Getting GPS location takes very long and frequently fails

[xandro0777]

Although it is not easy to compare almost any other app that I tried is faster.

Sometimes network location might be good enough. Maybe last location could be used if it doesn't differ too much from network location.

[xandro0777]

It did improve but sitting under bright sky it takes dozens of seconds.

Osmand or Google Maps show a location within seconds under this circumstances.

[forrestguice]

Which location providers are in use? Suntimes now shows diagnostic info in Settings -> Places that lists the providers and the current age of their locations. A screenshot of that UI would reveal a lot.

Checking or unchecking items in that list also forces one provider over the other. It should also be possible to determine which provider osmand is using by looking at the location age. The last update added the FUSED provider, which should be much faster, but its also limited to newer devices (api31+).

I suspect osmand is actually using google's new location api (google maps definitely is), but I guess it depends on who built it and where you downloaded it from. That new api has a reputation for being must faster, but its also closed (depends on play services). Otherwise the way Suntimes is using the older api should be identical in an apples-to-apples comparison - all available location providers are now queried - there really isn't anything left for me to rewrite or optimize... 😕

Is the poor performance consistent between devices? The ROM comes into play here because its responsible for implementing the location providers. Google's closed API works anyways because it has ways around this problem. For example, the diagnostic info may indicate a given provider is never used. I'll bet your NETWORK provider is never queried and all that time is spent waiting on the actual GPS. It depends on the rom, but rebooting the device may allow NETWORK to work again for a short period (according to some lineageos bug report I read somewhere). It is generally out of the apps control.

As a last resort, it should be possible to delegate the location updates to another application. When in passive mode, Suntimes doesn't perform any queries, it just reads whatever "last known" locations are available. If osmand already has a location, then Suntimes should have it too (and there shouldn't be any speed difference). I have my doubts this will work though, because PASSIVE depends on the other location providers working correctly.