The best GPS fix for the Samsung Galaxy S GT-i9000

Posted on 2012/03/17 by Jamezy

This requires that you root your phone in order to write to the system area of your phone, so it’s not for the faint hearted and done at your own risk!

I’ve used this fix for months now and it works quickly (cold start 45 seconds, hot start 1-5 seconds) regardless of if you’ve just restarted your phone or toggled your GPS radio off and then on again. It also seems to be very accurate and works well regardless of whether you are on a 3G or WiFi connection.

Steps to fix the GPS

  1. First install Root Explorer
  1. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.speedsoftware.rootexplorer&hl=en
  • Then write a new  gps.conf file of geographical choice
  1. download one from:
  1. http://www.darkyrom.com/community/index.php?threads/guide-gps-quickest-fix-solution.2022/
  • or create your own by following the instructions from:
  1. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1239713
  • Then using Root Explorer overwrite /system/etc/gps.conf or /etc/gps.conf with the above downloaded / created one. (You might want to back up your old one first, just in case!)

This will vastly increase the time to first find and hot start and reconnect of the GPS. Typically I find that, as long as there is a clear view of the sky, the time to first find seems to be around 45 seconds. Once connected, if for some reason the GPS signal is lost (e.g. going through a long tunnel), it quickly finds the signal again (typically from 1 second up to about 5 seconds) once the phone has a clear view of the sky.

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Skype Video Chat on Samsung Galaxy S

Posted on 2011/07/04 by Jamezy

The latest version of Skype for Android (at the time of writing is version 2.0.0.47), doesn’t support video calling on all handheld devices. This was frustrating as they do support Google’s Nexus S which essentially is a Samsung Galaxy S phone re-badged. So with a little ‘Googling’ I found that someone had correctly worked out that the support for the handset was defined by the manifest in Skype and could therefore be changed. So I gave it a go and it worked so here’s what I did.

To install this version do the following:

  • Download Skype (patched) from Villianrom.
  • Uninstall any pre-existing Skype installation (this is important as the downloaded version of Skype won’t install over an existing version).
  • Install the downloaded, patched version.
  • Start Skype and login.
  • Any person in your contacts list who can received video will have a little video icon next to their name. You can then initiate a video call with them by clicking the contact and then clicking Skype Video Call. This will then dial the end user who, if they accept your call, will be contacted by video. They will appear (in landscape) as the main video and a video of you will appear as a thumbnail screen in the lower left of the screen.
  • Clicking the screen will then bring up a video menu that will allow you (at least on the SGS) to select which video source, i.e. front or rear camera. If you select rear camera the end user will be sent the video of whatever your rear camera is viewing, a preview of which you also see in the thumbnail window that was previously showing yourself.

I’ve tested this over wifi with my wife as the end user on her netbook and everything worked well. However, I’ve yet to test it over 3G.

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Another Samsung Galaxy S GPS ‘fix’

Posted on 2011/07/04 by Jamezy

Whilst I’ve been using GPS Aids for the GPS long connection lock time fix, it doesn’t come without it’s own issues. GPS Aids is excellent at downloading the XTRA data and can be setup to do this at power up. If there is a lack of internet connection, however, the data won’t be downloaded. This means that if the user doesn’t realise this and tries to establish a GPS connection, the same long fix time occurs.

Another solution to this was to change the Operation Mode of the GPS on the phone. I’ve been doing this for the last month and the connection time (from cold power up) takes in and around a minute, much more reasonable than the 3-5 minutes it could have previously taken without using GPS Aids. To do this do the following:

  • Enable the GPS (Angry GPS) Test:
    • Using the dialer, on Froyo dial: *#*#1472365#*#*
    • On Gingerbread dial: *#*#3214789650#*#*
  • Click Settings, General Settings
  • Pull down Operation Mode and select MSBASED.
  • Reboot the phone!

The GPS should now find a fix within a minute of starting an App (such as Foursquare or Latitude) that requires GPS.

