Are there any ways to fix the gps on the LG G5? Where is the antenna located? I've found several fixes and tried a couple. Getting better contact with some of the pins has helped but its temporary. I only get one satellite to connect currently which is better than the none I had before. Help?!
"Finally I have solved the conundrum of the LG G5's GPS performance, and it turns out to be down to a mighty screw-up by LG. Messing with the contacts is a side-show, here is what's really going on, and the ultimate fix.
I've been poking around this phone on and off for quite some time, and never been happy with the GPS behaviour, even after getting the best possible contact of that pesky spring to the pad in the back. Even with apparently reasonable signal strength (using the GPS Status app), the GPS fix data was still erratic. The position, speed, and particularly direction, would jump about. I noticed this especially when using the phone on my boat - it's a useful pocket navigation aid with the Navionics app which in particular shows a direction vector on the chart. On water your direction is the most important thing to know, and the vector would uselessly swing around all over the place. I never had that on any other phone. It all suggested the GPS signal reaching the receiver was very noisy, rather than nice and clean.
The clue came when I experimented running the phone with the back off. It takes a bit of ingenuity to keep the battery in place, but operating like this the GPS worked perfectly, getting a quick and solid lock. On close inspection I discovered that there is a GPS antenna in the FRONT of the phone. It's in the top right corner, sandwiched behind the screen. You can't get it out because the front panel is a welded assembly, but it's where that flexible track coming from under the motherboard leads to.
This was obviously LG's original design, and at first sight a good idea, keeping the GPS antenna away from the other radio bits. GPS is by far the weakest radio signal the phone has to deal with and any interference will cause problems. However, it turns out that if you bring a metal plate (i.e. the phone back) to within a few millimetres of that front antenna (i.e. you assemble the phone), it kills the output of the antenna stone dead. My guess is that LG only discovered this at a late stage of development, something of an ""oh sh*t"" moment!
So the quick fix was to add a GPS antenna area etched into the back, with a contact pad in the corner, and a spring contact stuck onto the flexible track leading to the front antenna. It kinda works, but there are now two antennae, and any radio engineer will tell you that connecting two antennae together to one feed will not boost the signal. Instead they will interfere like !&&*, creating echoes, distortion, and a noisy, degraded signal - exactly what the GPS behaviour suggests.
Solution? Well we now know the front antenna doesn't do anything useful, so let's disconnect it to prevent it degrading the signal from the back. All it takes is a sharp knife.
Just take the tip of a sharp craft knife, and cut through the flexible track leading from the corner spring contact round to the hidden front antenna, see photo:
I've done this on two phones, and they both now have the same clean GPS performance you expect from any modern smartphone. Quick lock, accurate and responsive data, and a rock-solid direction vector. I can get location accuracy down to 10m indoors, I'd never even get a lock indoors before.
People make design mistakes, it's human, but when you do it's a good idea to fix the mistake properly. Adding a new antenna and not disconnecting the redundant one is more like adding a second mistake than fixing the first one. Thanks LG!
If you're still not happy with the GPS performance on your G5, take the knife to it - enjoy!"
"First of all, thanks Rick for putting us on the right track.
Now, I've had this problem on my device, and so I opened it and tested, seems that your first solution (the mesh) IS the correct one.
The other (flexible) connector on the PCB (the one that you updated to be it), is possibly not related to GPS.
Just to make some order, they BOTH connect to case metal (ground) which is very strange as I can not think why or how would it be used as an antenna. But!, powering the phone while opened, testing several pins which connects to the back, only 1 was found to be the pin for the GPS receiver.
This was tested with a thin wire connected and watching the reception on GPS test app.
Tested several times, each time yielded same result. Only the connector that mates with the mesh on the case (top right of back case when looking at it while phone opened) gave almost instant lock and strong reception.
I'm including photos with remarks to make it hopefully clear:
Here you see the mesh in the top right, the other (green) connects to the flexible connector on PCB, possibly not related to GPS.
I used a piece of thin copper tape folded a few times and glued on one side to the earphone connector.
here you can see the actual pin (red) that connects to the mesh. It is not on the PCB itself, but connects later to underside of PCB (I guess LG decided not to stretch the PCB to the very edge, because it would have to be very thin and fragile, just a guess)
You can see the connector after I removed the PCB, again marked in red, it continues to the pad marked in orange, which I put again a folded piece of copper. This pad connects to the underside of PCB.
The underside of the PCB with the connector that mates with the pad."
"Hi Schlomsi, thanks for looking at this in detail, and validating most of what I found.
In retrospect, I agree that my suggestion of the second contact relating to GPS is probably wrong. I had tried insulating this contact and failed to get a GPS lock, but I've re-tried it and this time it made no difference. It just shows how hard it is to reliably diagnose the problem!
If you test continuity of the various contacts areas on the case with a simple multimeter, they do mostly appear to connect to ground - but that's just a DC measurement. At RF they will behave completely differently. I'm no expert on how these flat on-case antennae work, but they are likely cleverly etched tracks forming a pattern that matches the signal wavelength. If you look at a UHF TV antenna, it's usually a closed loop.
I was interested when you said you'd tested the phone with the back off. I'd wanted to do that, but thought ""how do you hold the battery in, and what about the power button?"". So I revisited it, and found that a bit of sticky tape will keep the battery holder in place, and plugging in a charge cable will make the phone boot. Excellent! The SIM holder also goes in fine.
To my surprise I got a better GPS signal with the case off than I ever do with it on, and without even touching the antenna contact. It obviously picks up the signal perfectly well directly on the PCB tracks. I then found that just touching the corner contact increased the signal further, confirming that this is indeed the GPS antenna. There was nothing else I could touch that affected the signal.
I like your idea of copper foil. I don't have any so I've ordered some, and will see what I can do when it arrives. My GPS signal has once again been slowly degrading, I think that mesh oxidises over time."
I just did this on my G5 this arvo if you follow the instructions exactly and move the gold contacts under a microscope it fixes the problem. Before I could never get a gps lock and navigation would rely on mobile towers. With this I now can get 7-10 gps locks in under 30'seconds. Also use a cotton bud and some isopropyl alcohol to clean the contacts on the other side of the case when you have it apart. Hope this helps! https://www.reddit.com/r/lgg5/comments/4...
