Does GPS works OK on Xperia 10 III?

General
#1

hello

my XA2 Ultra never worked properly in gps location except maybe with SFOS 4.4.0.58and .62 with the present 4.4.072 either i takes a very long time, (up to never) or gives a position several hundred meters away curiously either exactly east of north (it depends) of the true position and or with the odds 9000 m pecision
sometimes (i cannot tell why) it works as it should

nobody here seems to be able to tell whether it is the phone hardware or SFOS
well forget that

as i am about changing phone does anyone here can tell me if the gps system is working better on Xperia 10 III?

jean pierre aubry

#2

It works okay on my X10II. It sometimes takes a bit long to get first fix point, but that is all.

#3

While I cannot compare it to the XA2’s behaviour, the GPS generally works well on my Xperia 10III. Time to first fix depends hugely on the settings. In my case these are individual settings, and then all three options activated (that is GPS and Mozilla offline and online methods).
To benefit from Mozilla location services (MLS), it is also necessary to install MLS offline data. There are several approaches to do that: official MLS packages from the Jolla store, or the app MLS Manager from Openrepos. While I don’t know how updating MLS data is done when using the official package, MLS Manager has an inbuilt update function that works really well.
If you keep your MLS offline data updated, GPS fix works really fast most of the time.

#4

I did a quick side by side compare of X10III Andoid vs SFOS.

It appears that Flightmode GPS performance similar to Android at first test.
Cold start acquire time >48hrs since last fix: 760secs. (Haven’t tried Android)
Re-acquire time after location turned off then turned on again
SF 45sec
Android 40sec (Android was restarted in flightmode, location off)

Both on a downstairs window sill with poor GPS signal.

I haven’t used the maps outside or in the bush on either to know how well the X10II works compared to my Mediatek based BV9900 (which was fantastic at getting a cold fix in the bush)

#5

I had the XA2 for quite some time as a daily driver. I used navigation a lot and although it often took some time to get a fix gps worked generally okish.
The reason why I bought a 10 III lately was that GPS in the XA2 degraded dramatically for what I think were physical reasons. I did not want to fix the antennas and so my XA2 became my idiot phone with lineage. Android navigates by more than just pure GPS and therefore my XA2 is still usable.

I short: The 10 III is by far the better GPS device.

#6

It’s somehow everything of that. XA2 had no real GPS problems as long as SFOS was on 3.x - all tvst problems came with SFOS 4.x on XA2. With the latest Update it went a little better again.
10 III gets GPS signal much faster - when you’re outside. 30 seconds for a fix after restart under clear sky. Inside a house is worse - even while laying at the window bench it takes much too long for a fix.

The main problem of SFOS wit location services is that the device doesn’t try to get a fix automatically after start - it first tries tat when an app wants a location.

Example:
Camera is set to store location, location services in settings are always on.
Start the device. Wait some hours without using the phone. Start camera and take a photo. The photo will have no location in its exif data cause location service just start first time with starting the camera. As getting a fix takes roundabout up to a minute there is no location available if you take the photo immediately after camera start.

BTW: if your location is some 100 m away from your position you just have the triangular location from cell phone stations - which means that GPS data is missing in that moment cause there’s no GPS fix…