This is sort of a meta-post/supertweet. I’m hoping to hear from folks who may have seen weird issues with GPS on a Samsung Galaxy S4 recently. There are two correlated factors. 

1. Firmware update.

I’m running stock firmware on my S4, Verizon Wireless 16GB edition. Never rooted or modded. About 3 weeks ago (November 2 I guess) I was offered the MI1_to_MJ7 upgrade over the air from Verizon. Since then, I’ve found my location services to be intermittent. 

2. Tiny Death Star.

About the same time I installed the new Disney/NimbleBit “Tiny Death Star” game. It crashed a lot, and got a few updates within a week or so. I still play it daily. it oddly requires front facing camera and GPS/”Digital Compass” which has me curious whether it’s related to the GPS issues. 

So I’m trying to figure out if one or both of these is actually causal. When the GPS (either GPS status app or Waze) starts reporting no GPS signal, turning location services off and on again in Settings fixes the problem. So does the “GPS” button in the pulldown menu. 

I’ve tried Verizon’s (abnormal) suggestion of rebooting the phone daily but I’d be disappointed if that was the (only) fix. I normally reset only when flying. And other than a well-known bug in my old HTC Thunderbolt that had me GPS-located 10k feet below Guam, I haven’t had to do this for GPS reasons before. 

Any of my readers have suggestions?