's supposed to logon to a server provided by your ISP, then use celltower co-ordinates to help make GPS more accurate.
It's basically totally broken on the HD.
To get a fix the GPS receiver needs Ephemeris data. This can be acquired in several ways.
1. Direct from the satellites to the GPS receiver.
2. From a data file (QuickGPS).
3. Transmitted from a cell tower (AGPS).
1. The receiver will get a fix without any assistance but will take a while to acquire sufficient data from at least three satellites to do so.
2. The receiver has much of the positioning data stored in a file so will resolve a fix quickly.
3. The data transmitted from the cell tower will take time to be received so will take slightly longer than 2.
If both (2) and (3) are supplying Ephemeris data, then that data may be similar but not identical. At this point the receiver will have a WTF moment while trying to resolve the fix from differing data, and so will rely more on (1).
Throw into the mix a weak cell signal and possibly a weak GPS signal / reflections and the problem is compounded.
Clearly there is no need for all three, and in many cases it is problematic. Keep the QuickGPS data up to date and switch off the AGPS.
Fully understood,, thanks for making it so understandable.
I dont believe A-GPS has anything to do with it, and I have mine always disabled to avoid any potential network charges for using it.
I did have some initial teething problems with getting GPs working but once I got up-to-date s/w and configured everything correctly, things improved dramatically.
Now GPS synchronisation is usually very quick indeed, with lots of satellites visible. Occasionally it wont synchronise but I find a soft reset of the device always puts this right.
gotta love that WTF moment wen it spazzs out.
The gps is not very good atleast it is not working very well in my phone.
I tried using cardio trainer. And the gps jumps about. Plus the gps signal shown is very low can anyone put their phone gps through the paces and then tell me should I ask for a replacement or its in all phones
Mines fine.
Mine works fine, GPS is actually pretty good as navigation tells you the road names..!
Dopedangel said:
The gps is not very good atleast it is not working very well in my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you clarify if you're talking about hardware or software?
And did you compare GS with other GPS at the very same time and place?
I too am seeing poor performance with the GPS. Seems to be a hardware issue.
I did a test over the weekend comparing my Galaxy S with a friend's HTC Desire. Using one of the many GPS utilities the Desire was consistently seeing and locking more satellites when stood in an open area outside. When running Google maps and showing the current location I found that the "accuracy circle" (for want of a better description) was growing and shrinking several times a minute causing the map to zoom in and out.
I've also noticed that the compass is almost unusable and showing a much lower signal compared to the Desire. I did perform the figure of 8 calibration several times.
Not tried the GPS yet, but I'm amazed how accurate network location is on this thing.
On my old G1 network location was laughable, but this thing knows pretty much exactly where it is without GPS.
MarvinTheAndroid said:
Not tried the GPS yet, but I'm amazed how accurate network location is on this thing.
On my old G1 network location was laughable, but this thing knows pretty much exactly where it is without GPS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
probably having wifi on? google can locate you more precise cause it has registered every wifi network during the streetview picture taking.
tommy34 said:
probably having wifi on? google can locate you more precise cause it has registered every wifi network during the streetview picture taking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, this is with wifi turned off.
tommy34 said:
probably having wifi on? google can locate you more precise cause it has registered every wifi network during the streetview picture taking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol what kind of anti-google propaganda have you been reading?
Google streetview cars collected data of open wifi networks.
Besides from the fact that google doesn't use the data (which it isn't allowed to have), there are by far not enough open wifi networks to find your location.
Also. You have to have at least 3 networks to be able to determine a location using wifi access points.
So the statement you just made is rubbish and ofcourse nonsense...
BasieP said:
Lol what kind of anti-google propaganda have you been reading?
Google streetview cars collected data of open wifi networks.
Besides from the fact that google doesn't use the data (which it isn't allowed to have), there are by far not enough open wifi networks to find your location.
Also. You have to have at least 3 networks to be able to determine a location using wifi access points.
