iPhone 8 GPS problems

I also bought the GPS diagnostics app (the dev must be wondering why so many people are buying it lately ;-) )

On my iPhone 8+ (iOS 11.2.5) and while afoot I get an accuracy of +- 6m. Satellite quality is around 80%.

Although pretty accurate I still see Apple / Google Maps, Mountainbike Pro, Ingress and other location based apps lagging behind or being totally wrong (to a point where Apple Maps would tell me to take a turn while I should have taken the turn 100m ago or Google Maps keeps telling me that the route is being recalculated)

The GPS diagnostic apps shows me that my position is updated every second via GPS but maybe the app is doing something differently here than iOS giving its location data to the apps?

Interesting - so your iPhone 5S, 6S and X all have iOS 11.2.5.

Did you test them all in the same physical location?

Did they all have the same GPS apps, and are those GPS apps all set to the same Location Settings such as "Always on"or "While using"?

Also what about the state of the batteries in each of your three iPhones?

Just trying to figure out what kept your 5S working fine...

Of course, it could just be a freak occurrence.

Same location, app and settings. I haven’t tested the batteries however the 5S is my old workhorse which I hammered for 4 years before getting the X so the battery is likely degraded. So it doesn’t seem like battery health is a factor in my case.

Also I noticed that when stationary the X sometimes shows me at 1mph whereas the 5S shows stationary. That may explain why the blue dot drifts on my X but much less so on the 5S.

Yesterday I found something weird.

Like all of you, I'm having the same problem in my iPhone 7. Nothing worked, restore as a new, toggle off/on...

But yesterday I could make a trip with 3 different GPS devices: my iPhone 7, GPS integrated of my car, and a Tomtom.

Any of them worked, and only the iPhone could ubicate me at the begginning, just because of wifi signal or 4G.

I was driving with all 3 devices on. And the weird thing is that, suddenly, all 3 started to work like they should do, at the exact same time.

I still can think that the problem was iOS 11 (at least on my iPhone), because the problems started with that version, and I can't assume that the problem is in the car, because the iPhone 6s of my gf works perfectly in the car (and in that moment, my iPhone and the GPS of the car didn't work -I didn't have the Tomtom in this new test-).

Nothing has changed on the car, no new window glass... and this is really weird. I'll try to test more things this weekend, like the same test of 3 devices in another different car.

@William

How is this helpful? My iPhone 6S Plus easily outperforms my iPhone 8 Plus in terms of accuracy.

This is while being afoot on open field; no trees, no buildings.

6s Plus has all satellite accuracy bars above 75% constantly while the 8 Plus has drops to below 75% again and again - for no obvious reason. That's when the lagging happens.

Okay, I've been struggeling with the GPS of my iPhone 8+ since I got it in December. I've tried everything. Eventually I contacted support and the way they treated it got my spirits up a little. I've sent them videos of the GPS diagnostic app open on two devices, on which the problem of the inaccurate GPS of the iPhone 8+ became really clear.

They contacted me and stated that I had to reset my phone. They also wanted me to go to three seperate locations and perform tests. I did all of it, twice. (I had to write down time and date, because apparently they can't extract that from meta data, whatever.)

After some time I finally got reply that the device was faulty and I should have it repaired. (Really? What are you going to repair on a brand new iPhone 8+... But again, whatever).

Sent it to get it fixed. Just now got a reply that it is on its way back to me. They couldn't reproduce the issue, so it isn't being fixed.

I've had it. I'm done. This is just ridiculous. All of the effort of re-configuring after restoring backups, creating videos. It's just to keep you busy and wear you down. The iPhone 8/8+ and X have issues with GPS. I think it's because of changes to allow wireless charging and they can't cover their own *****.

😟 #sadpanda

I think there may be more than one issue in this thread, but that was the case for me. Same version if IOS but the 7 was perfect and the X gps close to useless. In my case at least clearly something wrong with the X. Don't know if it was hardware or software obviously. After reading some of this thread I returned the X for a refund rather than deal with it.

11.2.6 makes no difference. After all this time I didn’t expect it to, I’m pretty sure there is a fundamental hardware issue.

So I’ve made a video comparing the GPS on iPhone X against my 4 year old 5S which outperforms it. Please share

https://youtu.be/t7vwU_DlfgQ

Also see reddit

https://reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7yqw1q/iphone_x_gps_problems/

Finally I decided: **** it, I'm gonna replace it in another store.

The story is, My girlfriend and I bought our 2 iPhone X's from the same store, while a friend of us bought hers from another store. Our 2 devices are screwing up while our friend's works perfectly fine. So I drove ~20 miles to that store and replaced the 2 iPhones.

Problem solved. No car related mistry, no endless backup, reset and restore...

This is simply a Quality Control FAILURE.

P.S.: I am talking about GPS from satellite, with cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth all turned off.

