GPS not working abroad

[mojo8472]

Hey guys,

Having some problems with the GPS on my 3GS. Have searched various forums and tried a few solutions, all to no avail.

Me and my iPhone are from the UK and the GPS was working just fine while in England.

Trouble is, I went on holiday to Greece (still here, tasty weather!) and all of a sudden, the phone's GPS it totally dead! In Maps, clicking the pinpoint location button makes the pinwheel spin for a while before giving 'Your location could not be determined'. The compass app gives the lat/long values of the last place in the UK where I was (Gatwick Airport!) and GPS apps dont pick up a signal at all.

I have tried:
soft + hard resets, resetting network settings, resetting Auto-Lock, trying with 3G off + on, trying with WiFi off + on, Plane mode off + on, tried a restore too.
All to no avail.

Is this an issue with cell towers in Greece or something? Or is my phone borked?

Thanks guys!

 

[BlackNTan]

Did you ever find what the issue was? I seem to have a very similar issue.

 

[josielinnea]

Could it be that the GPS actually works, but you have Data roaming turned off, and therefore Maps can't download the map of where you are in Greece?

Since you need an internet connection to use the Maps application to download the actually map to show on the screen, you might wanna download a third-party GPS/maps application which stores maps locally on your iPhone. The other option, to turn on Data Roaming, will be expensive, expensive, expensive...

 

[theschoning]

In my experience (Greece also) GPS could not determine the location whilst data roaming was off. Once I switched roaming on just briefly to help locating, and it knew where it was, I switched it off again and GPS was working fine from there on.

I believe the 'assisted' GPS does indeed require a little assistance initially when location is changed dramatically.

BTW I was using Navigon, so all required maps are pre-loaded onto the phone & no roaming is required to display location.

Hope this helps,

J.