So the statement you just made is rubbish and ofcourse nonsense...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i dont care about it, i like it.
hmm. just figured this because where i live there arent any open networks and with wifi on it knows my exact location. Without wifi it has a 1600 m radius.
The GPS seems to work flawlessly for me at least.
BasieP said:
Google streetview cars collected data of open wifi networks. Besides from the fact that google doesn't use the data (which it isn't allowed to have), there are by far not enough open wifi networks to find your location.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google collected the SSID and MAC addresses for all of the wifi networks they found, with the explicit intention of using them as an additional source of location data. They also inadvertently collected more data from open networks, and that's what they're in trouble for.
googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
yes and the new google navigation api in the i9000 and android appears to use this data as the damn thing turns on your wifi even when off when gps tries to get a fix!
lgkahn said:
yes and the new google navigation api in the i9000 and android appears to use this data as the damn thing turns on your wifi even when off when gps tries to get a fix!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can disable it in location settings then it wont look for wireless data
Dopedangel said:
you can disable it in location settings then it wont look for wireless data
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nope it is disabled and try to get a gps fix.. wifi still comes on and then goes off.. not sure what it is doing.
I got mine and tested.
In the beginning I had a perfect fix on location. When I started moving, however, I experienced this "jumping around" issue with a huge loss of accuracy. The circle of accuracy was also changing constantly. I think I show something about the wifi seeing (or not being able to see - can't remember) some hotspots although my wi-fi was turned off.
Maybe indeed - the phone detects wifi networks even if the wifi as such is off and possibly compares it to an internal database (thus explaining the persistence of the problem even when the radio is off and the phone is not connected on the net).
Do you know any good free program that would allow me to get some test data - e.g. number of satellites / signal quality etc (unless there is already one somewhere in the interface - I am new to Android).
Can someone else run a test? Can some one run a test in an area where no wifi exists.
That's bad news,i'm really interested in this phone (money-forgiving for a while ),but i need great gps performances...
Evans_Prophet said:
Do you know any good free program that would allow me to get some test data - e.g. number of satellites / signal quality etc (unless there is already one somewhere in the interface - I am new to Android).
Can someone else run a test? Can some one run a test in an area where no wifi exists.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try "GPS Test" its on the market for free. From my test the GPS is actually quite nice, several 18-25 SNR connections and a few 26-30 SNR ones ( When outside I even find one or two 31-40 SNR ones which is really great).
Anyway I notice that GPS had become far more accurate when I disabled the Wifi-location option. The only problem is that locking down takes some time ( about 10-20 seconds max) in my area.
kitsune223 said:
Try "GPS Test" its on the market for free. From my test the GPS is actually quite nice, several 18-25 SNR connections and a few 26-30 SNR ones ( When outside I even find one or two 31-40 SNR ones which is really great).
Anyway I notice that GPS had become far more accurate when I disabled the Wifi-location option. The only problem is that locking down takes some time ( about 10-20 seconds max) in my area.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok - i will test with that and revert..
By the way, in my wm6 Touch HD there was a utility called quickgps which would download data from server instead of having them downloaded from a satellite with a low speed connection. This increased speed of cold lock. Furthermore there was also another option to enable assisted gps (not sure whether this was different from the quick gps application and what this did exactly). I wonder whether these application / features are automatically enabled in our case.
Evans_Prophet said:
I got mine and tested.
In the beginning I had a perfect fix on location. When I started moving, however, I experienced this "jumping around" issue with a huge loss of accuracy. The circle of accuracy was also changing constantly. I think I show something about the wifi seeing (or not being able to see - can't remember) some hotspots although my wi-fi was turned off.
Maybe indeed - the phone detects wifi networks even if the wifi as such is off and possibly compares it to an internal database (thus explaining the persistence of the problem even when the radio is off and the phone is not connected on the net).
Do you know any good free program that would allow me to get some test data - e.g. number of satellites / signal quality etc (unless there is already one somewhere in the interface - I am new to Android).