I do have the same problem and I’m very disappointed with that. I have iphones since model 4 and I was expecting iPhone X to be the best. Unfortunately that is the worst one. It’s a shame.

No gps, no apple reply. What should I do?!

Which is the biggest issue.

No, it's not.

For greatest accuracy, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi must be turned on.

People keep saying this, and it's really a red herring.

Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cell towers are primarily used to get an *approximate* location *quickly* when GPS is not available or the signal is poor.

When a strong GPS signal is available its accuracy is far greater than the other mechanisms and it should take priority. If you're in an area where you can see plenty of sky and you've been there for more than a minute (really far less than this but I'm being generous) and your phone is having to rely on anything other than GPS to locate itself, there is something wrong with your GPS system (whether it's hardware or software).

Most stretches of open road won't have any nearby Wi-Fi or fixed location Bluetooth devices anyway, so having those enabled would make no difference in these circumstances.

For example, GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within a 4.9 m (16 ft.) radius under open sky

Which should be plenty accurate for satnav purposes. And it *is* - look at all the actual satnav devices that have no Bluetooth, Cell radios or Wi-Fi and never have any issue figuring out where you are just from GPS signals.

I'm not saying that people with the GPS issues shouldn't turn on Bluetooth and Wi-fi in order to get the best possible performance from their location services, but if they do and it helps, it's only masking the problem rather that solving it in any way.

CupawnTae wrote:

When a strong GPS signal is available its accuracy is far greater than the other mechanisms and it should take priority. If you're in an area where you can see plenty of sky and you've been there for more than a minute (really far less than this but I'm being generous) and your phone is having to rely on anything other than GPS to locate itself, there is something wrong with your GPS system (whether it's hardware or software).

Most stretches of open road won't have any nearby Wi-Fi or fixed location Bluetooth devices anyway, so having those enabled would make no difference in these circumstances.

For example, GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within a 4.9 m (16 ft.) radius under open sky

Which should be plenty accurate for satnav purposes. And it *is* - look at all the actual satnav devices that have no Bluetooth, Cell radios or Wi-Fi and never have any issue figuring out where you are just from GPS signals.

I'm not saying that people with the GPS issues shouldn't turn on Bluetooth and Wi-fi in order to get the best possible performance from their location services, but if they do and it helps, it's only masking the problem rather that solving it in any way.

The key here is if you're in the middle of a rural area with a view of the open sky, that's true.

If you're in a city with buildings that GPS signals can bounce off of, not so much.

It all depends on where you are.

Navigation devices work somewhat differently, and I can tell you as the owner of several Garmin GPS units used for hiking the saved location points can be quite a bit off of where you actually are, and this is in the wilderness.

The bottom line is the combination of technologies is what makes assisted GPS work as well as it does.

Copied and edited from my own Reddit post:

iPhone X GPS issues : apple

Got a further update:

1. The problem occurred again in the replacement device.

2. The problem is car related.

What happened:

1. The GPS worked fine on my way back home from Apple store;

2. GPS became buggy again, same symptoms, the next day when I was driving;

3. I downloaded the App GPSdiagnostic and tested it in my car (2012 Sonata with aftermarket stereo).

It lost signal almost immediately when I turn on the car’s electrical system (press the engine start button without pressing brake). It recovers when I move my phone away from the dashboard, or when I turn off the car’s electrical stuff. I replicated this for more than 6 times.

======================================================================

I will record a video and upload it later.

We are talking about determining location solely by GPS satellite signal, not anything else. Bluetooth / Cellular / WiFi is uncorrelated to this issue.

Bluetooth / Cellular / WiFi is not only uncorrelated, it complicates the debugging of the issue, because locating by Bluetooth / Cellular / WiFi (gives a somewhat approximate location) tend to hide the failure of GPS (inaccurate / outdated location).

Also I have been doing controlled experiments where all related devices are configured to rely solely on GPS satellite signal to determine location. Within these experiments, only iPhone X has the issue, not iPhone 7/7+, not Samsung Galaxy J. In other words, the signal strength is considered to be the same, while different models behaved very differently as mentioned above.

This is unsurprising.

As I related in earlier posts, Apple Executive Relations has already confirmed to me about 2 months ago that:

1. They can find nothing wrong with the performance of their phone after 3-4 data loggings and numerous screen records clearly documenting the issue and reproducing it for their data logging. (CYA much???)

2. What is going on is the result of third-party interference that they are taking no responsibility for.

3. It's not their problem, it may get fixed, it may not, but they bear no responsibility for whether or not your car/wearable/RFID, etc. interferes with their otherwise working phone. They'll offer you a full refund if you wish to take advantage of it within 30 days of notifying them you have the problem.

That's basically it in a nutshell, straight from the horse's mouth at the Executive level, folks. I put in for my refund a few weeks ago, and should have a check within 30 days (Why the self-styled most advanced tech company in the world takes 30 days to send out a check, your guess is as good as mine.... 😕)