The Fuze and GPS
This is a topic we haven’t addressed directly on this site but we’ve addressed it on an almost daily basis in our forums. Anyone with a Fuze who has tried to use the GPS receiver built into it had to have been frustrated with the out of box experience and probably even wondered if it even has a GPS receiver built into it. Well, here’s what you need to know about the Fuze and it’s little problem (which by the way this was#9 on the things we hate about the Fuze).
If you have AT&T’s Telenav enabled you probably don’t have any problems at all. It seems to unlock the GPS and make it…work. Otherwise, if you are still using a stock ROM (the one your Fuze was shipped with) then you need to change the COM to port 4 and the baud rate to either 9600 or 38400 (both seem to work). The who and the what? Let me back up – the most likely place to be using the GPS is in a navigational application like Windows Live Search or Google Maps. In both of these applications you can change the COM and baud rate in the settings (they’ll be there- it’s not too hard to find). If you’re not set to Com4 in settings both applications will give you a warning that no GPS receiver was found. Don’t go ahead and fire up the GPS right away though. Unfortunately the Fuze’s GPS needs to be primed or warmed up before it will actually function. To do this you need to run a third party application each time after you reset your phone. I use GPSTest which you can download from here for free (again change the COM and baud on this app). This application takes a few seconds to start running and then you can watch as it locks onto satellites. Once it hits 4 satellites (probably about 2-3 minutes) you can close it and open up Google or Live Search (and remember, if you’re indoors- you’re not going to easily get a GPS lock).An alternative is GPSToolPro which we discussed here. You should also make sure that QuickGPS (it’s in your Programs directory) runs regularly – it updates your phone with the location of the satellites to help get a faster fix. Once the GPS is up and running it’s actually really good in both Google and Live (and using AmazeGPS).
But what if you just want your GPS to work without all of this tinkering? Well if you upgrade to the AT&T test leaked ROM you will not have any GPS problems. It fires right up and within 10 seconds you have active GPS real time tracking (and the Test ROM does not require any special unlocking – just connect your Fuze to your PC and start the application to install the new ROM and that’s it). The other option is to change your radio to a different radio. For more on that check out this posting in our forums. That’s a bit too much to get into today in more detail:)
For all the hassle, the truth is if GPS is active the Fuze handles it pretty well and real time tracking works great. Hope this clarifies the issue for some of you.The COM/baud solution above was from m.carroll of XDA and there are a few other tips located in that thread but a lot of the additional suggestions vary on who you ask.
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Comments
Mark A Considering upgrading to AT&T leaked test ROM. Can I expect a hard reset to be involved in this process?
W. M. Miller Yes, definitely — whenever you flash a ROM, everything that was stored on the phone is gone. I just upgraded to the leaked ROM last night, and after eight hours or so of fiddling around and a couple of reflashes, I _think_ I have everything reinstalled and reconfigured to the way I want. (I thought I had kept good records of what I had done to the phone since I got it, but I wasn’t as good at record-keeping as I thought, sigh…)
I’m not sure it was worth it, but the GPS does seem to be working very well. 
Vince I’ve had a Fuze since its November release and I’ve never had any problems with its GPS at all. I use google maps and within 10 seconds its running fine even inside. I am using a stock rom and i’ve never fiddled around with any GPS settings.. weird..
Mark A WM Miller – Thanks for the “heads up”.
Ooops, should have mentioned good post! Waiting for your next one!
themrpark is there a way to Use GPS without using 3g data???
i’m a nub and i don’t know why if i fire up any sort of gps software, the phone uses data connection. (i tried tomtom, amaze, google, navngo…)
David K Mark- if you use software like Sprite Backup (it’s on your phone) you should be able to backup your phone and restore it back to that state (same software and settings) after a flash. I did not do that (I like to clear out the crap:)).
Themrpark – if you use one of the paid apps like tomtom the maps should be on your phone already and not need a data connection. If you do that also turn off assisted GPS (it’s not really needed anyway). The paid apps tend to have maps downloaded whereas Google, Live and Amaze all rely on downloading maps. Amaze is going to release an update that lets you download maps to your phone so data won’t be needed but it hasn’t happened yet
senorshaggo themrpark – go to settings – system tab – AGPS settings – uncheck “enable AGPS”. This will stop the data connection when you fire up the GPS.
I have a stock rom w/o the att bloat intalled and have had few problems with garmin mobile xt. if i run gpstoolpro before i run garmin i acquire a fix in under a minute from a cold start. the garmin mobile has great features like traffic updates, weather, flight info, fuel prices, and more. It navigates like a nuvi, you can load any of garmins maps (like TOPO and bluechart, change the map datums, and location formats (like UTM or hddd.mm.mmm. i haven’t used any other navi programs to compare but i am completely happy with the garmin.
W. M. Miller Mark A: Be careful with the suggestion about restoring a Sprite backup after a flash. It’s not generally recommended, although you might get away with it, particularly with closely-related ROM versions like the original stock AT&T ROM and this test ROM. The problem is that Sprite restores the registry verbatim, and the usage of various keys in the registry can change in incompatible ways between ROM versions. It’s not a disaster if something like that goes wrong; at worst it means that your phone behaves flakily or won’t boot or some such, so you have to do a hard reset. Just be aware that cross-version restores are not guaranteed to work.
Billy I installed the att test leaked rom and it really made my gps a lot faster. Before it would take maybe 45 secs to a minute and now it takes about 7 seconds. thanks
Shawn This worked really well. I hate having to reinstall/tweak everything on my phone again but it made the GPS lock in about 10x quicker so it was definitely worth it. Sometimes it would take 5-10 min, today I used it a few times and it only took 10-30 seconds. Thanks!
Court just updated the ROM, never had GPS work before, works instantly now, great post (phone runs better overall too)
Peter I have the leaked ROM on my Fuze but still had problems (TomTom would not get a fix, but other software like GPSTest would). Eventually, I simply disabled AGPS (Start – Settings – AGPS Settings) and now I get fast fixes in TomTom too. Hope that might work for you too.
Smittyj26 After updating my ROM…it works great without a problem..I just went to the HTC web page and followed the directions..The updater doesn’t work to well with Vista 64, so I used XP..no problems..
Funny,
After the first use of GPSTest – last October when I got my Fuze and after each hard reset – I have never had an issue with getting a GPS lock within 90 seconds just by firing up Google Maps.