Can someone else run a test? Can some one run a test in an area where no wifi exists.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It can also be a problem of google navigation beta?? Did anyone try another gps navigator?
i felt the same thing about GPS, as it is not that good , as there's no wi-fi Google can detect hear. the performance was not that good at all!.
but tonight i used the GPS without the Wifi (i turned it off) and for a surprise the performance was amazing, I was with my friend in his car watching the road as he drive and watching the google map in my phone and was very good indeed.
that's strange!.
Hey there. This is my first post but rest assured I'm not really a noob (been editing wm reg for at least 5 years...)
I am grandfathered in to an unlimited data plan with at&t (although I did have to go from $20 to $30 a month when I upgraded to the tilt2/rohdium) and I have a minor but seriously annoying problem with using xda-wifi-sharing & bittorrent under some pretty specific circumstances.
I have been using my service to download video for several years as I don't have a tv or internet any other way. I get much of my tv video from tvtorrents.com as you can download entire seasons of just about any tv worth watching.
When I am downloading a season torrent (multiple episodes, many peers etc...) my 3G/HSDPA connection times out or gets "stuck" and requires me to restart the data service on the phone. While this has happened before, rarely, it is happening very frequently now.
Using tvtorrents for these type of downloads affords many high speed seeds and I think that the number of seed/peer connections is somehow overwhelming the 3G/HSDPA data connection, causing it to time out. This never used to happen with this frequency and I'm not sure what to do.
Thanks for your help and thank Jebus for this site (and I don't even believe in Jebus...) as I would never have gotten this far without you all.
tilt2, wm 6.5 stock rom, bloat and crippleware removed
Have you tried a torrent software on the phone itself and downloaded to your Storage Card? My thought it to eliminate the tethering part to see if that has something to do with the lock out.
Thresher said:
Have you tried a torrent software on the phone itself and downloaded to your Storage Card? My thought it to eliminate the tethering part to see if that has something to do with the lock out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hmmm... wasn't aware of a bittorrent client for WM. I've been using uTorrent on my laptop for a few years now without any problems until recently. Right now my girlfriend also connects through the xda-wifi-router and this doesn't happen (at least nowhere near the frequency it happens to me). Physical tethering is a bit of a pain as I find that the orientation of the phone (in relation to laptop) and distance from my laptop significantly affects bandwidth.
I'm thinking about un/reinstalling utorrent, and maybe changing where the tilt2 is in the room... it's been working so well for so long, I'm sure I can get it to work again.
I've also had intermittent crash problems with device.exe on the tilt2, maybe this is related?
Thanks for your help
Ok, I guess that my problem was with at&t's network (damn iPhone users.. ..). Anywho, I have not made any substantial changes, yet all of the sudden, everything works fine.
I am reluctant to call at&t as they want to verify my network settings ( that have been working fine forever but might concern them as I am the network hog, not the iPhone users.. hehe). Every time I call I call from my phone and they have a hard time understanding that it is the only phone I have available.
Strangely, the very act of having one of their techs look at my account seems to fix my problem (most of the time it is that I am traveling).
Regardless, thanks for your help!
Anyone know why my GPS fix is so slow? It takes at least 10 minutes to get a fix..
I'm running - VaniljEclair RLS6
TW,
It really depends on the weather. If you look up and see clouds, it's going to be a while. If it's raining then it may never connect.
It also helps the have the best tools for the job. Use kallt_kaffe's latest kernel, and download and use "GPS Test" for connecting your GPS.
Dukenukemx said:
It really depends on the weather. If you look up and see clouds, it's going to be a while. If it's raining then it may never connect.
It also helps the have the best tools for the job. Use kallt_kaffe's latest kernel, and download and use "GPS Test" for connecting your GPS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's clear outside so its not weather related.
I'm curious what the"GPS Test" tool actually does? and just exactly what the phone is doing causing it to take so long.
Thanks,
The way GPS works is as follows.
In order to know your position on a 2 dimensional plane, you need 2 coordinates, X and Y, however in order to know your position on a 3 dimensional object, you need 3 coordinates, X, Y and Z, what we need to know is our position in a 4 dimensional space, which requires not only X, Y Z and V, so that's a lot of data right there, and to further complicate things, the satellites themselves are in motion, also in 4 dimensions.
