Juries, GPS, and General Updates...

It's gonna be a fairly quiet fortnight on the Blant... I'm in court for a fortnight.

No, I've not tattooed the word "Dunlop" on someone's midriff or anything like that (though one does get sorely tempted from time to time what with all the muppits one sees on the roads these days)... no, instead, I'm doing penance - I mean Jury Service - for a fortnight.

Now, I'm not allowed to give or discuss details regarding any case(s) I might sit on as a juror, so I'm sorry to say that it's gonna be a fairly quiet fortnight on the Blant.

However, if I do spot anything worth sticking up on here, be assured: It'll go on fairly quickly :)

GPS issues...

The GPS on my phone went a little skew-whiff the other day. Dunno why, it just would not lock onto the satellites. Result? No SatNav worth a damn.

So, I went hunting for a diagnostic tool that I could use to try to figure out what the hell was happening. Found one, too - GPS Test, which, strangely, appears to have solved the problem, though God alone knows how - all I did was load the software onto the phone, and presto, all of a sudden I was getting proper GPS performance again.

Go figure!

General Updates...

On a related note, HTC recently (in the last week or so) issued updates to the Touch Pro 2's ROM - the firmware on the phone - for SMS numbers to use the mobile international direct dialling prefix of "+" in IDD numbers (e.g. landlines use "0044" for the UKs' IDD, Mobiles/Cellphones use "+44" instead). In addition they also released a "radios" update to allow better GPS performance. Then they released a full ROM update as well.

Apparently, none of these work altogether as intended for a fair number of TP2 users. I certainly couldn't get the GPS update to work - and found out that one needs to use a specific piece of third-party software to generate what's called a "Gold Card" specific to my phone, before I could update the firmware.

Interestingly, my phone is quite happy with Mobile format IDDs, and aside from the hiccup last week, the GPS on my phone seems to be working alright too.

I've not even tried to upload the full ROM update yet - apparently that results in erratic performance issues for some users, according to what I've seen over on the XDA-Developers forums...

And now, it appears that HTC have withdrawn the Radios/GPS ROM update...

As the saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it...!"