Apparent GPS Failure

[spalding12]

That comment was directed at ly92078, or anyone else able and willing to try it.

Spalding12: I'm in the same boat as you--my cell # was the old number for my business line--I can't change it.

thanks for the clarification
as i've said before.... i did NOT buy the droid for its gps capabilities....
but, it ought to work
i hope it will, soon

 

[spalding12]

surely verizon is ALREADY aware of this ALLTEL-based snafu
they ought to be able to fix it ALMOST IMMEDIATELY.... NO?

 

[JerrytheGreat]

...and yes, these issues we Alltel people are having smacks of class action, as Verizon consistenly refuses to activate alltel-branded phones, and deliberately makes life difficult for subscribers still on Alltel-issued plans (which were consistently cheaper than the Verizon ones), and now has limited functionality on service features (like GPS).

 

[JerrytheGreat]

I unfortunately did very much want GPS (my old phone had it), and am now struggling like a homeowner without his microwave..

 

[ly92078]

Understandable, Jerry! And guess what...an hour or so has passed since last post and I was editing contacts......and.....no satellites and no fix. What an annoying mess.

And I am a physician too...wouldn't be so bad to get a new phone number!!! Hospital might not be able to reach me.

 

[cgunn82]

I took my phone back to Verizon and got a new phone and GPS has been working ever since.

 

[spalding12]

from another forum....
we have authentication:


was finally told today , it is related to former ALLTEL customers. towers and programming will not let the gps work properly. they say its being worked on and hope to have a fix in a couple of weeks. we shall see !

 

[crankygypsy]

from another forum....
we have authentication:

what other forum?

 

[R1Lover]

Make sure you guys are outside when trying this... GPS sat's will often not go through buildings....they need the see the sky to work properly.

 

[dvjones12]

I am not an Altel member. Have been Verizon for 8 years. I had the same issues. Ended up taking the battery out and leaving it out for an hour. Put it back in and works great. Afraid to shut off GPS power now though.

FYI I used GPS app and it showed that I have the sattalites available but was not using it. So i would say this in NOT just a Altel customer issue

 

[darreno1]

Like some on here, I believe we're looking at several different issues. Sometimes the GPS will not function without a power off then on. That seems to be almost universal. I checked the iPhone forums, same issue, Pre forums same issue. Once it's up and running again, it might work for weeks/months and probably require another power off at some point. I have yet to have an issue though.

The other is the need for a complete factory reset. This is more rare. The other is the Alltel issue which is being worked on. Aside from the Alltel issue, the other two may be fixed with a software/firmware update. Just my take so far.

 

[spalding12]

i appreciate the continued discourse...
i love my droid but still want the GPS to work
again.....
i'm an ex-alltell customer in the tampa bay area

 

[spalding12]

oh....
and, by the way:
here's what some UPPER LEVEL VERIZON REP TOLD ME... earlier today:

Former ALLTEL Customers will NEVER get GPS until they change to a VERIZON phone #

 

[Erich_F]

That is interesting in regards to the Alltel thing...I wonder how the phone number has anything to do with a GPS unit?

In any case, I have posted a formal procedure that I used to restore function to my Droid GPS. Here is the Post.

YMMV.

Erich

 

[Narsil]

I understand why my Alltel HTC Touch Pro would not lock onto the GPS satellites. This was because the drivers for the GPS chip were part of the Alltel navigation program. If you didn't pay for the Alltel navigation, my phone had no drivers to operate the chip; no GPS. I ran some other GPS-utilization programs but in order for them to work, I had to load the Alltel navigation program so the drivers would load. When HTC made the phone, they had drivers for it. The Alltel "Front End," the interface you saw when the phone powered up, screwed with (or deleted) the HTC drivers. I could not even apply HTC firmware updates for known bugs because it would overwrite the Alltel "Front End" (I don't know the proper programming term) and my phone would no longer function.

One of the largest, if not the largest, selling point for me with the Droid is that Verizon has no "Front End" on the Motorola Droid and does not in any way limit any functionality of the Android OS or Motorola programming. What you see when you power up is the Motorola programming and the Android OS. You'll notice that nowhere in any of the software splash screens, nowhere in the boot process, does "Verizon" appear anywhere.

IN LIGHT OF THE ABOVE, CAN ANYONE GIVE ME A TECHNICALLY VALID REASON WHY MY GPS DOES NOT FUNCTION DUE TO MY TELEPHONE NUMBER??

Neither the GPS chip, nor the GPS satellites, nor my Motorola phone, care that my phone number was designated by Alltel. How can that possibly make any difference on a GPS connection?

I smell a red herring.

And it stinks.