Ok if that hasn't messed with your head, consider this, your phone only receives GPS data from the satellites, it does not transmit anything, so how does your phone know where the satellites are? simple, the satellites transmit their position, the time, their velocity and heading, ( actually it's slightly more complicated, but I'm not getting into orbital mechanics, lol).
So in order to be able to fix a position, your phone must download this data from each satellite in view, process and compare it with all the other data in order to get an initial fix.
As if this was not complicated enough, you must also realise that the satellite data is continually transmitting in an updating loop, so if the receiver gets bad data from one sat, it must discard that set and start again.
Once the initial fix is made, it's a simple matter to continually update the devices position, but once the gps is turned off, it may take some time to resynchronise, especially if the user has moved to another location before restarting gps.
To operate with reasonable accuracy, (within a few tens of metres), you must have a good signal from at least 4 satellites, more just refines the accuracy.
So why ten minutes? Well there are a number of factors, weather does play a part, but not as much as some think, typically you will lose lock on the weaker satellites, giving less accuracy.
Surrounding buildings and trees are actually great at blocking GPS signals, so in wooded or built up areas, expect slower fixes, less accuracy, and dropped locks.
Movement, this is actually the biggest problem, if you are in motion during the initial fix period, there is a high probability that your own motion will cause problems, since the gps data may be changing too fast for the device to cope with, which will cause it to continually discard data that may be valid.
All in all, the best practice is to find somewhere stationary, away from buildings and trees, turn on GPS, and just wait for it to lock, it will usually take 5 minutes from cold start, perhaps up to 10 minutes in some cases.
Once the initial fix is established, it takes less time to refix after gps is turned off, since the last data is kept in the device for future reference, (which is why it can take more time to fix if you turn off gps and then move 10K or so before turning it on again).
Winmo has a few advantages over Android for gps, since on WM you can download a 'snapshot' of the satellite data in order to 'jump start' the gps to get a faster fix, that plus cell location and agps make it much faster to get up and running compared to Android on our hardware, which lacks cell location and agps.
What GPS Test does is simply show you a lot more data than you would normally see, satellite positions, signal strengths, number of sats visible, number in use by you. Basically it lets you see that some data is actually being received by your device, how strong the signal is, and if the device has locked to a satellite. I highly recommend getting GPS Test from market if you use gps, used it on WM, and the Android port is just as good, ( I got the paid version, but the free one is excellent too).
Any questions?
zenity said:
The way GPS works is as follows.
...
Winmo has a few advantages over Android for gps, since on WM you can download a 'snapshot' of the satellite data in order to 'jump start' the gps to get a faster fix, that plus cell location and agps make it much faster to get up and running compared to Android on our hardware, which lacks cell location and agps.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Terrific write up!
So, GPS Test won't help speed up the positioning so therefore there isn't a need to download it unless your curious about any of the other settings, thanks.
Since the WM version was a bit quicker in getting the position by downloading a file is there something in the works to try and incorporate this process into Droid?
After it finds a fix, if the handset suspends is there a need to re-aquire the sats or wait again for the same process?
Thanks,
Well GPS Test won't speed up the initial or subsequent fixes, but it does give a good indication that gps is actually working, and receiving/processing the data, and once fixed, you just close that and start your preferred gps app, which will fix almost instantly since the data is current.
I don't think we have anything for android that does the same as the WM gps app, could be wrong, but have not seen anything yet.
The slowest is the initial fix, after that it usually fixes faster, suspended or powered down, only reinstall/wipe data will usually require such a long fix time again, however as I said, there are a number of factors, movement being perhaps the biggest cause of delay.
However once fixed, Android is comparable to WM, even better in some cases, since I never could get my all time favourite GPS software (trekbuddy), to work in WM, it is great in Android though
I don't think we have anything for android that does the same as the WM gps app, could be wrong, but have not seen anything yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i also looked and found nothing
The slowest is the initial fix, after that it usually fixes faster, suspended or powered down, only reinstall/wipe data will usually require such a long fix time again, however as I said, there are a number of factors, movement being perhaps the biggest cause of delay.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mine also takes forever every time unless i havnt moved and switch apps within 10 minutes.
