Apparent GPS Failure

[ly92078]

A sunny day, no clouds, Winter Haven, FL. What is so Weird is that I am outside an hour ago and no lock in. Any where from 0 to 8 sats seen, but none used. An hour later same place, same sky and it sees 9 to 11 sats and uses about 8 and everything is working ok. Why???

 

[jaymeangreen]

A sunny day, no clouds, Winter Haven, FL. What is so Weird is that I am outside an hour ago and no lock in. Any where from 0 to 8 sats seen, but none used. An hour later same place, same sky and it sees 9 to 11 sats and uses about 8 and everything is working ok. Why???

i just read your post and grabbed my phone to check it and see if mine would work .sure enough it locked on while i was inside my house.wonder how long it will last this time

im in ft.myers

 

[BurtB]

Former Alltell customer in WI

I got my Droid on the 7th. GPS worked perfectly for 4 days. Flew to Ft Myers for 5 days. GPS never worked once. Back in WI this evening. Works perfectly again. The "former Alltell/SW FL area" problem is confirmed for me.

 

[ly92078]

Follow up: It is 3 hours since last post. The droid has been sitting quietly on my desk, inside. The GPS was ok for at least two hours, just checked it and all the satellites are gone. Did nothing to disturb droid, it was hooked up to the charger the entire time. Seems random and very unpredictable.

 

[jaymeangreen]

i woke up this morning and no satellites again. This is BULLS__T! Verizon keeps running these GPS navigation commercials and the damn thing doesnt even work.

 

[Itamar]

Well, here's my story:
I've always been a Verizon customer for many years, never with Alltel. I live in Boca Raton in SE Florida. I got my Droid on the 9th and the GPS was working fine until yesterday. We took a road trip to Naples via Tamiami Trail, taking a detour to do some off-roading on Loop Road in the middle of the Everglades. About half way through, the GPS died. It stayed like that all the way to the Naples. We drove past the Verizon store on 9th & Central and I stopped in to find out what happened. The CS rep fiddled around with it for a half hour and the GPS started working again. He said it should be ok now (he did ask me if I was ever an Alltel customer but never gave an explanation). Went to dinner, got back in the car to return to Boca and GPS was dead again. Verizon store now closed. Drove all the way home without GPS. Once home, GPS started working again. WTF? Apparently this is not just an Alltel problem.

 

[MarkB]

My phone came on Friday and the GPS has worked for all of 20 minutes, just once on Saturday night. Venice Florida, never an Alltel customer as mentioned before. It's interesting how this seems to be focused primarily on Florida, at least based on the posts here. Really points to some sort of network problem locally.

 

[cgunn82]

sighhhhh my GPS still doesnt work they need to hurry up and fix this, by the way Im in Atlanta and didnt come from Alltel

 

[ly92078]

Are there ANY people in Florida or in other parts of the country where the GPS IS working without any problems?

 

[MarkB]

I've read dozens of accounts of people loving the gps, both on the other subforums of this board and in other places too. They're probably not reading a "GPS failure" thread though

 

[Narsil]

Neither of the two guys in line in front of me at the Brandon Mall Invisible Shield kiosk had any problems with their Droids' GPS systems. They said they locked on in a couple seconds every time. I drove up to Leesburg, FL this morning and the GPS started working halfway up.

Beats me but this annoys me far more than the camera autofocus. I hope they fix it quickly.

 

[darreno1]

Are there ANY people in Florida or in other parts of the country where the GPS IS working without any problems?

I'm in SW Florida and so far, no problems whatsoever, it gets a lock in seconds.

 

[Erich_F]

UPDATE:

It's been a few days now on unit #2 and I have had no issues. I went on a road trip to Gainesville yesterday and it worked flawlessly.

I think the Tampa Area got a batch of phones with bad GPS units, or maybe a faulty antenna connection internal to the phone. My replacement unit came from the VZW store in Citrus Park, where the original came from the Wesley Chapel store. Maybe, if you bought your phone east of I-75, your GPS is at risk?

 

[MarkB]

Possible a bad batch got shipped to the area, true. Mine came fedexed from Wirefly though. I'll give it a little longer, put in another call to customer support at VZ later.

 

[MarkB]

Well mine just locked on to multiple satellites (I checked with GPS Status app) about an hour ago, and it's still locked on even though I'm inside the house. I'm just wondering if anyone else who was having a problem in Florida suddenly saw their GPS wake up around the same time. If so, it would point to something with the network and not an individual hardware issue on the phones themselves.