Database Develop

[Q] GPS Issue (NOW FIXED SEE POST 3)

We have 2 SGS phones, both running GoaTrip 4.0JVR, both with Talon kernel & virtually the same items installed.
GPS works great on 1 phone 8+ sats & 5mtr accuracy (my wife's) but my phone refuses to find any more than 3 sats with 0 lock (although it used to work fine)
I have tried JVR-JVP-JVO-JP5 modems with no luck.
Any ideas what to try next?

Probably means your phone needs to be opened to have the connector for the gps aerial bent slightly to improve contact. Over time the connector makes worse contact as the connector is flimsy metal flap which bends!
There is a thread about it here somewhere.
Mike
Garbled meaning induced by swype on my SGS!

xpcomputers said:
Probably means your phone needs to be opened to have the connector for the gps aerial bent slightly to improve contact. Over time the connector makes worse contact as the connector is flimsy metal flap which bends!
There is a thread about it here somewhere.
Mike
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You sir are a star for pointing me in the general direction of where I needed to go.
All fixed & working, 7+ sats lock in around 15 seconds 5mtr accuracy!
Here's my fix (should have took pics but didnt think) Anywho....
Take back shell off, remove battery\sim\sd etc.
Remove the 7 screws.
Gently ease the back case off starting on the vol btn side half way down & work anti-clockwise (face down)
Directly below the GPS aerial (SEE PIC 1 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=13053495&postcount=1 ) there is a small gold spring pin that pushes up onto the aerial connector I bent this up a little 0.5mm or so with a neddle and cleaned the surfaces on the 2 aerial connectors on the mid case & the small soft grey pin for the lower aerial connector.
Snapped it all together, fired it up & now GPS is working well

Glad you sorted it. I would have linked to the thread myself, but was posting from the XDA app on my phone. Nice little summary you posted too!
Mike

Nice!
Will give this a try.

[Hardware Mod][Teclast x98 plus II] Improving WIFI connection

WARNING! Hardware mods can brick your tablet even faster and deadlier than software, so please read carefully.
I am not responsible for your bricked tablet.
As I promised, I will share my experience about my attempts to improve the WIFI on my Teclast X98 plus II(C2D4).
A lot of users reported very bad WI-FI with this particular model, and the reason is simple:
The metal back cover! It simply shields the internals!!!. And we need to find a way around it.
First Step: Open the tablet
Have a plastic guitar pick and a cutter around
Try to find a gap to insert your pick
If you can't find a gap to insert the pick, slowly insert the cutter on the top of the tablet where the plastic strip is, and then insert the pick
Don't use the cutter to open, because you will make dents into the plastic
Don't force anything, be patient
After you inserted the pick, and you poped one part, the rest will follow
Don't insert the pick too deep and be extra careful with the cutter
Background: I live on the second floor, and I have a router on the first floor:
Speed before the mod: up to 5 Mbps
Now once the tablet is open we can see the internals, and it looks like it has plenty of space. We are interested in this part, the WIFI antenna:
Notice marking on the board: wifi plus(+) and minus(-)
First thing that I thought, is that maybe there is short between them. I checked with a multimeter and it was none.
I powered the tablet and did a speed test: the speeds were amazing!
So I started to experiment. There were multiple attempts but only two I found good enough.
Step TWO: Hardware mod
1. The basic way
You need only a pair of tweezers
You tweezers to unglue the tip of antenna
Be patient, do not apply to much force, the adhesive is strong but it slowly gives up
after the slim part of antena is free, make a fold 90 degrees up, so it will stick out of the case
Do not fold to agressive, the antenna doesn't really bends that way, so be carefull not to break it
make sure that antenna is not in the nearby clip and close the case
antenna still has adhesive, so glue it back to the screen
After you followed the steps from above, you should get something like this:
It is not very nice, but rather than an unusable tablet, this one is pretty good. Also, make sure you are not touching it when you use the tablet.
Speed after this mod: 5-15Mbps
2. Soldering extra wires
Warning! Be extra careful, while is not very difficult to solder on our tablet, I still recommend you to try to solder something before starting to work on the tablet.
You will need:
Soldering iron
Soldering supplies
multimeter
Copper wire with plastic cover(internet cable is not very good, phone cable: good)
Tape
Steps:
Cut a piece of wire, around 5 cm long
Remove the plastic from one end just a little, so you could solder it
Remove the plastic from the another end, about 3 cm, so that the wires will be free
Solder the short end to the (+) of wifi
Check if there is no shorts between the + and -
check that the original cable actually connects to original antenna
(Optional) Unstick the antenna from original position and stick it to the back cover, see images for details
stick the antenna exactly as shown in the image
be careful, do not rush and do not twist to hard
Get the free end of the soldered cable out of the case
Carefully put back the cover, with the copper wires sticking out
Do not press the cover fully, leave the top area a little open
Insert the thin wires between the gaps(as close to outside as possible)
Do not let the copper wires touch the metal back cover, twist them more to the center
Tape all connections, so it will not short with back cover!!
After you solder everything. You can also see the third cable with an aluminum foil, but that doesn't really do anything
This is the image with copper wires sticking out, better put them in the cracks before snapping the back cover:
Speed after the last mod: 10-25 Mbps
Please tell me the results.
If in doubt, better ASK BEFORE TRYING!!