However once fixed, Android is comparable to WM, even better in some cases, since I never could get my all time favourite GPS software (trekbuddy), to work in WM, it is great in Android though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i lose gps on the highway, unlike when i had wimo
i still think its odd that i can see 6, 7, 8 sats for 2 or 3 minutes before getting a lock
Thinking about trying this on a friends Eris, but other android devices get a lock very quickly. The other devices have working tower location, so does the android gps system use the tower location to speed up gps lock?
I'm going to take my friends Eris and turn off all radio functions, then run GPS test to see what happens and how long a lock takes...
Ok, tried a few things on the Eris. In airplane mode, launched GPS test in a lock in under 10 seconds. Restarted the phone, still in airplane mode, and immediatly launch gps test and a lock in under 10 seconds.
Do these other phones have GPS chips have almanac caching or does the OS have some way of storing almanac data to assit the GPS.
As far as I am aware, from previous experience of GPS devices, the last ephemeris data is cached in the device chipset, allowing a faster start up, provided the user has not moved too far, or left gps off long enough to make the data too old. However I do not have enough information to make more than guess that it is hardware based rather than OS based caching.
Cell tower location allows GPS to establish a 3 dimensional fix, (remember gps needs more than 3 dimensions to establish a true fix), not enough to be totally accurate, but within 20-50 Metres, which is ideal for 'seeding' the incoming gps data from satellite, allowing even faster start up, since the gps chipset does not have to do nearly as much calculation and correlation on the data, since it already knows roughly where it is.
So the delay we experience in getting a gps fix with Android on our devices has one main cause, lack of cell tower location, and it's possible that the ephemeris data cache may not be getting processed, if this is indeed cached by the hardware, and not by the OS.
Some of you may have noticed a file called gps.conf in /system/etc
It looks like this:
Code:
NTP_SERVER=north-america.pool.ntp.org
XTRA_SERVER_1=http://xtra1.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
XTRA_SERVER_2=http://xtra2.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
XTRA_SERVER_3=http://xtra3.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
SUPL_HOST=supl.google.com
SUPL_PORT=7276
NTP is a protocol for getting accurate time from servers on the internet.
xtra.bin is asfaik the satellite almanac.
SUPL_HOST is for AGPS.
My guess is that a "real" android libgps uses this information to do a few things to help the GPS out.
1. Give it the current time
2. Prime it with the almanac
3. Use the AGPS data to provide it with correction data etc.
We could do some HaRET magic to monitor what the QuickGPS software send to the GPS chip and make our own QuickGPS tool for android or even build that into libgps.so. It's possible but is it worth the time? I don't know. I would give it a go if I wasn't allready lacking time to do everything I want to do.
kallt_kaffe said:
Some of you may have noticed a file called gps.conf in /system/etc
It looks like this:
Code:
NTP_SERVER=north-america.pool.ntp.org
XTRA_SERVER_1=http://xtra1.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
XTRA_SERVER_2=http://xtra2.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
XTRA_SERVER_3=http://xtra3.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin
SUPL_HOST=supl.google.com
SUPL_PORT=7276
NTP is a protocol for getting accurate time from servers on the internet.
xtra.bin is asfaik the satellite almanac.
SUPL_HOST is for AGPS.
My guess is that a "real" android libgps uses this information to do a few things to help the GPS out.
1. Give it the current time
2. Prime it with the almanac
3. Use the AGPS data to provide it with correction data etc.
We could do some HaRET magic to monitor what the QuickGPS software send to the GPS chip and make our own QuickGPS tool for android or even build that into libgps.so. It's possible but is it worth the time? I don't know. I would give it a go if I wasn't allready lacking time to do everything I want to do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, that makes sense, since Agps uses an internet server to prime the gps chipset, and if I recall correctly QuickGPS is similar, but provides the weeks Ephemeris data. Ephemeris, Almanac and Time are the three main data components of GPS, ( almanac being the one I tend to forget about....).
