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.
1 Like
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
2 Likes
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.
4 Likes
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.
1 Like
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
Just to re-iterate. The issue with XA2 is not MLS or the lack of it. The gps is unable to lock on weak-ish signals.
In the exact same position old windows phones and android phones get lock within a minute of cold start, with no data connection, and no cellular signals present at all.
2 Likes
The inability to lock onto weak signals may be part of the problem, but in my experience it’s more than that. Even with a good signal there’s still no GPS lock on for a significant time after the a GPS app is launched.
1 Like
Just my 2 cents here - with my user hat on, as even if I work for Jolla, I’m not really involved in any GPS stuff.
I believe many of the XA2 GPS issues are really caused by faulty hardware - someone even reported that replacing the screen had major impact in GPS performance. Personally, I never had any issues with the GPS on my XA2. And I used it quite a lot for finding geocaches.
Now, for a few months I’ve been using 10 II as my daily driver, which gave me a possibility to perform a small test: I hadn’t used my XA2 for about two months. I turned the device on, and then turned GPS on. I got fix in 4 minutes. Inside my home, near window.
2 Likes
Hello Vige,
Thank you for taking the time to reply. Sadly my GPS experience with the XA2 doesn’t reflect yours.
I’m not sure it’s a hardware issue.There are some reports of GPS issues with the stock Android firmware. Some people complained about the hardware. It’s always hard to determine how widespread the issue is.
One report said the problem was fixed by carrying out a “Software Repair” using a programmes call Xperia Companion.
Another report said that by going into the Service Menu and purging the “Assistance Data” they were able to restore GPS fuctionality.
If these reports are correct then it seems it is a firmware/software issue.
The problem seems to have got worse with later versions of Sailfish. Perhaps it not so much the later version but the update process that has caused the problem. Pure speculation on my part.
It would be nice to be able to try a repair to the Android “blobs” or what ever is used to interface between Sailfish and the GPS hardware or be able to purge any assistance data. I’m not sure this can be done at least not without flashing back to Android then back to Sailfish.
Once again thank you for taking the time to rely.
2 Likes
I too am fairly sure it is not a hardware error.
I have two Sony XA2s, both single sim H3113 models. One is on Sailfish Verla 4.2 paid version, the other is now on Android 9. Both were bought new and well looked after. Neither has been dropped, drowned or had any repair work done. The Sailfish XA2 has occasionally had to be returned to Android 8 prior to a necessary reflash after some serious problem made the software non-functional.
The reason I have two phones is that the Android XA2 is a reference phone (I don’t actually use it as a daily driver at all) for when things don’t work on Sailfish and to see if they did work on Android. Now obviously this won’t root out a hardware failure of the specific Sailfish device, but it will probably root out whether there is a generic hardware design issue across the single sim XA2 phone in general.
My observations are:
- GPS work flawlessly and gets a lock in seconds on the Android 9 XA2
- GPS works flawlessly and gets a lock on the Sailfish XA2 when it has been returned to Android 8 prior to re-flashing Sailfish - so there is not an individual hardware issue on either of my XA2 phones.
- GPS does not work almost at all on the Sailfish XA2. The ‘wrong’ position, sometimes a mile or so away, and therefore useless for navigation, is found within seconds (probably due to MLS data, perhaps the nearest cell tower) but a proper positional fix can take over an hour, even outside in the open, and often never.
- The Sony XA2 was/is a mainstream global Android model for Sony. They have sold millions of phones. If there were a general hardware design issue with GPS not working then (a) there would uproar, and (b) such a failure would be visible on message boards, in reviews and so on. It isn’t. So its not an XA2 hardware design issue.
- There are over 335 posts in this ‘GPS not working’ thread, admittedly not all specifically saying that GPS doesn’t work on the XA2, but a huge number nonetheless. Common sense says these GPS issues cannot all be due to individual hardware failures.
The only logical conclusion I can therefore come to is that there is a problem with the Sailfish software, or perhaps more likely, a problem in how Sailfish interfaces to the GPS hardware via blobs or whatever.
Either way I can’t see how it can be a hardware problem - either with an individual device or a generic hardware design issue across all XA2’s of this model.
4 Likes
AFAIR the issues with GPS on SFOS@XA2 began when Mozilla stopped support for online position lock. So I see a chance that A-GPS via Mozilla’s online position lock may hide HW issues of the GPS device. As Android uses it’s own A-GPS service I guess this would hide our possible HW issue as well.
It seems that GPS works much better / quicker on other phones running SFOS, which makes me believe that @vige 's assumtion is right.
So may I suggest you deactivate online position lock on your Android phone and try out how GPS behaves?
3 Likes
You may suggest this!
I’ll change the location services config now as you suggest.
When I take the dog out later for a walk across the fields I’ll take the Sailfish XA2 with me instead of my iPhone 12 and see if this config change makes any difference to how quickly, or not, I can obtain an accurate position lock.
If Mozilla have stopped supporting the online position lock functionality, then why is it still an option in the location services settings on Sailfish 4.2?
My XA2 had this option toggled on by default (never even thought to change any of the GPS settings), so surely this is a bit daft in the circumstances?
P.S. noticing your avatar as, I think, a small Psion 5 (?), somewhere in my cupboards I still have a brand new Psion 5 MX Pro in its original Psion leather case. Taking two AA batteries you were always sure you could get power for it anywhere in the world - a great design apart from the iffy ribbon cable that bridged the clamshell hinge and often suffered from fatigue breakages.
1 Like
I have given up using my XA2 as a satnav. It’s unreliable, so it’s dangerous in real situations.
Once upon a time…Jolla 1 had a decent working satnav with Here. That’s over. I use MagicEarth on a Gigaset290 with /e/, without sim, without wifi or mobile data, that works well. The sim is on my Sailfish device.
Wished it worked on the XA2, but it doesn’t.
When I look back at the old days when we used a Garmin GPS12 it took ages as well to collect almanac data after a cold boot. I’d speculate that our GPS (or it’s firmware) fails to store it’s almanac data and needs to collect it again from the sky.
It’s still a great device, the screen of the (first) Psion 5 was bad, however the OS and the apps were great. If you remember how well navigation with external GPS worked on a device with just 20 MHz clock.
[sorry for beeing off topic and sendimental/]
1 Like