There is a gps problem
with Mediatek powered Chinese phones and that is their GPS function. The main
cause of the problem is the budget GPS chip as well as the lack of proper
routing and implementation of antennas within the phone to facilitate a better
signal and fix. Therefore, there are two solutions to go about improving the
poor GPS performance. One would be a hardware fix whereby the phone will have
to be disassembled to install an extended antenna. The other, which is what
this article is going to cover, is a software fix where a few different phone
functionalities will have to be activated to improve the GPS performance.
This should improve the
poor GPS performance in most Mediatek powered phones (MTK6575, 6577 6589, 6589T
etc). I cannot guarantee that it will work for all as it did not for one of my
phones that I tried on. Sometimes the GPS chip within your phone might be too
poorly implemented for the software fix to correct. Nevertheless, there is no
harm trying out the fix as it requires nothing much except a few button presses
and a few minutes of your time.
What we will be enabling are functions present
within Mediatek’s GPS chips. It basically requires you to use some data (yes
data is required) to download the coordinates of the satellites as well as to
assist the GPS in locating your location. The two different functions are
called A-GPS (Assisted GPS) as well as EPO (Extended Prediction Orbit). To
start, enter the following into your phone (as if you were calling someone):
*#*#3646633#*#*
An “application”
(EngineerMode) should pop up as soon as you enter the very last “*”. Swipe to
the right until you reach the “Location” menu. Select “Location Based Service”
and then under the sub menu “AGPS”, enable it. Once done, go to the next sub
menu “EPO” and enable it as well. Once enabled, press on the EPO (IDLE) button
and it should start downloading some data. It should say “EPO update success”
in the Log. If it doesn’t, simply press the button again until it is
successful. Once all this is done, hit “back” and go back to the “Location”
menu.
Select “YGPS” and go on
to the “Information” sub menu. Hit on the buttons “hot”, “full” and “AGPS
restart” (in that order). Go back to the “satellites” sub menu and wait till
you get a fix. Do be under clear skies for this to work. Once you have a fix,
you can start using your GPS proper.
If data is not in
abundance, the following steps can be done just once and you can simply rely on
your GPS after that. A GPS data file is created in the process and that will
help in the GPS performance. With that said, I’m not too sure how long before
you have to redo the steps again but do note that you do not need to do this
every single time you want to use your GPS. To ensure that you are not using
any data, do turn off “AGPS” as well as “EPO”.
As mentioned earlier,
this will not work for all devices even if they house the same GPS chip. If the
phone does not lock on at all, it might be time to either get a new phone or
perform a hardware modification to improve the signals. If you do know of any
other ways or methods that helps, do leave a comment and share it.
