The TP with the Dead GPS

[roopull]

A tale of GPS, Sprint Customer Service, and the mysterious death of my GPS...


I've had my TP for several months, and the little thing has worked virtually flawlessly the entire time. I know that's supposed to be rare, so I'm thankful.

I work for UPS and use the GPS feature almost every day. Generally, we don't use GPS devices at all since we're supposed to know our area like the back of our hands, but instead of having a dedicated route I run every day, I'm in a different area almost every day. In Atlanta, that makes it impossible to "know my area like the back of my hand."

For 99% of the time, I use good old fashioned paper maps... but, for that 1% of the time I need GPS, I NEEEEEED GPS. At first, way back when, I only used Google Maps. On my Apache with its blue-tooth linked GPS receiver, Google was the only GPS software I could get to work. When my Mogul dropped into my lap, I branched out. Now, with my TouchPro, I use a variety of programs. Garmin XT, Bing, Google Maps, Amaze, and GPS Today to name a few. I have even been desperate enough to use Mapquest via Skyfire once or twice.

Why all those apps? Well, a little known fact is that some of those apps have better maps than others & while "Joe Ct." may show up in Bing and not Google, "Schmoe Dr." may show up in Google, but not Bing. Frustrating.

For fun, I'll give you guys a little rating for all of them... Bing's maps are the most thorough. Google's are second, followed by GPSToday and Amaze. Garmin XT sucks donkey balls as far as thoroughness goes. Half the time, Garmin can't even find the street I'm looking for. To their defense, though, by the time I break out my TP, my good ole' fashioned paper map-book has already failed me. The streets we're talking about these apps NOT finding are streets that are 50 feet long, have two houses on them, no street signs, and are usually in newer subdivisions.

Back to the GPS tale...


Well, last Thursday, I cracked open Google Maps or Bing (don't remember which one) to find an elusive street... While the app opened just fine, it couldn't acquire a satellite signal at all. Maybe it was the weather, I thought.... afterall, it was drizzling, foggy, and 100% cloud cover. I should've known that wasn't the case since I've never had problems with it in the past in that kind of weather.

Later in the day, when it'd cleared up a bit, I tried it again. This time, it showed me being about 5 miles away from where I was. Strange.


The next day, I tried again. This time, the TP froze on me. When I rebooted it and retried GPS, it crashed. Uh-oh. Weather didn't cause that!

From then on, it only got worse... Anytime I attempted GPS, it either froze, crashed, rebooted itself, or - my fave - started rebooting itself over & over again. Woohoo!

Finally, I started browsing forums trying to find a solution (hoping it wasn't a hardware issue.) In that search, I read that some people were getting TP2s as replacement for TPs... suddenly, I hoped it WAS a hardware issue! LOL! I tried a couple of fixes, swapping radios etc. No luck. It was looking more & more like a hardware issue.

But, as I browsed a variety of forums, it seems there were a TON of TPs that lost GPS functionality, last week. All at once, hundreds of Touch Pros lose GPS? Bizarre... it sounded to me like Sprint had done something, but I couldn't figure out why GPS, which is off-network, could be screwed up by them doing something... whatever.




Now, I've souped up my phone quite a bit & had it running EXACTLY how I wanted it (thanks to SPJ & others, of course.) The LAST thing I wanted to do was a hard-reset. If that's what it came to, I'd just as soon have a new phone than re-set-up my phone. So, assuming I was going to have to go the Sprint Total Equipment Protection Plan route, I logged on to Sprint.com & chatted with a CSR. He had me do a few things... power it down so he could "reset" my phone a few times, re-download Google Maps... etc. No luck. With his failure firmly in hand, he sent me off to the "technical support line." There, I went through the same nonsense. For me, this was mostly just building a case for the TEP route. Afterall, I'd already done everything this side of a hard reset AND I had my half-baked theory that Sprint had made change to the network that affected TPs.

Of course... eventually... that's exactly what the technical support rep had me do. Hard reset. BAAH! Then, insult to injury, the problem persisted.

Boot, open Google maps, crash.
Boot, open Bing maps, crash.

Hardware? Network? Who cares...

Woohoo! TP2, here I come!



Then, as a last resort, for some reason, I decided to upgrade the ROM to Sprint's official Rom. Why not? I'd already wiped my phone clean with the hard reset, right?



I still have my Touch Pro. The upgrade fixed *whatever* was wrong.

On the downside, I won't be getting a TP2 anytime soon.
On the bright side, my GPS is working, the new ROM is better than *whatever* I'd installed prior, I still have the CABs and keys for most of my software, and I've found a few new toys to play with. Yay?

[iamdasht19]

cool at least it is working for you which is the most important thing right?

[roopull]

Absolutely. And, unlike most of the guys on here (I'm assuming, anyway,) I do NOT look forward to getting new devices. So, I'm certainly pleased it's up & running.

I just wish the mystery as to WHAT happened could be solved.

[ratcheezy]

My touch pro gps went out last week too. It was doing the same thing you were saying. Google maps would find me but wouldn't follow me, signal was strong, but would not follow me on the map. I would close it and reopen and that's when my phone would reset on its own. The regular sprint gps wasn't working at all.

Took it to sprint store, all they did was hard reset, didn't fix it after they said they did. This other guy that worked at sprint store just order me a new one, got it yesterday. Working fine so far, they tried to offer me a blackberry or a "Snap"...which was a hundred dollar phone, I said hell no. But I'm good now

[roopull]

LOL.. I went through the same thing. If I'm getting a different phone, buddy, it's going to be an UPGRADE, not a DOWNGRADE! Why don't you just offer me a Nokia 6100?

The new phone should have Sprints most up to date Rom on it.

You can check the version by clicking Start-Settings-Device-Device Information.
The newest is 2.01.651.6

If you don't have that, you can get it at Sprint's website. Log in, click "Device Support," Downloads, "More Details" under "Software Update for Touch Pro," and then "Download from HTC."


Of course, if you'd rather, there are about 2.3 million cooked ROMs here on SPJ that will probably do the trick, too!

[ratcheezy]

lol, I was saying the same thing. Don't offer me some cheap stuff thinking thats going to make me happy cuz I got a new phone. I thought he was going to say I'll send you the TP2 or something, not offer me the bull.

I have that ROM on my phone, thanks!

[ppopper78]

now you need to repeat this process 10 more times and sprint might give you the tp2. lol