I did a post on time zones and given my recent improvements to my Android apps it seems that many users don't understand how GPS works.   My old versions would get the cached GPS location (also known as "last known location") and continue to try to get the current location.  Problem with that is you usually just got the cached result the first time the app was run and if that was too old the system would return zeros for longitude and latitude. 

This confused people because they knew that GPS was working on their phone.  So in the new versions I put the location "listener" on a thread and wait for it to return the current location.  It puts up a progress dialog while it does this.  I also will time out after 2.5 minutes and take whatever is available: cached and with some of the newest update the network location (the cell tower location).  Pressing Cancel may still give you the cached or network location which is often just fine for astrology given that we just use coarse atlas coordinates most of the time.  I think some folks thought that pressing Cancel would also cancel the transits chart but it doesn't.  The other advantage of doing it this way is the phone is only running the battery eating GPS chip during the time that it is syncing and not the entire time the app is live.

Devices with GPS chips in them triangulate your position given satellites overhead.  Depending on the number of satellites overhead and the reception you device can get it can take between a few seconds to 2 minutes or more to sync up a location.  Try it with Google Maps.  Often Google Maps will start with either the cached location or the network location if the cached is too old.  I've watched Google Maps take up to two minutes then just stay with the cached location most likely because it couldn't get the info from satellites.

Unfortunately most astrologers want things immediately.  And in many cases when I've tested GPS here it has taken only about 5 seconds to get an accurate fix but other times it would take up to 2 minutes.  I could have done just the network location which is the fastest but that will only work with phones and not wifi only devices.  Some wifi only devices do come with GPS chips.

Time will tell how this all plays out or maybe I should just time out after 15 or 30 seconds.

On another matter one prominent Android device manufacturer didn't particularly make their devices conform to Android standards.  The recent updates for "large screens" aren't working well on these devices.  For one thing I used the term "large screens" for screens that are 480x800 or 480x854 because those are devices with more pixel density than normal devices.  And lists like the chart entry and chart load displays were a little too short on phones with those displays.  This does not mean the extra large screens that are used for tablets with higher displays such as 1024x600.  There will be support for those too though most work just fine with the recent layout improvements.  However that doesn't help the devices that broke the rules.  Hopefully that manufacturer will fix things in a firmware upgrade.