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GPS Issue - Forerunner 235

pigabriele
over 6 years ago
Hello everyone,

happy owner of a Forerunner 235 since two years, I am now facing a major issue I cannot seem to fix.

The watch has been working well with minor glitches for close to 2 years until Monday 23rd when it ran out of battery while sleeping. No big deal I would assume, plugged it in in the morning and started charging, once at 100% I put it on and soon understood something was amiss, this is the status as we speak:

1 - the watch would not find ANY GPS signal, no matter how long it stays under clear skies. I also travelled a bit in the last days, it never picked up ANY signal whatsoever
2 - no more sleeping patterns recorded, it does not record when I fall asleep or wake up, if I put manually the times in connect there is no movement recorded
3 - I can manually adjust the time of course, but every time I try a soft reset the watch reverts back to Monday 23 at 7am, and I cannot adjust the date manually

What I tried so far:

1 - simple soft reset and leave the watch alone for 1hr + - FAIL
2 - reset + delete defaults - FAIL
3 - hard reset - FAIL
4 - manual firmware downgrade to 7.10 and update back to 7.50 - FAIL
5 - sync with Garmin exress and with phone - this works but GPS still dead

My last option I could think of is now to let the watch drain its battery completely, in the hope this causes some kind of deeper shut down of sort, but my expectations are nice and low.

Pretty bummed about this, the watch has been great and going strong but its starting to look I have to fork out for a replacement. Anybody else had similar issues?

Cheers!

Gabriele
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    1 - the watch would not find ANY GPS signal, no matter how long it stays under clear skies.


    A relevant question is: how long was it before either you or your watch gave up trying? Remember, the default power save setting is to return to low-power mode (in which the GPS radio is disabled) after five minutes, and it may well take more than five minutes after a hard reset for the FR235 to lock on to a GPS satellite signal, in my experience.

    Do you see the number of lit bars in the GPS icon increase, even if it never reaches four or five before power-save kicks in?

    2 - no more sleeping patterns recorded, it does not record when I fall asleep or wake up, if I put manually the times in connect there is no movement recorded


    Are you sure it isn't because any movement recorded is being attributed to the wrong date?
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    thanks for taking the time to reply, to your questions:

    1- that's a good point. To be honest I regularly wore the watch for the whole day and did an outdoor bike activity, hence the GPS would be in full on mode. For the sake of it, I just put it outside again in RUN mode, with the activity started. This should cover it. As for the bars, I keep getting only the blinking of the first short one, nothing else.
    2- could very well be connected to the date issue, any way I can change date manually?
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    What does the About page (Select-Down-Up-Up-Select-Up-Select-Up-Select-Down from the watch face) on your FR235 say is the GPS version?

    Personally, I'd try restoring to factory defaults, then sync with Garmin Connect (via Garmin Express using the USB cable), and then leave the watch resting in a stationary position under clear skies in the Run profile with the timer running. If that still doesn't work, perhaps try changing the GPS setting for the Run profile to Off, then GPS+GLONASS, and start another timed Run activity.

    Other than that, I'm out of suggestions, sorry.
  • 0 over 5 years ago
    I had the same issue, similar behavior:
    1. GPS not working (or unable to find satellites) properly.
    2. Unable to automatically set the time and date, no matter how long you wait for gps signal.
    3. The outdoor running activities doesn't show a map in the Garmin Connect (website or app).
    4. Once in a while it stops responding, battery drains and it need to be charged to restart again.
    5. Once it boots again, the time and date is the same as when it crashed for the first time (January 5th).

    I tried all the possible reseting options. All the GPS+glonass combinations.

    Nothing seems to work so far.
    Alex
  • 0 over 5 years ago
    Bump. Same thing happened to me. It froze and the GPS stops working. Unable to find a signal... Anyone able to find a solution for this?
  • 0 over 5 years ago
    Bump. Same thing happened to me. It froze and the GPS stops working. Unable to find a signal... Anyone able to find a solution for this?


    No. There is no solution. Once its dead, its dead.

    I've gone through two replacements. The watch just has a poor GPS chipset installed and is very flakey.

    Initially, you may be able to bring it back to life via resetting the entire watch and deleting all data. The fixes only lasted a week or so before the GPS stops reading. I've had my watch for a year and half and eventually gave up. I just run with my phone now, and use the watch as a smartwatch (which it also does poorly) until I can find a replacement that isn't a bloated piece of junk.
  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I can solve my GPS signal problem by sync with Garmin express, while sync with Garmin Connect does not work. 

    Once you connect Forerunner 235 to computer, check the following file /Garmin/REMOTE***/EPO.bin, which stores the GPS satellite schedule cache. Sync to make sure it's updated. It's said this cache only work in serval days.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to syszm
    Same thing happened to me.  Anyone able to find a solution for this?
  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Esse parece ser um defeito recorrente, o meu após atualização simplesmente parou de conectar ao gps, após contato com a assistência o meu foreruner 235 foi condenado e vou ter que comprar outro,  Garmin teria que fazer a troca dos foreruner com defeito após o rack e a última atualização.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to syszm

    Tried sync with Garmin Connect & Garmin Express. Also have the latest EPO.BIN file, still no GPS lock...I think the GPS chip is toast. Shame really!