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Experiences of Updating the Samsung Galaxy S to Gingerbread 2.3.3 ROM

Posted on 2011/06/03 by Jamezy

I got fed up with plugging my phone into my PC, starting Samsung Kies only to find out that

Samsung Galaxy S

Samsung Galaxy S

the Gingerbread update promised for so long still hadn’t arrived. I had previously subscribed to Android Advices who, out of the blue, emailed stating that there was a leaked version of the Gingerbread ROM from Samsung and gave the instructions on how to update the phone. So I thought I’d give it a try. (FYI, updating the ROM of your phone does not void your warranty; rooting your phone might.) Here’s what I did….

 

Firstly, I made sure that my phone was backed up (both apps and data). I used Titanium Pro from the market to do this, however this requires root access to the phone, so MyBackup can also be used for those who do not have their phone rooted. I then had to update to 2.3.3 XWJVB version of the ROM and then update again to 2.3.3 XWJVH (don’t use the phone between the two updates!)

First impressions were good! The GUI had been updated to more of a green hue to the icons(to match that of Google’s Android logo I guess). The phone was very much less laggy too (not needing the Lagfix, although this is still recommended for even greater speed). I also noticed over time that the efficiency of the phone seemed have been increased as the battery was typically lasting longer.

What did disappoint was that the GPS signal acquisition and signal lock had still to be fixed, again forcing installation of GPS Aids, which was not really a major issue but as this was a Samsung leaked ROM I did expect this fix to be included.

Overall though a better, more polished experience than that of Froyo. I’d generally recommend the ROM update, which I’m now hearing is being rolled out over Kies (well a slightly later version) but I’ve yet to try it. If you want to try it yourself, follow the instructions below:

 

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Samsung Galaxy S Auto Rotation Issue

Posted on 2011/05/02 by Jamezy

I awoke one morning to find that my Samsung Galaxy S auto rotation feature had stopped working. It was stuck in portrait mode and no matter what I tried to do to disable and re-enable the auto rotation or power cycle the phone, it still remained in portrait mode. Whilst this is largely OK for most functions of the phone, when reading Comics, browsing the web or even doing a little word processing it becomes difficult and generally ruins the overall experience of the phone.

There seemed to be a number of people on various forums who have encountered the same issue but with no real solution other than to either do a hard, factory reset of the phone or a lot of reinstalling of the ROM with fixes. After spending some time Google-ing around for an alternative solution, I eventually succumbed to a factory reset.

In order to reset the phone I did the following:

  • hold power, volume up, home to boot to recovery
  • Select Factory / default (and optionally wipe cache and format internal memory)

This was surprisingly simple to do but blew away my applications that I had previously installed. However, beforehand I had completely backed up the phone with Titanium Backup so I was able to recover my phone easily using the recovery option in Titanium Backup.

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Samsung Galaxy S GPS Long Connection Lock Time Fix

Posted on 2011/05/02 by Jamezy

In order to speed up the rather slow GPS connection lock issue on a Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 I did the following:

I then clicked the following:

  • Reset XTRA
  • Inject Time from NTP
  • Download XTRA (this would sometimes fail so just keep retrying)
  • Reset LTO
  • Download LTO (this always worked)

Whilst I don’t fully understand the background of how the GPS is being fixed by the phone (although the app does go a long way to try to explain the differences between XTRA and LTO), it did greatly speed up the lock time. So I purchased the DONATE version as I feel it was worth it and I’d recommend it for people who are still on V 2.2 of the phone’s firmware.

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Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 Experiences

Posted on 2011/03/30 by Jamezy
 

Samsung Galaxy S

Samsung Galaxy S

Whilst the Samsung Galaxy S is an excellent phone and a very viable competitor to Apple’s iPhone it does have it’s own issues. The main issue being that the phone is laggy which is a common complaint of a lot of users. Hopefully Samsung’s update to Android’s Gingerbread version will hopefully resolve these issues. In the mean time the user can speed the phone up by doing the following:

Root the phone then install OCLF (One Click Lag Fix) which changes the apps file system from RFS to EXT4. To do this:
This doesn’t complete solve the general phone lag. I also noticed that if the screen has been set to to automatic brightness or power saving mode, the phone was noticably slower. To disable this do the following:
  • Settings, Display, Brightness, uncheck Automatic Brightness
  • Settings, Display, Uncheck Power Saving Mode

Also the main GUI interface application TwLauncher keeps hanging (which may be due to the above display brightness issues.) An additional solution to this:

Uninstalling a load of the apps that I don’t use the hope that it too would speed up the device made no noticeable difference. Also there were a lot of Force Closes on the device start up. I discovered that this and further the slowness of the device (and it turns out battery consumption) seemed to be caused by the widgets I had on the desktop. I had BBC news, Facebook, Twitter, WeatherBug, Audible, BeyondPod, Astro Nova and doubleTwist running. I believe the FC’s at startup were caused by a lack of network on phone bootup to the Facebook and Twitter widgets as they often crashed during boot up. Further lag could then be attributed to 3G / Wifi network changes when moving thus slowing down the general operation of the phone.
When I had the widgets running on the desktop I also found that the Bluetooth Audio (A2DP) stuttered (i.e. annoying and lengthy gaps in the audio), regardless of the player I used (Audible, doubleTwist, Astro Player Nova, Android stock MusicPlayer, BeyondPod or WinAmp), the Bluetooth headset / car kit I used or the 32GB Class 10 SD card I installed. Removing all the network reliant widgets again seemed to greatly reduce any stuttering although there was still occasional stuttering on high bandwidth MP3 (again another common complaint of users).
I also ensured that the only app running that would kill processes in the background was OCLF. I removed all widgets bar one (the agenda widget) from the desktop. All the above made the phone much more nippy!
Whilst I’m a techy and very able to investigate and implement the above changes to the phone for a better user experience admittedly based on some experimental and some anecdotal evidence, there is something to be said for Apple controlling the experience of their phones for the general public such that these steps should not have to be taken.
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Head First WordPress by Jeff Siarto – Review

Posted on 2010/12/09 by Jamezy

 

Head First WordPress

Head First WordPress

As I have used WordPress as my CMS and use it for my blog I thought it worth looking at Head First WordPress to see how I could best tweak and generally improve my blog presentation. This was the first Head First book I’d seen so the format was new to me and whilst it’s a nice presentation, fun and easy to read, the pages can be a little busy at times which can be a little distracting. Ebook PDF version is searchable, my preferred reading source these days due to the searchability and ease of access on a Kindle reader.

I review for the O'Reilly Blogger Review ProgramEach chapter works through each of the major processes to setting up and creating a blog using WordPress. It starts with the basics of obtaining and installing WordPress. I was able to skip this chapter as my host (Godaddy) is able to install WordPress for me automatically.
Once installed the book goes through how the look and feel of the WordPress site can be configured. This can be done using themes but can also be hand edited at the HTML and CSS level, details of which are covered. As WordPress can be used as a web site Content Management System (CMS) the book goes into some detail about how this can be done. It outlines how files can be stored, menu’s built, links managed and a whole host of other information for managing permalinks in a human readable form.
An area of less concern to me but may be useful to others is running a blog with a team of people. The book goes into how you might organise and manage the team’s blog. Avatar’s for each team member could be setup and managed by Gravatar which is supported by WordPress (Gravatar is a service that allows a user to upload an avatar once and then configure it to be propagated to other sites by the gravatar.com service.) The book goes into detail of how users can use one avatar for all social sites and then link this to their WordPress site.
Of course, whilst most people might use YouTube or other video sharing sites to host their videos (the book does outline how to link to videos on these sites), some may still want to host their own videos from their own site. The book shows details but it doesn’t really highlight how much bandwidth may be involved and the associated cost.
I use the Google Analytics and Akismet plugins on my blog. Google Analytics is an excellent (free) website traffic online analysis tool. Spam comments submitted to your blog could be an issue too. This is where Akismet steps in. This book goes through how to setup and use these and other plug ins.
I have an interest and at some point, (when I get time), will start podcasting.  Podcasting and the RSS syndication has to be recorded and posted. WordPress has this ability all of which the book guides the user through.
Security and an assurance that the blog won’t be hacked has to be considered when anyone is creating and publishing a blog. The book highlights how security is considered in WordPress. I would further suggest that people listen regularly to Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte’s Security Now podcast over on the TWiT network. This is by far the best way to stay on top of security issues on the desktop and on the web.
Lastly the book goes through how to optimise the blog for fast and efficient dissemination of information. This means the correct maintenance and administration of the blogs site traffic (via Google Analytics), database and caching of information in the background. It also touches on how the blog bandwidth can be managed so that the site may not suffer from the Digg effect.
Whilst the book does attempt to briefly summarise what it didn’t cover, it would have been nice to see more detail on, for example, SEO management of a site to help drive traffic. This, of course would help with advertising revenue on your site, should you wish to add advertising later (another thing the book does not cover).
Overall though, I’d recommend this book especially to beginners of WordPress. You do require a bit of tech know how however but it does guide the user quite well through these areas.
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Differences between Linksys WAG54G2 and Netgear DGN2000

