GPS not working

[harmonica01]

Have had my 3gs since its release. Never really needed to use the gps + google map thing until recently during travel.

It is so inaccurate it makes me gag. It was telling me I was in a city 70 miles outside of Houston, did the figure 8 move on it to reset gps location, restarted the phone, nothing works. About 2 hours later I turned it on after lunch just to load the map application to see a visual map, and then the GPS was correct in pinpointing my location. Next day in Dallas, was inaccurate during drive between Houston and Fort Worth, sometimes wouldnt even register me (maybe 3g issue? i have no idea on gps nonsense) Then in downtown Arlington near the sixflags park, worked for a few blocks, as soon as screen went to sleep and I turned it back on was way off again.

This is insane, did apple just use a flaky gps device in the phone, or is it just mine sucks. Really need to get this figured out or pick a better gps instrument before big family trip this summer, so any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

 

[Mlrollin91]

Have had my 3gs since its release. Never really needed to use the gps + google map thing until recently during travel.

It is so inaccurate it makes me gag. It was telling me I was in a city 70 miles outside of Houston, did the figure 8 move on it to reset gps location, restarted the phone, nothing works. About 2 hours later I turned it on after lunch just to load the map application to see a visual map, and then the GPS was correct in pinpointing my location. Next day in Dallas, was inaccurate during drive between Houston and Fort Worth, sometimes wouldnt even register me (maybe 3g issue? i have no idea on gps nonsense) Then in downtown Arlington near the sixflags park, worked for a few blocks, as soon as screen went to sleep and I turned it back on was way off again.

This is insane, did apple just use a flaky gps device in the phone, or is it just mine sucks. Really need to get this figured out or pick a better gps instrument before big family trip this summer, so any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Sometimes the GPS chip is bad or can go bad. I had that problem on 1 3G and 2 3GS'. Take it to Apple and explain the situation. They will probably restore it and retest it to see if they can duplicate the problem. If so they should replace it.

 

[Galarina]

This behavior is not normal at all. My iPhone 3G GPS has an accuracy of about 10 meters most of the time.

 

[TomKov]

iPhone 3G GPS instability

Since roughly iOS 3.1, my GPS started getting very instable. For hours the GPS information is quite all right and precise, then suddenly the precision gets worse and then the GPS info is completely lost (does not have to do anything with the location, I have full visibility of the sky, and other GPS devices continue showing the position pretty sharp). This state takes seconds, but sometimes tens of minutes (maximum so far was 2 hours), when suddenly the device starts showing precise GPS position. For hours, sometimes days. And then suddenly the scenario repeats.
Is there a "soft" way to reset GPS in such a situation? Any experience?

Thanks,
--- Tom
Btw - mine is iPhone 3G with 8G, iOS 4.0