[rskay]

Here's a fairly long story. I post this on the off chance someone knows something that can help me- but I understand it's a long shot.

I have a Curve 8310 with 4.5.0.110 OS. It's actually my fourth 8310. The GPS on the first two worked fine. One broke- one I lost. I bought the third from a Ebay seller. It certainly seemed to be brand new and in every other way it worked fine but I couldn't raise a satellite to connect to the GPS receiver. I "refreshed" the GPS many many times, inside, outside, cloudy, sunny, day night. Nothing.

I bought the ATT Nav service mainly to get help with getting the GPS to work. Strangely I could never connect to the Nav service to agree to the terms of service. ("Unable to connect with server. Try again later." Of course I tried about 100 times.) These two things seemed a strange coincidence since one seemed to turn on GPS reception the other on internet connectivity. Many hours with AT&T and no success. They said (reasonably) that the GPS issue had to be hardware problem.

I complained to my seller and- strange to say- he agreed to a replacement which I have now received (this one not looking so brand new but otherwise working fine). But with the GPS I had exactly the same problems.

Back to AT&T. they put me in touch with Telenav who got me to install a new version of the software that I could actually register and open. But not much of a victory since there' still no satellite.

Now I suppose I could have gotten two bum GPS receivers in a row but the fact that these two exhibited exactly the same problems makes me wonder if there couldn't be some settings issue somewhere and that the underlying satellite question might also be resolved on this phone.

I really think I have tried all the obvious (and many not so obvious) things (including a master reset). I 've pretty much resigned myself to living without GPS on the phone (perhaps having been swindled by someone specializing in phones with bad GPS receivers).

If someone could suggest a fix, however, I will be delighted and grateful.

Lost in New England,

Rick

[drphil1]

Did you get your money back?

[rskay]

No. I doubt he'd do anything and I don't want to go through another period with no phone and have to set up again, etc. I think I'm chalking it up to experience and I'll get a new phone in the Fall when my contract expires. Maybe a Nexus One, huh?

BTW I'm now thinking this may have something to do with the way the phone was set up on manufacture. I read that many phones have the GPS locked to make the buyer buy the carrier's map service. AT&T doesn't but I think this probably was locked to another carrier at some point and was unlocked for phone service but not GPS. It's just a theory but I've asked the seller to tell me where he gets the phones. I don't expect I'll learn though.

[jeffh]

Have you tried the internal self-test? I don't have an 8310, but I assume it has one. If it does have self-test capability, access it by going to Options / Status and typing test into the screen. You won't see the letters, but when you finish, you'll be prompted to select tests from the menu. The GPS is one of the tests.

[rskay]

Thanks. I just tried that but I think what it did was look for a satellite as I have done so many times before under the "refresh GPS" option. The test "timed out" without finding a location. Of course this time I did it indoors and it's raining out so it will be worth trying in better conditions.

Anyway the test is a neat thing I didn't know about. I'm really glad to find out about it.

[jeffh]

Try it outdoors with clear sky and a clear view of the horizon in most directions to give it the best chance. If it fails under those circumstances, there is something defective in the GPS chip.

[rskay]

Thanks. As mentioned above I think it may be some kind of lock setting from the original carrier. I will try the test in better conditions as you suggest and who knows but if the test just scans for a satellite (and that's what the set up prevents) I won't get any further. I just thought it odd that I would get two consecutive phones with defective GPS hardware. And I've already solved another problem (with mass media storage) that makes me suspect it was previously locked to a carrier. I really appreciate the help and I'll report when the weather clears (maybe April here )

[jeffh]

If you bought an AT&T phone, are an AT&T user, and can't get AT&T's nav software to run on it, that's a pretty clear indication of some hardware problem. I agree that getting two is unlikely. When you say locked to a carrier, are you implying that you bought another carrier's phone to use on AT&T?

[rskay]

That's what I suspect. I bought the phone unlocked. R

[rskay]

A previous unlocked phone-- (yes, it's my third replacement) -- same model had no GPS issues. It's the phones from this seller.

[jeffh]

... It's the phones from this seller.

That could be the case, if he's getting all his phones from the same source. But I don't know any GSM carrier that locks the GPS. But I don't know them all.