I think its something more than not just having positioning files. Sailfish on the XA2 range seems to have a particular problem which nobody seems to know how to fix (see GPS stopped working - Bug Reports - Sailfish OS Forum GPS stopped working - Bug Reports - Sailfish OS Forum). I honestly can’t believe its the XA2 hardware otherwise the same problem would exist with stock Android XA2’s and it doesn’t.
The positioning files help, if you’ve got cell reception - but even then it can take (for me) between 10 and 20 minutes before you get an accurate fix. If there is no cell reception it can take longer than an hour. I have literally come back from walking my dog on the north Somerset coast - a round trip on the beach and in the fields of about an hour and a half. I had my Sailfish XA2 on 4.1 with me with Pure Maps open. For the whole time I was out I was, apparently, in the same place about a mile out to sea in the Bristol Channel!
OK, so there wasn’t a good cell signal where I was (if any for most of the time) but over an hour and a half to get any reliable fix at all makes it completely useless.