Posted on 2010/05/17 by Jamezy

As I was getting very frustrated with the poor QoS and bandwidth issues of using my ISP (Imagine) with my Linksys WAG54G2 and the fact that my wife is using a Asus EeePC 1005HA with 802.11N, I decided to upgrade my Wireless Modem router. After a bit of research (and availability) of Wireless N modem routers I finally took the plunge and purchased the Netgear DGN2000. The differences are pleasing to say the least even on my 1Mbps ADSL link.

Comparisons.

I did some comparisons between the Linksys WAG54G2 and Netgear DGN2000 modem routers on my rural domestic ADSL line which has several computers connected on the wired and wireless connections.

The Linksys WAG54G2 was using Ver.1.00.17 (Annex A) firmware which has been upgraded from the out-of-the-box Ver.1.00.10 firmware installed. The bandwidth continually varied between 320kbps and 540kbps. I thought that this was possibly due to the ADSL filter which I duly changed but regardless of filter manufacturer, made no difference to the varying bandwidth. Furthermore, the link would often go down completely for periods of time. I ensured that my Sky set top box was disconnected from the phone line and ensured that my DECT phone extension had the appropriate filter, however the link was still unstable and varied. I complained to the ISP but they claimed that my phone line and ADSL line were stable.

The Netgear DGN2000 uses V1.1.8.0 (Annex A) firmware, upgraded from the out-of-the-box version automatically after I plugged in the modem and configured it for my ISP, something I had to do manually for the Linksys router. This was impressive to begin with. I used the same ADSL filters as for the Linksys router for consistency and the ADSL link is consistently up and has varied between 576kbps and 640kbps. The 802.11N is picked up by the EeePC and gets 135Mbps over-the-air and and much more stable wireless link that that of the more local 802.11b/g wireless router else where in the house. In addition, I have the modem router setup to email a daily security log, most useful for the security minded.

One of the things to note, however, was that some of the reviews of the Netgear modem router was that it got very warm, if not hot. Well I have the router standing on it’s edge to allow for maximum air flow around it and the a (admittedly subjective and inaccurate) touch test proves that it doesn’t really get much if any warming than the Linksys modem router for the same purpose.

All in all I’m much more impressed with both the stability (both ADSL and Wireless) and bandwidth of the Netgear modem router and would recommend it.

 

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Using Drupal For My Homepage CMS

Posted on 2010/04/25 by Jamezy

I’ve now updated my homepage from a hand edited HTML source page to that managed by the Drupal CMS system. Drupal is initially a little complex to setup a relatively simple homepage. However, after some research and general play with Drupal I was able to setup my homepage in an evening. I’m still learning how to manage Drupal with things like users requesting access to my system (even through I have nothing for a user to access). I also want to import my blog so that I can manage everything from one CMS rather than having 2 CMS systems, Drupal and WordPress. I also have to sort out adding Google Analytics to the pages.

There are other advantages, apart from editing speed (hand edit HTML is sooo slow) in that I can now more to a more Mine Project senario.

 

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