James Reyes

On Thursday I went to my local T-Mobile store and picked up the new Samsung Galaxy S to replace my damaged Google Nexus One.  I am usually reluctant to early adopt any new gadget, preferring to wait at least a few weeks to read about any issues or complaints other users might have.  Being eager to replace my Nexus One with an Android-powered device that wouldn’t suffer obsolescence in six months, I went ahead and took the plunge.

I was thrilled with the brillant Active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display.  The T-Mobile version of this handheld is called the Vibrant and the image quality is just that.  The device included a copy of the movie Avatar and it looks amazing.  I also liked the thinness and light-weight of the device.  The device is also fast.

Given all my excitement, I soon found myself crashing into a brick wall of disappointment. The GPS utterly sucked.  It took seemingly forever to get a GPS lock if I was lucky. Often I couldn’t get a lock at all, inside or outside. My buyer’s remorse intensified. This was a big deal.  Using my previous two phones, the HTC Dream and the Nexus One, I found GPS to have become indispensable, especially when navigating in the car or geeking out with augmented reality apps, not to mention foursquare or Google Sky Maps.

Frustrated, I started Googling to see if this specific unit was just a dud off the factory line or if other users were experiencing the same thing. Sure enough, others were complaining and I came to regret my early adoption.  I stumbled across across rumors that Samsung was preparing to release a firmware fix for the issue.  This gave me the hope that the hardware itself was fine. I can deal with a fixable software problem.

It turns out it is just software that can be corrected with a small firmware change anybody could do themselves. I found this fix on XDA Developers forum.  So far it seems to have done the trick.

1. Turn Airplane mode on
2. Dial *#*#1472365#*#* which brings up the firmware menu
3. Under Application Settings change Operation Mode to MS Based
4. Under SUPL/CP Settings change the Server & Port to supl.google.com (no “www”) and 7276 respectively
5. Reboot
6. Turn Airplane Mode off

Ahh! My buyers remorse has vanished and I love this phone again.

In case you need to restore the default settings, they are:

Operation Mode: Standalone
Server: www.spirent-lcs.com
Port: 7275

I hope this works for you.

Cross posted at JamesReyes.com.