Judging by the post, problems have been observed since May 2022. They show up in a long search for satellites – the exact location is now determined not in a matter of seconds, but in a matter of minutes. This makes the use of maps and navigation devices practically impossible.

What happened?

Apparently, Qualcomm has blocked users from Russia from accessing the server from which devices with the company’s chipsets receive A-GPS data.

The principle of operation of A-GPS consists in receiving two indicators by a smartphone via mobile Internet or Wi-Fi:

• Ephemeris – the exact position of the satellite for the next few hours. Each satellite transmits only its own ephemerides, and their reception takes about 20-60 seconds.
• The almanacs are the approximate location of all the satellites of the constellation in the coming weeks. Having almanacs, remembering your old location and knowing the current time, the device may not initially analyze the entire frequency band, but immediately calculates which satellites you can expect to hear at which frequencies (taking into account the Doppler shift).

Again Qualcomm no longer provides access to this data for users with Russian IP addresses, respectively, smartphones need to download them directly from satellites, which takes much longer. Also, some smartphones trying to download A-GPS data receive completely false information that corrupts the data previously received from satellites.

A similar situation, as reported on the network, concerns MediaTek – the company turned off A-GPS support for Russians a week ago. Other manufacturers have not yet joined these sanctions. Moreover, it is reported that these are sanctions from the USA.