Thanks Veaceslav. I soldered a phone cable exactly as you describe in option 2. I did not touch the original cable. I am hesitant to touch the original cable and antenna. I soldered the additional wire's one end to the ( + ) WiFi panel. I stayed away from the ( -) sign. The other end of the wire was kept hanging outside as you did. Unfortunately that did not seem to have any impact, better or worse. I suspect this is simply the limitation of the Realtek wifi module. It simply has a maximum range of 10 meters (as stated about this participated module). When I am in the same room as the router, I get the maximum speed which is 25 Mbps. Once I go to a different room about 9-10 meters away, I get very poor speeds, almost unusable.

aj624 said:
Thanks Veaceslav. I soldered a phone cable exactly as you describe in option 2. I did not touch the original cable. I am hesitant to touch the original cable and antenna. I soldered the additional wire's one end to the ( + ) WiFi panel. I stayed away from the ( -) sign. The other end of the wire was kept hanging outside as you did. Unfortunately that did not seem to have any impact, better or worse. I suspect this is simply the limitation of the Realtek wifi module. It simply has a maximum range of 10 meters (as stated about this participated module). When I am in the same room as the router, I get the maximum speed which is 25 Mbps. Once I go to a different room about 9-10 meters away, I get very poor speeds, almost unusable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Did you check if you don't have a short between the (+) and (-) ?
2. Did you put some tape on top of the part where the (+) and (-) is? The back plate might sort them when is on top
4. You can also unstick the antenna and stick it to the plastic part of the cover, as shown in the picture, but be careful how you twist the antenna cable
Well the chip is also bad, in some areas I still get 1-2 Mbps where my phone still can do 15-20 Mbps..

Hi fellow user of the Teclast X98 Plus II!
I received my tablet only 3 weeks ago. I have the dual boot C2D6 version. The wifi was not stable (connection loss) and very slow.
After I updated the Firmware (C2D6, from the Teclast website) for the android version only I experienced better performance (no slow speed anymore). Unfortunately I still have loss of connection now and then. I didn't have the guts yet to do your harware mod
At least my table is usuable, however still not fully happy with it...

worked perfectly !
Thank you man ! I just followed what I did understand. For me, the plus (+) and minus (-) were shortened. I unsoldered the wire used for antenna and I just soldered it to the minus : this way, the minus is soldered to the mass (the black plate). I soldered an iron wire to the plus (+) and made a hole to let it go outside of the tablet. Now, I have a 15 Mbps stable connection at 10 meters (and 3 walls) while I had only 0.3 Mbps and unstable before.

Hi, the Mod work!!!
Photo A : My colleague unwrapped the wire of the original wifi antenna and soldered a Laptop Wifi antenna.
Photo B : I installed the antenna on the battery near the loudspeaker and closed the tablet. I completely lost the signal.
Photo C : After several tests I installed the antenna on the cover on the plastic section near the photo exit.
Result :
Original : 0-2 Mbps at that range
After the first intallation paste on battery : no reception
Before closing the case : 27Mbps
After closing the case : 16Mbps
Best result is 33Mbps – maximum on connection with the internet provider.
Not spectacular performance, but really usable.

