.247 + Japan = No GPS?
 

Hi all -
I have been in Japan for 2 days now with my unlocked Rogers Bold, running off a rental SIM which was sourced from a Docomo Blackberry. The data services seem to be running about 90% properly after a couple reboots, although the GChat application rejects my password.. yet Gmail accepts it. All other data and email apps work fine.

My biggest issue right now is my GPS. Which apparently does not work AT ALL. I have tried Blackberry Maps, Google Maps and the GPS configuration in Advanced Options to force GPS refresh.. the phone seems unable to track any satellites, anywhere. On the shinkansen yesterday I excused it by maybe moving too fast to get an accurate bootstrap lock on a satellite, but I have been outdoors on foot now and still unable to lock on.

Is this just a 'cold boot' issue, having moved halfway around the world since its last fix, or is it actually a Blackberry software issue? Are there other users with GPS problems on .247? :?

You may have to wait awhile. Sometimes satellite acquisition can take 20 minutes or more.

Have you tried to load a non-map dependent GPS app like GPS Logger? I'm in Shanghai and had similar but not exact (BTW, I'm still on .190) issues.

Once I loaded GPS Logger, the Advanced Options GPS refresh still didn't make it work -- not sure why. I had to do a battery pull reset to get it to read satellites.

I'm not aware of any map support for BB in Shanghai (my BB Maps shows No Data Available...). But GPS Logger can show and save coordinates, map a path, show speed, elevation, there's a compass function.

Try Google Maps. This has worked for me in many places, including the middle of Iraq.

Duh. Why didn't I think of that? Loaded and it OTA and works great (in Chinese, tho). Thanks for the tip.

No problem. :)

Unfortunately you'll be stuck with the language issue until you leave China. When you download Google Maps in another country, it downloads the local version. This happened to me on my Nokia 7900 in Denmark (got the Danish version).

You don't mean that I would need to OTA Google Maps and reinstall to get a language change, do you?

Don't the maps load in the local language -- automatically depending on where you are --
when you open the app?

Yes, you will need to re-download.

The language of Google Maps is based on the version downloaded, and that is determined by the IP address of your device. In your case, your request came from a Chinese IP, and thus you were given the Chinese software.