You can reflash the Android OS. Here’s one how to; https://www.androidinfotech.com/sony-xperia-xa2-xa2-ultra-xa2-plus-oreo/
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FWI: GPS consistently does work within a few minutes on my XA2. So it’s not totally broken. I concur, it still isn’t as good as it should be, and Jolla should at least be more communicative on the situation. Then again, they rarely comment on any issue, unless they’ve already solved it.
@Jolla: if a reflash to a newer AOSP-base is what’s needed to get GPS working, because of some Qualcomm f#ck-up, then so be it. I’d be happy to wave my fist in anger at Qualcomm again. (And if not for GPS, than for full 64-bit support)
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This is, unfortunately, not unusual. There are quite a few things in Sailfish that are missing, somewhat flaky or unreliable (VoLTE, exchange email synchronisation, audio in phone calls, GPS, bluetooth connection visibility, calendar entries displaying wrong times, browser issues with popup widows, loss of network connection, etc) either across the board, on specific phone models or in specific cases. Some issues have been outstanding for years, One day I hope to use Sailfish as my daily driver, but that is not today as the OS is simply not mature or reliable enough for me. So I continue to use my iPhone as a daily driver and enjoy using Sailfish as a hobby OS on my XA2 just to play with. I agree with the views about paid licences for Sailfish X. They don’t sell Sailfish in the UK, but if they did (speaking as a legal adviser in UK contract law) the current way in which they are promoting the product (i.e. as a mobile OS alternative to the dominating consumer OS’s of Android and IOS) would almost certainly fall foul of Section 9 the Consumer Rights Act 2015 on fitness for purpose (i.e. there will be reasonable expectations about what a mobile phone should be able to do reliably in 2021 and products sold as such have to meet these expectations unless they are explicitly specified otherwise). There is much similar EU legislation in this area as well. If Jolla ever decide to seriously concentrate their efforts on commercial markets other than Russia then, in whatever manner, and by whatever means, they will need to up their game. Until then we will just have to be ‘grateful receivers’ of Sailfish as it is.
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Hello,
but I am surprised. after I downloaded the positioning file “Western Europa” and after restarting the phone, I was immediately shown at least 12 satellites. The first fix for 5 of these satellites took an hour.
Of course it is not timely that a fix takes 5 minutes or more. But the navigation system in my car without Google, i.e. pure GPS, takes just as long after a cold start. Since one drives already times 15 minutes without Navi. that happens however fortunately only with battery exchange.
I went to Sailfish, because I wanted to get away from the Google crap and IOS garbage. which has also worked 100%. That then functions (GPS fix) take longer, I can deal with. But that is each his personal decision.
Of course, such functions should work stably.
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Hi @OhneZ ,
At least smetimes your GPS work ahah !
To me Sailfish was like you the opportunity to look to an independent project out of Google/Apple field too. With this issue we all see that an european and independant OS project must be an european and independant hardware project too. With firmware and hardware dependency we have the hand tied and can’t use innovative project as we want.
Is working with Sony smartphones a good idea ?
Maybe we should have in Europe a true “open hardware” smartphone with open source firmware easy to adapt for all companies / communities who want to build smartphone OS. Sailfish deserve that, this project is too good to be such wasted by this kind of firmware issue and what is more with open hardware developers might be able to focus more on quality and innovation than trying to adapt constantly the OS to close and complicated firmwares. Project like Sailfish can’t be competitive to Google/Apple in such conditions.
I came from an other project that i was testing for many month with Samsung Devices, it’s /e/ OS, an interesting degoogled custom ROM on which i had more stability (only tested with Samsung devices).
The XA2 is in supported devices list too, i think i will come back to this project until a fix is published for Sailfish OS (i asked Jolla support for a refund i hope they will refund me because this issue with GPS is too critical for a smartphone)
ok! i have an odd, very long, quite boring story to tell. GPS problem, but i honestly cannot tell if hw or sw.
it seems that some LCD screens completely block the gps signal…but only in SFOS.
all my fake/knock-off LCD screens work fine, but two of my Sony factory screens do not.
im not talking about time to fix, or MLS, just pure device GPS signal,
as determined by the GPS Info app showing “satellites in view/use: 0/0”, in device-mode-only.
i have three xperia x compacts.
one works perfectly, one is brand new and the gps doesnt work, and the other works with some LCDs and not others.
note: as far as i know, the back inner housing in the xperia x compact is where the GPS antenna is, like the X/XA2/etc.
removing the housing greatly DECREASES the gps signal, but does not eliminate it entirely, so part of the antenna must be in the motherboard.
the front-housing and LCD screen have shit to do with GPS, afaict.
-
gps always works. satellites found. reflashing, replacing the screen, replacing the housing, continues to work.
current housing actually has a clean break on GPS antenna, at the bottom.
still works.
REMOVING the screen and the housing, bare motherboard, VNC-ing into the device over wifi:
it STILL finds satellites, tho it did not get a fix any more. -
brand new phone. GPS worked fine in android for initial test in google maps (no sim card).
gps will not locate a single satellite, ever, in SFOS.
tried reflashing, several OS versions, including the same images that work on phone#1
did NOT try hardware solutions, since its brand new and works in android. -
gps doesnt work with some screens
screen broke, so replaced it with a screen that i am reasonably certain is a sony factory screen.
GPS stopped working, zero satellites found ever.
figured i damaged the antenna, so i replaced the back housing. no luck.
put the broken screen back on, suddenly found a satellite.
tried several old screens, two fakes, one legit but cracked.
all screens work, except the color-accurate, unscratched official one i want to use.
removing the housing (and thus the GPS antenna) with a good screen, it STILL finds some satellites, tho it does not get a fix.
removing the housing with the bad screen, it of course still doesnt find any satellites
the front-housing has some contact points, but all the screens all have the same contact points and no visible differences.