Nice to hear that it worked for you!, to get the best results, take a look at the antenna that you soldered, see the thin wire part and then the huge base plate? Make sure that the thin one(+) is as far away from aluminum cover as possible. Also, try not to put it on top of something like the sd-card corever, because that one is also grounded(-)

Wifi Antenna paste on cover
veaceslav said:
Nice to hear that it worked for you!, to get the best results, take a look at the antenna that you soldered, see the thin wire part and then the huge base plate? Make sure that the thin one(+) is as far away from aluminum cover as possible. Also, try not to put it on top of something like the sd-card corever, because that one is also grounded(-)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Veaceslav,
First thanks for your tips and experience with the tablet.
The Laptop Wifi Antenna is paste with electric tape on the back cover on the plastic near the camera hole. the original antenna is remove from the Wifi pole + and - .
I try to install the Laptop Wifi Antenna at many place on the tablet. The second best place is outside the case on the side.
The pictures are not so clean, but I pretty happy with the result. Do you think that I should reinstall the original Wifi Antenna and if so change the wire?
My collegue try it with the laptop antenna and he said that the connection was really bad.
Thanks for your feedback

I don't know exactly, how it works better.
1. First I had 3 wires, original antenna(which I got it out of original position and glued it to the plastic part, as you can see in my pictures), the copper wire and a wire connected to a aluminum foil(wrapped in plastic). This one had decent speeds and good stability
2. Then I decided that I don't need the aluminum foil and I cut the 3rd wire, and I got slightly better internet speeds and but now I am getting a strong "gate effect(when you cover the part where antenna is with your hand, the signal drops to zero)"
I wish I didn't cut the 3 rd wire, because now I need to be careful how do I hold my tablet. I ordered a new antenna, which I am going to solder alongside with the original.
Do some experiments and see what setup works better for you!
I will share my results once I get the antenna

BoomBox antenna
What about using an antenna from a portable radio hacked into the case? TIA
eight.nit.al

Many thanks @veaceslav for the idea of this hardware mod!
I removed original WiFi antenna at all, and installed some used one from laptop (Toshiba L650, but probably can be any).
I've tired few location, and I get the best signal when antenna is placed on the opposite side to the original antenna, I mean next to the battery. There is some space and the new antenna fits almost ideal.
Before mod I got max 10 Mb/s and totally no signal (zero) when tablet was laying on the desk. Distance to router - 5 m.
Now under the same conditions I get max 30 Mb/s and 20 Mb/s when tablet is laying on the desk. Absolutely incredibile.

eight.bit.al said:
What about using an antenna from a portable radio hacked into the case? TIA
eight.nit.al
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any thick wire also works an antenna, however the build in antenna is still the best. You just need to unglue it from the case and stick it in reverse on the cover, the same as shown in the first picture. The gains will be substantial.

MarcinLewkowicz said:
Many thanks @veaceslav for the idea of this hardware mod!
I removed original WiFi antenna at all, and installed some used one from laptop (Toshiba L650, but probably can be any).
I've tired few location, and I get the best signal when antenna is placed on the opposite side to the original antenna, I mean next to the battery. There is some space and the new antenna fits almost ideal.
Before mod I got max 10 Mb/s and totally no signal (zero) when tablet was laying on the desk. Distance to router - 5 m.
Now under the same conditions I get max 30 Mb/s and 20 Mb/s when tablet is laying on the desk. Absolutely incredibile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you put it under the metal cover, then you might loose some power, also when you hold the tablet, the signal drop might be even bigger. try to keep in close to the plastic strip from the top
I still found the default antenna the best optimized for the chipset, I just had to get it away from the metal plate of the sd card. That one is grounded and kills all the signal

