Troubleshooting a Smartphone = instant factory reset?

[Borgholio]

So I'm having issues with my Samsung Galaxy Note 2's GPS unit. Unless I reboot the phone daily and manually refresh the AGPS cache, it will go haywire at some point during navigation and simply refuse to maintain a GPS lock. I had this issue with the Note 1 which they replaced twice before giving me an S3 instead....which had the same issue. Finally I upgraded to the Note 2 and after a few months it started doing the same thing. So either something I'm doing is nuking the GPS on every phone I've had, even if it's right out of the box...or Samsung has a shit GPS.

Now for the really fun part. Troubleshooting.

As I said, this happened to one of the Note 1s right out of the box. So when I call the drones at Samsung and they ask me to factory reset, no problem. But when I have a shit-ton of data on my phone, I'd really rather they actually perform some real troubleshooting instead of telling me to make sure the GPS is turned on and then failing that, factory rest.

I use my phone more than my computer these days. If someone's software was messing up and they told me to reformat my computer after 10 minutes of troubleshooting, I'd be a bit upset. Why can't they actually do their fucking job instead of asking me to hose all my data after they've read their entire script?

[Vendetta]

There tends not to be a lot you can do to troubleshoot a smartphone or tablet because there just aren't many user options that you can fiddle with that might be the cause of a problem with it.

Also, your data is not their problem, if it was important it would be backed up.

[Borgholio]

Yeah it's all backed up, just reconfiguring everything is a pain in the ass. Even a full backup using Samsung's software doesn't save system settings, wifi passwords, app settings, or anything like that.

[Isolder74]

There are troubleshooting steps that you can try before doing a factory reset such as clearing the cache but because of the simplified architecture of most mobile smartphones, usually only a system restore will often solve these type of issues. Also it could be something that a software update might fix then unfix as well.

And YES Samsung's GPS sucks.

[Borgholio]

My wife suggested I get a different brand of phone, like an LG or a Motorola. They have screens almost as big as the Note and they seem pretty fast from what I see. Maybe it's time to switch over.

[Mr Bean]

My wife suggested I get a different brand of phone, like an LG or a Motorola. They have screens almost as big as the Note and they seem pretty fast from what I see. Maybe it's time to switch over.

Get a Nexus, it's made by LG it's powerful enough for the next few years and it's plenty cheap with an excellent screen. I do recommend you hold one before buying because it's right on the edge of to big for those with small hands.

[muse]

So either something I'm doing is nuking the GPS on every phone I've had, even if it's right out of the box...or Samsung has a shit GPS.

It's a "feature". Samsung phones don't have the best GPS to begin with and it's made worse when carriers load their software packages into them (conflicts galore!). My S2 was useless out of the box, couldn't even hold a GSP signal, standing still, outside. I had a friend root the phone to strip out all the junk and work some magic, after that the GPS worked, though it still wasn't as my iPhone or my current Blackberry Z10.