The Fuze and GPS

This is a topic we haven’t addressed directly on this site but we’ve addressed it on an almost daily basis in our forums. Anyone with a Fuze who has tried to use the GPS receiver built into it had to have been frustrated with the out of box experience and probably even wondered if it even has a GPS receiver built into it. Well, here’s what you need to know about the Fuze and it’s little problem (which by the way this was#9 on the things we hate about the Fuze).

If you have AT&T’s Telenav enabled you probably don’t have any problems at all. It seems to unlock the GPS and make it…work. Otherwise, if you are still using a stock ROM (the one your Fuze was shipped with) then you need to change the COM to port 4 and the baud rate to either 9600 or 38400 (both seem to work). The who and the what? Let me back up – the most likely place to be using the GPS is in a navigational application like Windows Live Search or Google Maps. In both of these applications you can change the COM and baud rate in the settings (they’ll be there- it’s not too hard to find). If you’re not set to Com4 in settings both applications will give you a warning that no GPS receiver was found. Don’t go ahead and fire up the GPS right away though. Unfortunately the Fuze’s GPS needs to be primed or warmed up before it will actually function. To do this you need to run a third party application each time after you reset your phone. I use GPSTest which you can download from here for free (again change the COM and baud on this app). This application takes a few seconds to start running and then you can watch as it locks onto satellites. Once it hits 4 satellites (probably about 2-3 minutes) you can close it and open up Google or Live Search (and remember, if you’re indoors- you’re not going to easily get a GPS lock).An alternative is GPSToolPro which we discussed here. You should also make sure that QuickGPS (it’s in your Programs directory) runs regularly – it updates your phone with the location of the satellites to help get a faster fix.  Once the GPS is up and running it’s actually really good in both Google and Live (and using AmazeGPS).

But what if you just want your GPS to work without all of this tinkering? Well if you upgrade to the AT&T test leaked ROM you will not have any GPS problems. It fires right up and within 10 seconds you have active GPS real time tracking (and the Test ROM does not require any special unlocking – just connect your Fuze to your PC and start the application to install the new ROM and that’s it).  The other option is to change your radio to a different radio. For more on that check out this posting in our forums.  That’s a bit too much to get into today in more detail:)

For all the hassle, the truth is if GPS is active the Fuze handles it pretty well and real time tracking works great. Hope this clarifies the issue for some of you.The COM/baud solution above was from m.carroll of XDA and there are a few other tips located in that thread but a lot of the additional suggestions vary on who you ask.