@MarcinLewkowicz,
did you took a photo and can share it with us.
Thanks.
42

Activating UART mode

Bit of a long shot but hey, this is XDA
I purchased a soft-bricked Mi 5, the FDD-LTE variant. It had a functioning fastboot mode that worked every single time, but no official ROM liked to flash stating that phone is locked. (At the time I did not know of Xiaomi PC Suite to try.) So I went down the EDL rabbit hole: found the testpoints, successfully flashed 7.7.20 china development ROM with MiFlash and... have not seen anything on the screen since.
Tried vol+ with vol- with power for 30s.
Tried to leave phone on the charger for a day and the above combo again.
Tried flashing with Qualcomm Flash Image Loader v2.0.1.1.
Tried flashing 6.12.8 china, 7.7.20 china, 7.7.20 global, 8.5.24 china, 8.8.9 china, 7.2.4.0 global, 9.6.1.0 china with no errors in MiFlash / QFIL.
It is either bad luck and PMI8994 got fried at the exact same time as I flashed or... something else. I don't believe in bad luck so hoping for the "something else" part To discover what could the problem be I was hoping to hook up a UART console to the board. Unfortunately I found no accounts of someone doing this on the Mi 5 and hence this post.
From Mi 5 PCB schematics it seems that on this phone UART console is connected to the ISL54062 analog switch and then output via the headphone jack (think Nexus 4) if enabled. The "enabled" bit is tricky – according to ISL54062 datasheet, both IN1 and IN2 need to have a logic state of "1" for TX/RX to be enabled. These are supposedly routed directly from MSM8996 as AUDIO_SWITCH_EN on pin BE49. This is as far as I got so far.
Has any of you heard of someone tracing down these lines? Does anyone know the conditions that would trigger AUDIO_SWITCH_EN to "1"? (On the Nexus 4 it was voltage comparison on some jack pins, on some phones it is resistance, etc.) Would prefer not to desolder the ISL54062 as it is a tiny µTQFN package (1.8 x 1.4mm) unless absolutely necessary.
Would love to get this board up and running and am prepared to ruin it for science since it does not boot anyway. If we do discover something, however, it seems that it will also be applicable to other Xiaomi phones – I fould the exact same circuitry on Mi 2 schematics. Perhaps there is some trigger that works on many/most Qualcomm SoCs?
EDIT: some more info confirming what I wrote above. According to kernel sources for MSM8996, the SoC's GPIO_4 and GPIO_5 are indeed configured for UART console. The interesting bit is the analog switch enablement pin, GPIO_49. According to kernel sources, GPIO_49, GPIO_50, GPIO_51 and GPIO_52 are a classic SPI MOSI, MISO, CS, CLK configuration for an interface referred to as "SPI9". Only on the Mi 5 they are marked as AUDIO_SWITCH_EN, FP_SPI_RST, TYPEC_I2C_SDA and TYPEC_I2C_SCL, where the last three go to the bottom fpc connector. Hmm... shame I do not have a proper microscope yet!
EDIT 2: Since the original post I also went through a list of all Mi 5 test points and while some look interesting in general phone diagnostic (PMI8994), none seem to have anything to do with UART enablement analogous to the way TP1204 and TP1205 force EDL mode.
EDIT 3: Out of curiosity I went through the Xiaomi kernel code drop for the Mi5 looking for ways they might be detecting voltage on the mic line and/or controlling the ISL54062 audio switch via AUDIO_SWITCH_EN. Nothing out of interest really. Shame we do not have a leaked Xiaomi bootloader code somewhere
EDIT 4: Yup, still going. Had a few spare minutes with a scope today and tried the Nexus 4 way of feeding the phone +3.3V on the mic line, hoping that as Xiaomi was copying other bits from other manufacturers they also copied that trick. Didn't do a thing unfortunately. Next step: look for and desolder ISL54062 to get to the data lines underneath.
EDIT 5: Had a hotair gun handy so went ahead with checking whether ISL54062 is hiding beneath RF shielding (as I hoped) or not (as the PCB layout from the schematics shows). Unfortunately it seems the schematic, showing that the final PCB design omits the audio switch IC, won. As you can see in the attachment, there is space and pads but they are not populated. One last thing to try is to solder a thin wire to the relevant pad to see if perhaps MSM8996 does still transmit stuff but is "only" no longer able to re-route this communication via the audio jack or if they also removed all relevant print lines from PBL/SBL source/build. Stay tuned

So I had some more time to play and to my/our luck it seems that the relevant pin is indeed still wired to MSM8996 and moreover, that debug messages were not disabled and are still emitted by PBL. If you facy a go, you will need to:
Remove an RF shield using a hot air gun.
Solder a wire to pad 5 (MSM8996 TX) where ISL54062 would normally be.
Solder a wire to pad 8 (MSM8996 RX) where ISL54062 would normally be. (Only needed if you want to send it commands.)
Solder a ground wire somewhere.
Use a logic level converter to go from 1.8V signalling to 5V understood by most USB-to-UART converters (can be skipped if you have eg. BS101P and you select the 1.8V level).
Run your favourite terminal software and set it to 115200 baud rate, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, no flow control.
Check attachment for help in locating the TX pad and a sample log (Mi5 connected to a charger without battery). This seems to conclude my investigation Hope this can be a starting point for someone interested in some more tinkering!

thanks for the info!
Because of the by-pass resistors in the schematic, I already feared the mux would not be populated, and, sadly, you have confirmed my fear.
I might attempt to remove the bypass resistors and add that mux myself, or do what you did and add a bunch of wires

I believe if you wanted to add the mux you'd have to either hope that the code that activates UART passthrough is still present in Xiaomi sources or try to drive the mux yourself

It is fairly easy to drive the GPIO over /sys/class/gpio if you have a booted system, or you can edit the DTB to turn GPIO49 high.
I want to attempt to get a newer version of linux working on the gemini (preferably mainline), in that undertaking (that I"m prolly not qualified to do, but whatever ) driving a single GPIO should be a minor detail

Ha, in that case indeed this is tiny compared to what you hope to achieve Fingers crossed for you!

davidcie said:
Ha, in that case indeed this is tiny compared to what you hope to achieve Fingers crossed for you!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I failed at removing the RF shield, and don't want to kill my phone, so I'll have to make do without uart for now

Flux? You can also try diluting the lead-free solder with good old SnPb using a fine iron tip in order to lower the melting point for your hot air later on.

