I’ve been playing with the new HTC TyTN II (aka Tilt aka Kaiser) this weekend mostly to try out the new Google Maps app that takes advantage of the built in GPS. However after a quick download and install direct from http://mobile.google.co.uk things didn’t go as planned.

Despite being in the open, Google Maps found it impossible to lock onto a GPS signal and kept giving me a time out message. So, being someone who isn’t afraid to mess around with various settings, I tried everything related to GPS that I could find on the device, which wasn’t very much. I went about checking the various COM ports in the Settings Menu for GPS but all of these failed. I even tried resetting the device back to factory settings and re-installing GMpas but again, no signal.

I then realised that all the testing I had done was using the GMaps application so it could be the app that was causing the problem. A quick google search found a Google Group dedicated to GMaps Mobile which pointed me to GPS Viewer (Warning: Link is a download), a freeware application that outputs raw GPS data and I quickly had it installed and working on the TyTn II. Having locked on to the signal I then restarted GMaps and voila, location tracking worked like a charm.

The problem seemed to be that GMaps didn’t give the device enough time to lock on to a GPS signal before automatically timing out and sending an error message to the user. Once the locking had already been done by another application GMaps had no problem getting the signal straight away and the timeout issue was avoided.

So I now have GMaps working with GPS on the TyTN II but I need to run another app to get it going; annoying but it works. I’m pretty sure Google will pickup on this soon enough and fix this bug in a future release but until then, this is a fairly simple work-around.