GPS Hack for Motorola Q9c (Sprint)
Well, in my search for a phone with decent GPS support, I’ve found the Motorola Q9c. For a change, Sprint has released a phone with an actual GPS receiver in the phone. Most of the phones they claim to have GPS are actually using aGPS. The “a” stands for “assisted” which requires the cell towers to triangulate the receiver’s position and report the location to the phone. The difference with the Q9c is that it is able to report its GPS data through the COM port to applications like Google Maps or Windows Live Search.
While this is great news, it can be a little slow. And the people at Sprint probably figured since the phone can retrieve its GPS data from sattelites, it didn’t need to provide aGPS support (which uses processing power at the cell tower). StarmanDX at sprintusers.com posted a great guide on how to enable aGPS on the Motorola Q9c. By enabling aGPS, the devices is much faster at getting a position lock.
Preliminaries
One caveat: you need your MSL, which stands for “Master Subsidy Lock” and is a 6 digit code to program your phone. Remember when you called Sprint to activate your phone and they had your program in your number in that “special menu”? To get there you had to enter your MSL. Some of us tricksters now know to write that down for future use. But you probably haven’t done this, so here’s the trick: you need to call Sprint and get it. It’s technically not a big deal and are supposed to give it to you if you ask, after all it is your phone not theirs. So here are some things to say to the Sprint CSRs or better yet, try Tech Support:
- Just ask, sometimes they give it. Worked for me!
- Say you took your phone to a Sprint store and they need your MSL to reprogram part of the phone
- Tell them that you are trying to change your user name within the settings on your phone and the phone is requiring the MSL code
- Say you are developing application for the phone
Yeah, it’s a wee bit of a white lie, but it’s worth it. Now once you have that number, store it somewhere safe and remember to do this for all your WM devices in the future, you may never know when you need it.One other note before the actual hack: you have to trust the settings are saved. If you go back into this menu, it’ll all be erased, but once entered it’ll stay. So have faith that they stuck.And now for the trick and thanks again to StarmanDX!
Enable aGPS Sprint assistance servers for Moto Q Q9c
- Dial ##073887*
- Hit Send/Green Key
- Enter your MSL
- Hit H (GPS Settings)
- Enter 68.28.31.49 for the IP address
- Enter 5017 for the port number
- Save/Exit
(ps Nope, I do not know how to do this for AT&T Q9h’s or Verizon’s Q9ms. Sorry, Sprint only!)
(from VMexperts)