Hack your Sprint Motorola Q9c to improve GPS performance – GPS + aGPS = awesome
By Will Park on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 2:08 PM PST In Devices, Motorola, Services, Sprint, Technologies
Sprint’s Motorola Q9c features a fully open GPS receiver – the first Windows Mobile smartphone to rock integrated GPS on Sprint (NYSE: S)’s network. The Moto Q9c’s “open” GPS means that the receiver’s COM ports are visible and accessible to external programs – not just the programs (like navigation software) that the carrier wants you to use. Applications like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps and Microsoft Live Search are free to leverage the GPS receiver – the way it should be.
Unfortunately, the GPS unit in the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Q9c is set to acquire positional data from satellite only – making the device essentially a stand-alone GPS receiver. Sprint apparently didn’t think aGPS (assisted GPS), which uses cell-tower location information to help get a position-lock, was necessary on the Moto Q9c.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could add aGPS location information to the Moto Q9c’s open GPS receiver? Of course it would. GPS and aGPS could work together to return a faster position-lock in most situations.
Sprint Users‘ member StarmanDX apparently saw the need to add some aGPS goodness to the Sprint Motorola Q9c. He’s come up with a cool little trick to get the Moto Q9c to take advantage of Sprint’s aGPS servers while maintaining that awesomely-open GPS receiver’s functionality.
Keep reading to find out how to make your Motorola Q9c a better GPS performer.
From WMExperts:
Preliminaries
One caveat: you need your MSL, which stands for “Master Subsidy Lock” and is a 6 digit code to program your phone. Remember when you called Sprint to activate your phone and they had your program in your number in that “special menu”? To get there you had to enter your MSL. Some of us tricksters now know to write that down for future use. But you probably haven’t done this, so here’s the trick: you need to call Sprint and get it. It’s technically not a big deal and are supposed to give it to you if you ask, after all it is your phone not theirs. So here are some things to say to the Sprint CSRs or better yet, try Tech Support:
- Just ask, sometimes they give it. Worked for me!
- Say you took your phone to a Sprint store and they need your MSL to reprogram part of the phone
- Tell them that you are trying to change your user name within the settings on your phone and the phone is requiring the MSL code
- Say you are developing application for the phone
Yeah, it’s a wee bit of a white lie, but it’s worth it. Now once you have that number, store it somewhere safe and remember to do this for all your WM devices in the future, you may never know when you need it.
One other note before the actual hack: you have to trust the settings are saved. If you go back into this menu, it’ll all be erased, but once entered it’ll stay. So have faith that they stuck.
And now for the trick and thanks again to StarmanDX!
Enable aGPS Sprint assistance servers for Moto Q Q9c
- Dial ##073887*
- Hit Send/Green Key
- Enter your MSL
- Hit H (GPS Settings)
- Enter 68.28.31.49 for the IP address
- Enter 5017 for the port number
- Save/Exit
(ps Nope, I do not know how to do this for AT&T (NYSE: T) Q9h’s or Verizon (NYSE: VZ)’s Q9ms. Sorry, Sprint only!)
[Via: WMExperts]
where do I find the msl on the sprint moto q
Sprint customer support told me that they were not able to give me that number while I’m in contract with them.
is MSL same thing as MSID? I wrote that one down… but it is a 10 digit long. is that right?
do you have to put the #`s in when you put the msl number in or not, i went thru a lot to get this number but i was able to get it after a reset on my phone
This definitely did not work for me. Now my GPS isn’t working at all and I’m trying to figure out how to undo this. Any information on how to do that?
I have to say it worked great for me, I have a regular GPS and my phone now is actually closer than the other one and seems to work pretty fast
Bobby, are you using the Sprint Navigation program? That’s what I’m doing, and it is saying “Getting GPS” for like 10 minutes and then it’ll tell me that it doesn’t have a clear view of the sky, even if I’m doing it outside on a clear day.
Kathryn, Did you do everything the e-mail told you to do when you hacked your phone. I did all of that and it improved my GPS a lot and yes i am using Sprint Navigation program
These are the directions I followed:
Dial ##073887*
Hit Send/Green Key
Enter your MSL
Hit H (GPS Settings)
Enter 68.28.31.49 for the IP address
Enter 5017 for the port number
Save/Exit
Was there more to it than that? I did have my MSL number. I got that when when I first bought the phone.
I guess it would not hurt to go thru the whole set up again and that way you make sure it is in,I guess the next question I have is did the GPS work good before you did the download and from what I understand if you do not save it reverts back to orginal setting, and besides if you have to dump the program and reload it no big deal.
Yes, the GPS worked before I did this. When you say the download, I don’t remember my phone downloading anything. Was this process supposed to download a program onto my phone? I tried doing those steps that I pasted above again, but no change. Am I missing something? You mentioned an email. I didn’t access this process via email, but on this website: http://www.intomobile.com/2007/12/23/hack-your-sprint-motorola-q9c-to-improve-gps-performance-gps-agps-awesome.html If you still have the email you’re talking about, will you forward it to me? kathryn t smith at gmail dot com
@Kathryn Did you ever get your problem resolved? I’ve run into the same issue you describe, but with WLS and Google Maps. They were working before, but after I tried the steps described, it didn’t work. I tried to undo, but still not working. Thanks for any insight.
No, I never got this “hack” to work. I had to completely reset my phone. I don’t know what kind of reset they call that, but it meant completely deleting everything from my phone and even reactivating it with Sprint. My GPS works now, and I’m not going to mess with it again.
I guess that I am missing something somewhere because I have had no issues with my phone since doing the hack. I noticed Sprint has stopped selling the Q phone?
If you use this hack, you might loss the GPS connectivity when there is no Sprint tower to connect to.
At least, that is my experience so far. I am able to use the GPS in the city, and it is very fast to have a fix (take seconds instead of 1 or 2 minutes).
But once I get in national parks, where I am roaming, the GPS never locks on any satellite.
There is surely a way to get this to reset without a hard reset. I am going to try to input something like 0.0.0.0 as the IP address next time I hit off the backcountry. If someone didi it, can it confirm?
So, I did this and the unit still works. How do I know that I have both GPS and aGPS? Is there a test? Seems like at least one person (Chris) is saying that when he’s out of tower range that the GPS is not kicking in. My concern is that I don’t have GPS + aGPS, but rather I’ve gone from GPS to aGPS.
How do we know?
i tried this, but the gps still does not get a signal. it takes about 10 minutes to try to lock onto a satellite, but no dice.
I master reset my phone and all my phone numbers got erased ! Will I be able to get those numbers back with any settings ??
It actually messed up my navigation, and will not connect. so i am on the phone with sprint’s tech support attempting to fix this issue, hopefully it gets fix, because i am traveling to jacksonville tonight and have no clue on how to get around there without the navigation, i have a TOMTOM, but i am trying to avoid carrying one extra item with me
my gps do not work, please help moto qc9
Does this hack work with regular motorola q with out the need for a gps receiver?
Also if the above is possible, is it good enough to be worth with to mess with?
This worked fine for me. My gps is a lot faster. both on sprint nav and google maps.