Perhaps changing a few server addresses in gps.conf may provide us with some aggps functionality, but I am now wondering if perhaps agps is 'broken' in our builds, or perhaps I have never noticed any data activity.
Just had a look at the website address http://xtra1.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin, which allows me to download what I assume is the data file, so what we need to complete the puzzle is, what uses gps.conf, and where does it put the data file?, Also does anything use that data file if present?
GPS is currently pretty much useless in that it just never gets a fix, today I waited 10 minutes and still nothing - I went back to WM to use GPS, so any development in this area would be sweet!
TW,
Not sure exactly what is going on there, last night I installed the latest nbh from kallt, plus his RLS7b eclair build, this morning I started gps for the first time, using gpstest I got a first fix in under 3 minutes, which is faster than average.
Sent from my HTC Kaiser using Tapatalk
zenity said:
Not sure exactly what is going on there, last night I installed the latest nbh from kallt, plus his RLS7b eclair build, this morning I started gps for the first time, using gpstest I got a first fix in under 3 minutes, which is faster than average.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using the same setup at the minute, tried GPS this morning and it got a fix on the move in about 5mins which isn't bad, my girlfriends HTC Hero got a fix in under a minute though and it's the first time it has connected and it's true that WM is much faster when quickGPS is updated. Any improvements here are very welcome, maybe i'll have a look into it too.
you could edit gps.conf according to your own pool server
a list of these servers can be found here. May make a small difference for some people.
Please post if this helped getting a quicker fix
http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/
Update:
i used the appropriate time server for my country (netherlands),
i used a fresh device (android had never ran on it, though the android on sdcard has been used on other devices)
i went to the toilet very quick, when i came back there was a fix.
So please go see if this makes a difference for you, and post your experiences in here
I seriously don't think it will matter what you put in gps.conf at the moment. What we need to know is how this is used on a "real" android phone.
I've tried to find some GPS code in the Hero kernel source in the past but found almost nothing and the libgps for HTC devices are asfaik closed source so I guess it's in libgps all the "magic" takes place. (I fact, for Kaisers the it would be more "right" to do our NMEA parsing in libgps instead of doing it in the kernel but since libgps evolved around the Vogue it was made in the kernel to make it appear just like the vogue gps data to libgps.so.)
So I'm guessing that a "real" libgps.so reads gps.conf, get's some data and feeds it to the GPS. Likely with AT-commands. It is possible though that it is the ril interface that does it. We have the source for our ril lib and our gpslib and I know for sure we don't do any prime:ing in the our libgps. (The sources are here: http://androidhtc.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb-index.cgi?p=gitroot/androidhtc/bootenv/)
It is possible to do dump stuff with HaRET when you for example enable the GPS (I've done it in the past following instructions from dzo) and also when you run QuickGPS and try to match the information sent with the information in xtra.bin. I also expect we should find it sending the current UTC time which by it self propably could speed up fix times.
Once we know what to do we either build it into libgps or we make an Android app similar to QuickGPS.
In fact, I found some dumps laying around....
At boot WinMo sends the system time to the Radio with this command:
[email protected]=2,21,43,2010,5,12
I would say the format is H,M,S,YYYY,M,D even though values are a bit strange because the files are dated 2010-05-11 but it's possible that the WinMo clock was a bit f*cked up at the moment.
Perhaps our rild is allready sending this (someone should check the source)
Otherwise you could try this and se if it helps:
echo -e "[email protected]=x\r" > /dev/smd0
(replaceing the x with the current time and date of course)
Just tried and it was going on 10 minutes with no fix...
TW,
Have you tried gpstest to see if it's actually receiving a signal at all? It is possible that you have a hardware issue, perhaps a broken antenna connection?
If that were the case then it shouldn't work in Windows and it does... ???
Strange...
Does Android require a data connection when getting a GPS fix?
TW,