[Joost]

I have a strange question

Recently I bought a new gen4 Jimny, and I noticed that the GPS on my phone (iPhone SE 2nd gen) sometimes get 'confused'. What I mean by that is most of the time it works fine, but suddenly you are one or 2 streets (in the city) or around 100m (off-road tracks) away.
After while it seems to sort it self out again, but its a persistent gremlin that keeps coming back

Some things to note:

I NEVER had this issue in my previous car (Suzuki Grand Vitara)
It does not matter if I move the phone in the car, in the phone holder, on the dash or on the passenger seat , the results are the same.
It never happens in the same location so its not location bound
My Wife's phone (iPhone 15) does the same thing - in my car only - both phones work fine in her car (Hyundai Kona)
It happens with all map apps I use - Apple Maps, Google Maps and HEMA offline 4x4 maps

The only thing in common seems to be the Jimny for some reason?

Does anyone else have this issue? Is there a solution for it? Its not a huge problem but its so strange and consistent that it make me wonder....

[fordem]

First - let's clarify what we're discussing - are you linking the phone to the car's head unit to display the maps on the screen in the car? If so, you're using Apple CarPlay and it may not be the GPS that is acting up.

Moving on - is it that the position shown is "delayed" by several seconds? For example, you're approaching an intersection and the position displayed is one or two corners further back (you've already driven through the spot) - or is the position displaced ahead of you (you haven't reached there yet, or displaced left or right from where you are?

I have not experienced this with my Jimny, but I have seen it happen on other vehicles (it's a pain in the butt on my daughter's Kia Seltos) and it's usually a communication issue between the phone & the head unit. Head units differ in the different markets, I'm in the Caribbean, I'm not certain if you have the same head unit that I have, mine supports wireless CarPlay, you can try turning off the WiFi and using USB only

[Joost]

Thanks for your reply,

yes I am linking the Phone to the Screen with Apple Maps and Google maps. (with a cable)
HEMA maps is on the phone only, no support for Apple carplay
in both cases the same thing happens.

The position is not delayed, its like you 'teleported' away. When I am in the city, Apple/Google maps will try to direct you back to your destination, just from for a example a side street and not the main road you are driving on.
Offroad in most cases there is no other road so suddenly you are just driving next to the track

[fordem]

And you say this happens with HEMA maps, even though that is on the phone only? Does it happen if the cable is disconnected?

I'm inclined to say that what you are describing is highly unlikely, almost to the point of being impossible - there are ways to "jam" GPS systems, but I don't see it as either happening by accident or being caused by a vehicle.

There should be GPS apps available for iPhones that will let you see the satellite count (I know they exist for Android, I assume they exist for Apple), try to find one and compare the number of satellites the phone will see in the Jimny and in the Kona - you need four satellites to get a position fix and typically you'll be seeing two to three times that number.

[Joost]

I respectfully disagree that this highly unlikely. as this happened on a regular basis to me. I have the new Jimny for just over a month.

It does not always happens on short (10 -15m) rides. but anything over an hour and it will happen.

great idea of testing the HEMA app without the cable, I did not think about that. next weekend I go for a off-road trip, that would be a great time to test that.

I will have a look at the GPS apps, thats another great suggestion, thanks for that!

[Gwagensteve]

I think the answer is fairly straightforward- the shallow and steep windscreen of the jimny means there’s a lot of steel roof over the phone= poor satellite reception.

[fordem]

Joost wrote:

I respectfully disagree that this highly unlikely. as this happened on a regular basis to me. I have the new Jimny for just over a month.

Maybe that was poorly worded - I'm not doubting that you have experienced it - but it's a very unusual issue, your case might be the one in a every hundred, rather than one in every ten - unlikely vs very likely - unlikely doesn't mean it's not happening - for what it's worth I have a five door, which I took delivery of in July of 2024 - I'm not dependent on the GPS for navigation, but, it'll be up on the head unit screen and I haven't noticed anything weird.

Gwagensteve wrote:

I think the answer is fairly straightforward- the shallow and steep windscreen of the Jimny means there’s a lot of steel roof over the phone= poor satellite reception.

