Google satnav is all over the shop!

Merlin5 · 23 Feb 2015 at 01:54

It's served me well for the last 3 years on my SGS2 but recently it's been ******* me off with it's erratic behaviour. It does get me to where I want, but once I'm sat at lights, the white triangle goes off for a wander, the map might spin around slightly, and I can't see where I'm heading anymore. Once I start moving again, it eventually catches up but not always in good time.

It also decides to sometimes randomly reroute (while I'm moving) for no reason at all. Getting a satellite signal has also become more difficult than it used to be. And sometimes it keeps losing it then locking on again.

I've been putting off a phone upgrade for too long and now is definitely the time to do it. I don't know if these issues are hardware related (dropped the phone 2 or three times recently with silicone case on, no scratches or dents, in almost 4 years of owning this phone) or if google satnav has got worse. Should I delete google satnav and reinstall or is there a better free android satnav app?

Richie · 23 Feb 2015 at 06:53

Sounds more like your phone is losing the GPS signal than anything else.... I used Google sat nav recently and it was faultless.

Kanpai · 23 Feb 2015 at 07:13

Richie said:
Sounds more like your phone is losing the GPS signal than anything else.... I used Google sat nav recently and it was faultless.

+1

Myshra · 23 Feb 2015 at 08:45

It's 99% likely to be the phone in this case. You can re-install gmaps, takes 20s but it's not likely to be the fault. If you use a gps tester, how many satellites can you see?

Minstadave · 23 Feb 2015 at 08:56

Try Waze, I find it's pretty reliable.

Orcvader · 23 Feb 2015 at 11:47

As above, it does sound more like the phone's GPS is getting faulty. I use Google Maps as a sat nav on my M7 and it works fine. Try out another sat nav app to see if the same thing happens.

As for the auto rerouting, Google detects traffic (from Waze) and produces a new route that avoids it, which can sometimes be annoying. There's not really any way to disable this, but if you look on the map and notice two routes splitting off from each other in blue and grey, then grey is usually the old route and blue is the new route that avoids traffic. Move onto the grey route and the app will automatically switch you back to the old route. I did this last night so I know it works

.

soundb0y · 23 Feb 2015 at 13:18

I've had a lot of problems lately on both m7 and note 4.

I sort of just put it down to being in the middle of London though. Is there anyway that can interfere with the satellites?

neil_g · 23 Feb 2015 at 13:24

http://www.gps.gov/spectrum/

there has been a bit of solar activity recently i believe? long shot though, more likely to be local environment interference.

Myshra · 23 Feb 2015 at 13:50

soundb0y said:
I've had a lot of problems lately on both m7 and note 4.

I sort of just put it down to being in the middle of London though. Is there anyway that can interfere with the satellites?

Buildings reflect the signal around a bit which weakens the integrity (will increase the radius of the sphere it thinks you're in - gmaps used to show this as a blue circle, can't remember if it still does this?). This is a fair problem in metro areas to be fair. It helps if you have a phone in which the GPS chip can use glonass as well as GPS as that doubles your satellite count etc...95% sure an S2 would be too old for this.

Orcvader · 23 Feb 2015 at 13:52

soundb0y said:
I sort of just put it down to being in the middle of London though. Is there anyway that can interfere with the satellites?

I was in central a couple of years and tried to use my M7 as a sat nav to get to places as I was showing a few friends around, but it struggled to get a proper GPS location in most parts (thank god there were maps around

). It happened with their iPhones and Lumia as well so it's probably something to do with the area.

Psycho Sonny · 23 Feb 2015 at 14:49

Minstadave said:
Try Waze, I find it's pretty reliable.

You do know google own waze? In fact that is where google collects some of its traffic info from

Minstadave · 23 Feb 2015 at 15:01

Psycho Sonny said:
You do know google own waze? In fact that is where google collects some of its traffic info from

Yup, but I've also found it very reliable and well worth a try.

Rich_L · 23 Feb 2015 at 16:39

I found on my similar gen phone (Razr M) when I was in London that the phone couldn't keep up with navigation, my guess was calculating the mapping options being guided by traffic etc ended up lagging miserably which isn't much good when you need directions every couple hundred yards so I'd end up getting sent round in circles or via some weird convoluted way.

Could try a less featured/bloated (delete as applicable) nav app and see if its any better?

Mr Paul · 23 Feb 2015 at 19:15

I was in France last week and for a few minutes I was apparently in Israel lol

Merlin5 · 23 Feb 2015 at 19:39

Thanks for the replies guys. Sounds like the phone needs ditching. Will have to contact EE and upgrade to perhaps the latest Samsung phone.

Mr Paul said:
I was in France last week
and for a few minutes I was apparently in Israel lol

GT3 · 23 Feb 2015 at 20:26

I find google maps is fine when driving along roads but in cities using the walking function it can be a bit irratic like you mention probably due to struggling to get gps next to high rise buildings.

Uriel · 4 Mar 2015 at 14:25

There is a bug on some Android devices where network Location (using wi-fi, mobile masts etc) can interrupt GPS and momentarily send it awry. It's a known problem on a Nexus 5 for example.

Go to settings, location services and turn off Google's location service. I have to do that to keep a rock solid GPS signal on my Xiaomi Mi2S.