How To Fix GPS Issues On Galaxy S8 And Galaxy S8 Plus

All reports seem to indicate Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus as two of the best smartphones currently on the market. Owning one of them, however, won’t spare you of problems. Even the best phones can stop working on different occasions. And one of the things that stop working with a Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus, aside from losing the lock or dealing with odd results from the fitness apps tracking runs, seems to be the GPS.
If you’re having problems too, with the GPS from your Samsung Galaxy S8 or Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, and you can tell that it’s not showing an accurate positioning, here are the first things you should consider.

5 troubleshooting methods for Galaxy S8/S8 Plus GPS problems:

Activate the High Accuracy mode

With this GPS mode turned on, your smartphone should be able to pinpoint the location a lot easier. It is the first thing you should try because it is a simple change of settings that is easy to perform, it can be reversed anytime, and it was also proved to work more often than not:

Go to Settings;
Tap on Location – make sure it is turned On;
Select the High Accuracy option available in there.

Download the GPS Status and Toolbox

With this particular app, you will gain access to an overwhelming range of options and settings. Everything you have ever dreamt of knowing about your GPS sensors and GPS data, from signal strength and position of satellites to speed, accuracy, acceleration, battery status and much more, it’s all in there.
Extra tools for marking and sharing your location, leveling tools, compass tools, navigation with Radar are only a few of the cool features available within this app that you can download and start exploring right away from here.

Clear the cache from other apps that use the GPS

If you’ve used the above app and found nothing wrong with your Samsung Galaxy S8 or Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, perhaps you’re having a problem with sharing the GPS. Especially if you have a lot of third-party apps installed on it and that usually rely on the GPS, clearing the cache of those apps could solve the problem:

Go to Settings;
Access the Application Manager;
Tap on Clear Cache.

Perform a hard reset/factory reset of your Galaxy S8

The hard reset, widely known as a factory reset, is a process that will delete all the data, information, and settings from your smartphone. This is usually effective when you have tried everything without success and restoring the factory defaults is the last frontier.

If you are willing to try this, first, backup all your data, and second:

Go to Settings;
Access the Backup & Reset section;
Tap on Reset Device;
Select Erase everything.

When you start reconfiguring your smartphone and installing new apps, pay close attention to what you’re adding! Some of your old apps might have caused the GPS problem and you don’t want to make the same mistake twice.

Run a GPS test for the satellites and decide accordingly

If you’ve made it to this final point without success, you can test to see the nature of the problem with the GPS test. The key, this time, is to compare what kind of satellites is your Samsung Galaxy S8 or Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus using for positioning with what other devices use. If yours is not picking the signal from the same satellites of other devices that use the GPS without problems, you have all the reasons to suspect a hardware problem. Consequently, you should take your Galaxy S8 to a Samsung store or to the retailer.