I don't really see this as the issue Steve - in a concrete jungle with tall buildings all around you, yes, it's a possibility, and I've seen it happen in the days of "single channel" GPS receivers (mid 2000's), most GPS units are now twelve channel - there should be twelve satellites "visible" at any geographic location, with only four needed for a fix, the units would normally be "locked" onto more than the minimum and constantly switching between them - this I see as more likely to be some sort of interference preventing the signal from being decoded.

[Gwagensteve]

I don't get what interference could occasionally scramble or block the GPS signal in a way that's basically unique to Joost's car.

The simplest solution is that the phone isn't seeing enough satellites, and there are physical factors that influence this.

In my cars GPS reception is frequently laggy if the phone is buried down in the centre console, for example.

[Joost]

Like Steve i am a believer in Occam's razor, so I am sure that can/will have a impact, that said if that's the case I would think many more (new) Jimny's would see the same issue. Maybe I am looking the wrong places but i cant find many people complaining about it.
on top of that if i put the phone right against the window on the dash, so it has as much glass around it as i can give it (appart from taping it to the outside of the car) it still happens.

again its not a huge deal, I have enough (just) brain cells to know I am not suddenly driving in the river next to the track. It is mainly annoying in a new part of town as you are suddenly a couple of streets away.

but mostly I just like to have a explanation I dont like unexplained gremlins in my car

[fordem]

Attachment:

GPS3.JPG

This is a screen capture from an app called GPSTest, I don't know if it's available for an iPhone.

The capture was taken at around 9:15 am this morning in Atlanta, Georgia, behind the wheel of a rented Chevrolet Blazer, I should be home later this week and I will take similar captures from the driver's seat of a Jimny and a GV. The phone's GPS is seeing ten satellites and has 'locked' onto eight, only four are required to get a 3D fix (latitude, longitude & altitude). The GPS can actually see a much larger number of satellites, but I have opted not to show anything other than GPS satellites, Glonass & Galileo, are alternative global position systems - the number of satellites in view & in use change constantly.

The color of the bars in the graph is representative of the SNR or signal to noise ratio - it is entirely possible that the two satellites shown in orange are behind me (there is way to see this in the app), but at this point I don't think it's important, what I am trying to show you here is that there are almost always enough satellites in view and with strong enough signals that the GPS receiver can achieve a fix.

Electrical interference reduces the SNR values - why should Joost's car have enough interference to cause a problem - I'm not saying it does, I'm saying it could have - I'm providing a way to determine whether or not it does, and as for the why - vehicles are what are known as hostile electrical environments, electronic equipment being designed for use in vehicles have to be specifically designed to survive and function properly in these environments, electrical noise, voltage spikes, all have to be considered - something as simple as a poor ground can cause a problem.

Let me give you one scenario I ran into a few years back.

I bought a used Mitsubishi Pajero several years ago, it had problems, but it was cheap and I needed a vehicle - one of the problems it had was with the automatic transmission, the TCU had maybe a dozen or so codes set, and the investigation led to the harness between the TCU and the transmission - somewhere in the vehicles life the harness had been damaged & repaired and the codes in the TCU were never cleared, I went through the harness wire by wire, and redid several of the splices, and cleared the codes - the last problem I was faced with was the transmission would intermittently not shift into fourth gear, the temporary fix was to switch the ignition off and back on, which would reset the TCU. I drove the car like this for several years, and the frequency with which the problem would show up went from occasionally, to frequently, to very frequently and I decided to take a closer look.

Only one code was being reported, an output shaft speed sensor error - the wiring to the speed sensor was amongst the wires that have been damaged & repaired, end to end tests with an ohmmeter showed these to be intact and the sensor good, so the next step, according to the service manual was to replace the TCU, which I did, it didn't help, putting a scope on the signal to the TCU revealed the problem - the speed sensor wiring was shielded and even though I had repaired the shielding, noise was being picked up by the wiring and distorting the signal from the sensor so it could not be recognized by the TCU - the fix was to open the harness, add another layer of foil shielding surrounding just those two wires and ensuring that the foil was properly grounded.

The transmission harness has been designed to provide adequate shielding for the signal, but because the shielding was compromised, enough electrical interference was being picked up to cause a malfunction.

Question for you Joost, have you added any electrical accessories to the Jimny? Maybe LED spot lights or a light bar? Does your Jimny have LED headlights? The reason I'm asking is the current limiting circuits in some LED lamps are notoriously noisy.

I'll get back to you in a few days with screen shots from the GV and the Jimny.