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I am almost tempted to replace the screen with a Chinese one to see if GPS reception improves.
heh, thats what i had to do, but for me it was literally zero GPS signal with the other screens, not just poor reception. i really dont like the fake screen either, the color reproduction is slightly off, and its much more dim
This is my question and my frustration too. My husband and I need a good satnav. That’s MagicEarth for us (could be PureMaps though). On my XA2+ GPS doesn’t work. On Jolla 1 it did with Here, but now the XA2 with Sailfish is becoming more and more a toy instead of a useful tool. Even in my city ‘Maps’ doesn’t work because it can’t find my location, nor a route. How can I recommend Sailfish to others when GPS doesn’t work?
I also have an Gigaset GS290 with E/OS, out of curiosity. The GPS and satnav (MagicEarth) work fine even without a sim. How is it possible that the XA2 does not work with a sim? I love Sailfish, but two things annoy me very much: the lack of GPS and the tricky new menu of answering a phone call.
My suggestion would be (said before in other topics) to coöperate with a European company like Fairphone or Gigaset and to build up a decent system. As is is now, it cannot last.
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Ans I have to add this as a third annoyance: Sailfish radio apps do stutter, while FDroid radio apps don’t. Also search in Sailfish radio apps became impossible, while it worked on Jolla 1 some years ago. This is no good.
Hi Kea,
I share your point of view about an european solution.
This is not a solution to fix the GPS on Sailfish but i can share what happened in the end for me : because of this gps issue i asked and got a refund for the Sailfish OS licence (i just contacted the support and they did the refund) and then, i replaced Sailfish with /e/ OS and now everything is working fine on XA2 with Magic Earth.
I hope that every people having this issue might get a refund too.
Strange that GPS/MagicEarth works well on an XA2 with E/OS and that it also works well on a Sony 10 II with Sailfish, but not on an XA2 with Sailfish.
I would have gone to E/OS if I didn’t liked Sailfish so much. E is rather dull while Sailfish still has this Finnish design and local apps too. Community devs have done a good job. Some apps I use daily: Nednieuws, Welkweer, Talefish etc. Also Piepmatz is a lot better than Twidere. Sigh, we can’t have it all.
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I have the same problem as everyone else here. 
Model: XA2
Sailfish version: 4.1.0.24
Positioning package from Jolla Store installed: Yes
Settings: Recommended settings (Mozilla offline positioning)
I usually have 20-30 satellites in sight in GPSinfo, but I get no fix for extended amounts of time (or none at all). Never indoors, not under trees, not in the car. But sometimes after a long time under clear sky.
My XA2 still has positioning issues, none of the Sailfish updates have resolved the issue.
What is causing the problems?
Can we contact someone that works for Jolla to answer us?
Even if they tell us they don’t know why it’s happening at least that’s better than silence on this issue
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I lost all my hopes that Jolla’s eventually fixing this issue. This lasts now for several OS updates - beyond the provisioning of offline MLS data as a replacement of Mozillas online service - without any improvement for the XA2.
Either Jolla cannot fix it, or they don’t want to fix it. At least I would expect some kind of statement if there’s room for improvement and if they plan to work on it.
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Hello,
was there ever a working OS version where GPS ran stable ? I read 3.x.x should have run stable.
The question is what has changed since then ?
And of course Jolla should at least give an answer, even if we don’t like it.
My workaround since now almost 2 weeks is, I start once a day GPS info. On the first day the fix took almost 45 minutes. After that, the daily fix went much faster < 3 minutes.
When I have at least 8 satellites I turn it off.
Since then, the fix for the Navi works.
But if you forget to do the fix once, then the game starts all over again.
But this is of course not a real solution to the problem.
I have an Xperia X as well running the same version of Sailfish. It doesn’t have a sim card in it so cannot use MLS location. I don’t turn it on often but it always gets a GPS fix within 2 or 3 minutes.
The problem is related to the XA2. I don’t think it’s hardware because as far as I know the GPS on the XA2 works OK on Android. I think it’s a problem with the implementation of Sailfish on the XA2 or how Sailfish interacts with the Android “blobs” for the GPS.
It’s as if the GPS forgets all the almanac and or empheris data each time it is closed.
I agree it would be nice, no courteous actually, for Jolla to acknowledge the issue and explain what’s going on and whether/when it will be fixed.
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It is looking likely that 4.1 broke something on my XA2. The GPS works but crashes every 15 mins or so, usually with no visual indication. It only crashes when it doesn’t have a lock, so if you don’t get a lock in 15 mins, good luck.
Yesterday, I got a lock by putting my phone on the balcony. Went downstairs & to shops and it would not get a lock.
Mostly, deactivating/reactivating via GPSinfo fixes it. This also fixes the compass breaking. Sometimes, GPS needs a reboot.
I daren’t try 4.2 as deactivating GPS reportedly doesn’t work any more. 4.01 with MLS Manager worked by far the best for me – usually got a lock in a few mins.
The phenomenon with the GPS abort I have also noticed.
In GPS Info all satellites are red for a short time. After that, the fix is there again. whether it now happened exactly at intervals of 15 min, I can not say.
So on the XA2 with 4.2.0.21 GPS is also running. via Gps Info I can disable and re-enable it.
But I have not noticed an improvement to 4.1.
I have just resurrected my old Jolla C.
It has no sim and doesn’t have MLS manager or any other such app installed. The phone hadn’t been used for nearly two years. It got a GPS fix within a few minutes sitting inside on my desk. When I took it outside it had a fix within a few seconds. Just like you expect with a GPS.
It’s a pity Jolla cannot do that with the other devices running Sailfish