S pen drifts with tilt

Hello all.
I'm testing my new note 8 after having repaired it (more on this later just in case), and I notice that the point of the s pen shifts off the tip with the s pen tilt, and it's on point (pun ignored) only if I hold the pen perfectly perpendicular to the screen.
Is this behavior normal or expected? I hope not, and I hope it's fixable.
I mention the fix since it maybe had something to do with it? I bought the phone on Ebay us thorugh a friend (it's a N950U originally from vzw, running U1 now), my friend tested it but when it arrived here it would not connect to or even list any network.
After many many many many tests and getting some diagnostics via the engineering rom and searching extensively on Google I decided to change the power connector board. This fixed the radio/connection issue effectively, to do this I removed the back cover with an air pencil (soldering station), removed motherboard to change the power connector board (assembly) and reassembled. I mention this only in case this could've caused this somehow, be it hardware, or system (I shoved engineering rom on this, and saferoot, and after doing my tests I activated service codes on efs so I could use them on the normal rom, maybe something got corrupted in stylus calibration on efs? I doubt it but just in case)

You mean if you have the spen on the screen making a dot then tilt the spen at a 45° or more angle it makes an extension of that dot towards that angle of tilt?
My 10+ behaves that way. It extends the dot proportionally to the angle of tilt and in the direct of the spen body.

It starts before 45, as soon as I start to tilt the dot wanders away from the tip in the direction of the tilt.
It's an expected behavior then?

Blissfull said:
It starts before 45, as soon as I start to tilt the dot wanders away from the tip in the direction of the tilt.
It's an expected behavior then?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. That's exactly how mine behaves.
You're looking at it too hard.
Relax doctor, the surgery was a success

[SOLVED] Pebble Time (Steel) - what kind of microswitch is needed?

Hello,
Some time ago I managed to buy a working second-hand "Pebble Time Steel"... well, almost working. The watch succeeded to connect via bluetooth, showed information on screen properly, was responsive. The only things that worked wrong was the almost worn battery and non-working "back" button.
I like PTS, it has some unique functions that modern smartwatches miss... so I decided to repair it and use as my primary watch.
Never mind the battery, the new one is on its way from Aliexpress. The "back" button however is a big challenge. The previous owner tried to repair it, but he didn't succeed. The only goal he managed was to solder out the microswitch and... leave an empty space. So right now I have PTS with a working motherboard and empty space where the microswitch was.
I tried to find out what type of microswitch it is. Hours of searching internet and online catalogues returned poor results. The only switch that is close to the size of the original was Omron B3U-3000P-B, but it is still a bit too big. A bit risky to use it due to the SMD resistor placed close to the switch. The original switch is 3mm in width, 2mm deep and 2mm high.
Can you please help me to find the appropriate model of the switch?
There is also another way... does somebody have a broken "Pebble Time" or "Pebble Time Steel" motherboard to sell? I could use switch to replace it to my PTS board.
Here are some photos:
- The first photo shows the motherboard, the arrow points the empty space
- The second photo shows one of the other switches
- The third photo shows the front of the switch - there is a black micro knob mounted to the golden spring circle
Sorry for the poor sharpness, my phone doesn't have "macro" mode.

Welcome to XDA.
This device dates back to when?
This site may have a plan if you contact them if the watch dates back 6+ years.
Conversely buying a parts queen cheap might work but you better have excellent desoldering/ soldering skills. These pcbs are easily damaged.
Digikey or Mouser Electronics may have something that small. You need to know what type of switch it is ie NC or NO, single pole etc.
No easy task...

OK, I contacted Rebble Discord and they really helped. Just for your information if someone needs it: this is the Panasonic TACT switch of "EVPAV" series. Right now there is only one model available (EVPAVAA1A) that is a bit thinner than the original Pebble one, but I will find a way to solder it properly.
You can close this thread.

ravan70 said:
You can close this thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thread closed at the OP's request.