[Joost]

Hi

No electrical accessories have been installed, I do have LED headlights that came with the car. The only 'modifications' I have done on the car is a Phone holder and a plug that goes in the cigarette lighter for USB charging. (not used at the moment)
This weekend I am doing a off-road trip and I will do more testing

1- use HEMA maps with no cable and see if it still happens
2- when it happens I'll stop and go outside with the phone see if that fixes it
3- when it happens I'll stop the car (leave it running) dont move and see if it goes away

anything else you can think off I can try? its a remote-ish area with hardly any phone reception to its all pure GPS data

[Gwagensteve]

Hmm, this is interesting information. Check if having the led headlights on or off makes a difference. LED headlights can be/are responsible for a lot of electrical noise. I’ve had quality (JW Speaker) LED headlight globes in a few of my cars and they play havoc with radio reception. In my defender they pretty much made listening to the radio impossible when on.

[fordem]

A little bit of background...

My introduction to GPS was through computers - about 30 years ago, I had setup a large plotter for an international aid agency with GIS systems, and that resulted in a surveyor contacting me looking for assistance with a used plotter that he had acquired, we became friends and he would contact me for almost anything involving computers & electronics, one of his needs was getting an echo sounder and a GPS receiver to "talk to one another" so he could plot, my guess is the depth of the river.

Back then, civilian GPS use was not common, and certainly nothing like it is today where pretty much everyone has a GPS receiver in their pocket or even on their wrist - the GPS receivers of that era were single "channel", could only communicate with one satellite at a time, and needed external antennas to function - by the mid 2000s GPS usage was starting to take off, a GPS receiver, still single channel, has shrunk to a little box, perhaps an inch by an inch by half an inch high, and driving under a highway overpass could cause it to loose the signal - with that style of receiver, if I were indoors, I would have had to put it on a window ledge where it could see the sky to get a fix, with today's smart phones, that's not a requirement, last Saturday evening I had a fix in a room on the fourth floor of a ten story hotel. I've driven hundreds of miles using wireless Android Auto (android's equivalent to Apple CarPlay), with the phone still in my pants pocket, which means it's less than a foot or so away from the driver's side door.

Not having a clear view of the sky is no longer a problem.

[Joost]

Thank you both for trying to help, regardless the outcome I greatly appreciate your time and brain power. I am normally not a fan of internet forums for information but this one is one of the very few I have found with some decent people , so again thank you for your help

Steve: 95% of my driving is during the day so while it might have happened once or twice while I had my headlights on, its safer to say that so-far it only happened with the headlights off, and not tested with the headlights on. That said, the daylight driving lights come on with the car (the little round ones) but my understanding is that those are not LED?

Fordem: After some searching I did find a iPhone app that shows the GPS satellites you are connected to, of course it was not free but the 5AUD is spend in the name of science. I will use it when I have the issue off-road. one of the challenges I have is that when it happens in the city I am the one driving with nobody else so pulling over or fiddling with the phone in the middle of peak hour traffic is a no-go

Interesting that I am the only one that has (reported) this issue. Maybe I have a truly unique car as mentioned before I am mainly after understanding the 'why' I am going to use this car for long remote trips, so while this is not a dealbreaker in anyway, if it somehow is related to a reliability issue it is a BIG deal.

[fordem]

Another possibility crossed my mind today and this might require a bit of backstory to explain.

The past week has been spent on a road trip in the US in the company of my daughter, who is an iPhone user, whilst I use Samsung - we've been sharing the driving and I've come to recognize that whilst the CarPlay & AndroidAuto screen displays serve the same purpose, they are not just a way to display Google Maps on the head unit screen, they are different applications with different options - at first it was little things, the shape of the buttons that you touch, the location of things like the speed limit (AA has it at the bottom right, CP has it at the top right), CP provides two instructions at a time, AA gives them one by one, AA lets you as a user add details like stalled vehicles, accidents, etc., CP doesn't.

You're a CarPlay user, I've been using Android Auto, this could be a glitch in the CarPlay app, and if it is, I wouldn't see it - maybe check the firmware on your headunit - I know mine is one away from the latest.

https://www.global-infotainment-system. ... index.html

[Joost]

great idea, I will check that out, thanks for suggesting that

it wont explain how the HEMA maps has the same issue, unless the connecting cable somehow has a influence - note thats something I will try this weekend (disconnect the phone completely)

[fordem]

Attachment:

GPS4.JPG

The capture above was taken from behind the wheel of my five door Jimny, the one below was taken standing in front of the vehicle.

