The Samsung Galaxy S and its variants are plagued with a troubling GPS problem that produces inaccurate GPS readings. Not only is the internal GPS slow to get a satellite lock, when a lock is finally obtained, the location information reported to the handset is often streets, sometimes even towns away from your physical location. Its not all doom and gloom for Galaxy S owners as Samsung is aware of the GPS problem and tweeted on Friday that they are in the process of testing a software fix. Samsung expects to have both the patch and its installation instructions available for download in September.
While you wait for Samsung to rollout this update, you can manually change a few GPS settings deep within the OS that will improve performance. If you are not afraid of what lies behind the LBSTestMode menu, then you can follow our detailed set of instructions here. These instructions were derived from the folks at xda-developers who took it upon themselves to craft a fix for the Galaxy’s ailing GPS. We tested this fix last month and confirmed that it works for the Samsung Vibrant and the AT&T Captivate. Presumably, the other variants of the Galaxy S will see a similar improvement in GPS performance following this 6-step modification.
No worries if you don’t want to apply this manual workaround. The official Samsung fix is less than six weeks away and the update will most likely contain a bunch of extra goodies which will make it a “must have” for any Galaxy S owners.
[Via Twitter]
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