iPhone 8 GPS problems

JGostl,

Sorry, I have not tried CarPlay. I think there were various postings about issues with Bluetooth interference inside vehicles earlier in this or other threads (including GPS not working after update to IOS11). All I can suggest is you look through them. I seem to remember one person found a fix, but all I could find was this guy who had no luck Re: Why is my GPS not working on iPhone X?

I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with a kind, competent and understanding senior Apple technician who has forwarded my case to the engineering team. It seems that I am finally getting somewhere.

If you guys can do the same then maybe our problem can become better known and thus better addressed.

The steps I went through are:

• support conversation with @AppleSupport that downloaded a diagnostic,
• got called by Apple Support low level technician that downloaded another diagnostic,
• got a support appointment at the Apple Store to talk to a Genius who downloaded another diagnostic and reset my phone via iTunes

Helpfull, thanks.

Sadly the thing is:

• this does not concern all iPhones because if that was the case then it could not be hidden and we have heard of people having iphones 6, 8, X for which the GPS works
• this does not concern a specific iPhone model, the common denominator seems to be iOS11

Therefore if you go around saying "how can you rate the iPhone X so high when the GPS is not working" well most people are just going to ignore that comment because their X GPS works.

By the way I got a GPS signal yesterday for a few minutes. Why? No one knows.

brice_in_brussels wrote:

The GPS issue is also on iPhone 6, so nothing to do with the new models.

It's extremely unlikely that we're only dealing with a single issue here. This thread is littered with people (including myself) that upgraded from an earlier iPhone and even ran them in parallel on the same OS version, with the older iPhone having no issues and the new model exhibiting problems. So statements like "nothing to do with the new models" are more than likely not true across the board.

My guess is there are at least 3 problems here:

1. Interference problems on iPhone 8/8 Plus/X, experienced by a lot of users here, particularly in certain models of car
2. Problems on iPhone 8/8 Plus/X that cannot be attributed to interference, experienced by many users here even when walking in open-air areas with plenty of sky visible (I'm in this group)
3. Problems that first manifested in iOS11 across older devices. These are discussed at length elsewhere, and I would not like to see them incorrectly conflated with the two above.

It's impossible to say if there are any underlying causes that are common to some or all of the above, including potentially Galileo support (in fact I raised this possibility in this same thread 4 months ago) in hardware and/or software, and we will probably never know. But we cannot and should not rule out the possibility that there are hardware issues with iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X.

Indeed we might be in front of many problems. I still would not rule out the main problem to be related to iOS11.

1. Indeed with some cars or with some magnetic holders or next to a certain type of radio or in some other circumstances there could be something interfering with the GPS chip.
2. and 3. can be grouped by the following facts:

• GPS signal was lost on old phones the moment iOS11 was installed
• iPhone 8/8 Plus/X ship with iOS11
• iOS11 added Galileo on top of GPS

Bugs in an OS upgrade could become very complicated if you have to deal with a new satellite positioning system which maybe itself has bugs. As AppleQer said it could very well be that iOS11 brought Galileo to new iPhones and messed up GPS on all models.

Laying a 6 and an 8 next to each other on the same iOS11 version and having the GPS work on the 6 and not on the 8 does not rule out the possibility of the problem coming from iOS11 as many people have had their 8 replaced by another 8 and still having the same problem. You could lay 100 iPhone 8 next to each other, on the same iOS11 version and have half of them show GPS problems.

So far I agree getting a refund is the only solution to this issue.

1. Issue only appears on iPhone X and 8/8+, not on older generations;
2. Multiple updates failing to rectify this issue, ever since release of X/8/8+;
3. Not a standalone issue meaning QA failure.

I just started reading this thread last night and I'm a bit dazed. Just to clarify my situation:

1. I've had this problem for more than a year.
2. For me, this problem was present on all versions of IOS 11.
3. The problem was on my old iPhone 7+ and is there on on my iPhone 8+. In fact, I upgraded (more than a year ago) specifically to get rid of this problem.
4. The problem occurs on Waze, Google and Apple Maps.
5. My problem only occurs when Carplay is active! Otherwise it's perfect!

I found the thread about "magnetic holders" interesting. People forget that when the iPhone is up against the dash it is right next to all kinds of electronics, including, in some cases, speaker magnets.

Do I understand that a factory reset does not fix the problem. I've done one factory reset in my life and it's like giving up two days of your time to get back to ground zero. I'll do it but only under pressure.

All responses, including sympathy, greatly appreciated.

WIFI and Bluetooth are enabled. Both iPhone 8’s we have are doing the same thing. I also have a 6s plus and a 6 and both of them are very accurate. I tried opening Motion x gps and it shows the accuracy between 39 and 59 feet On the iPhone 8. Both the iPhone 6 and 6s show 16 feet.

iPhone 8 Plus here - doesn't sound as bad as your experience, but accuracy is significantly worse than my iPhone 6, to the extent that it sometimes puts me on the wrong road while navigating. Last night (indoors) I watched it slowly drift 200 metres away over a couple of minutes. iPhone 6 doesn't exhibit the same behaviour in the same environment.

I was beginning to think I was the only one who noticed this, I don’t see anyone else with this problem in the forums. I went to the Apple store yesterday and swapped oot the phone for another 8 plus and it isn’t any better. I think the 11.0.1 update has improved it a bit but it’s still not as accurate as my old 6s.

Noticed the same issue this weekend and called Tech. They had nothing to offer except that "maybe there was maintenance going on with the satellites?" Seriously. Wife's 6S had no issues during the same period.

Was about to go return the phone yesterday and then everything was working fine (of course...). Now, this morning back to being all screwed up.

Apple had better have an answer for this ASAP or they're going to have a lot of angry people on Friday when the return window ends...

Just got off with Tech support, while my GPS was located 3 buildings away from my office. This at least fixed that, but won't know for sure until I start driving later:

1. Go to Settings > General > Language & Region , change to a different location, (like UK)

2. Restart iPhone

3. Go to Settings > General > Language & Region and change back to original location (US)

So after a week of tech support, uploading diagnostics and screenshots and now two phones, had the same problem each time.

Pretty sure I figured out it's a hardware issue and my 2nd phone seems to be working as of now.

When I offered to help explain the problem to Apple, after hours of my own time, Customer Relations offered me a hat and some stickers. I say to all of you the same thing I said to them, good luck. Hope it works out for everyone.

I'm also on my second phone and still having a problem with the GPS. My daughter also has an 8 Plus with the same issue. I was working with support and sent them some logs and screenshots yesterday, I'm waiting to get a reply from them.