Attachment:

GPS5.JPG

The interesting thing is there was one more satellite visible when I was inside the car, but as I said earlier, the number of satellites visible and in use vary constantly - I'll get side-by-side comparisons in the Jimny & the GV later in the day, and also see what happens when the lights are on.

[Joost]

report after a long day on and off-road trip:

In the morning when I left it was quite overcast and raining, when I went thru a gorge near my house the GPS went haywire again, it stayed that way quite a long time actually, all the way past the other side out of the gorge, good for trouble shooting. I thought initially that the overcast raining weather + rocky sides must have been the issue, but when I stopped I checked the satellite app, it showed connection (see picture)

I sorted itself out after a while and we arrived at the trailhead. Killed the apple maps, switched to HEMA offline maps and..... for the rest of the +/- 9hours no issues whatsoever in deep valleys, in heavy rain and next to 'mountains' perfect navigation.

At the end of the off-road track before turning on the tar, started Apple maps and kept HEMA maps running (I can see one on the phone, one on the car screen) and.... 10 min later it all goes haywire, BOTH apps.

So I pulled the cable from my phone, killed the apps, pugged the phone in USB power only (that sigarette lighter converter thingy) started Apple maps (phone only, no Apple carplay) in the same location (phone holder) and drove back 2.5 hours with no issues whatsoever.

I have the feeling its not reception thing at all, but a 'software' issue in the dash unit that upsets the phone when using carpay as navigation, as it did not happen with HEMA plugged in but carplay only used to play music, but its hard to tell after only one 'successful' try

I will try to find out if there are newer firmware versions and upgrade the car and if/when it happens again do the same trick.

note: I did have to reboot the phone to get back to normal, so thats where my wrong conclusion that HEMA was also impacted when disconnected came from.
my best limited conclusion is:
- Apple carplay navigation upsets the GPS somehow, sometimes.
- When that happens all GPS on the phone are impacted, needs a reboot to clear by the looks of it
- phone in the same location powered only, not plugged in does not seem to suffer from it (one test only)
- phone in the same position connected to Apple carplay, but NOT used as navigation (music only) and a local phone offline map app also seem OK, one (long) test only

[fordem]

https://www.global-infotainment-system.com/en/top.html

Here's the infotainment portal.

What I find curious there is that only three satellites are shown with green "quality" indications, more than four are shown with red - that is very different to what I see. Try getting the same display in the car with it running and out of the car with the car off at the same location, are they very different? Mine weren't.

I did notice one "anomaly" last week - I was driving home from work, I don't need the GPS for that, but I did have AA running and the map up on the screen and I noticed the display kept changing - it had my position jumping back & forth from where I actually was to another point a few streets away, maybe 250 meters or so, but, it was always a point at which the vehicle had been a minute or two ago - it hasn't happened since.

[Joost]

maybe I am looking the wrong place, but under settings I have different menu's

[fordem]

Is your Jimny three or five door?

[Joost]

The 3 door version

[fordem]

You may have a Bosch unit, there is supposedly a "secret menu" that can be accessed by holding (or touching) the settings gearwheel for 10 seconds - I say supposedly because I've never seen the Bosch units, the head units vary with the markets the cars are built for, mine is the five door and the software update option is a line in the system settings screen.

Attachment:

Jimny software.JPG

[Joost]

wow! you are wealth of information, the 10 sec thing worked!

[fordem]

We're at the limit of what I can help with now though - 1791_220319 looks like a fairly old version of the software, assuming 220319 to be the release date - I don't know what the current version is, but my guess is 1890 or later.

Try the links below for software updates and discussions.

https://www.suzuki-slda.com/Home
https://xdaforums.com/t/suzuki-slda.3326937/

[Joost]

Thank you so much for your help so-far, I could not have figured it all out by myself

I will have a look on the sites you mentioned if there is an supported way of upgrading. If not, next Wednesday I bring the car in to the dealer to get (finally) my tow bar installed, so I can ask them to upgrade the headunit while they have the car.

again thank you both for being so helpful, greatly appreciated