Driving in your car can cause a pretty spasmodic GPS connection on your Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Making a lot of turns, speeding past large buildings, and going underneath trees and highway underpasses can all disrupt your GPS signal, making it difficult for the satellites (in the sky) to get a good lock on your location.

According to them, you’re in that blue circle. Somewhere. Probably.

With the GPS unable to lock—and you being in a hurry—trying to get to your location may become two cups of difficult and one large cup of annoying as shit.

That street that you were supposed to turn left on? You missed it a few minutes ago, all because your GPS couldn’t get a good lock. Now you’re off course and sort of lost.

How can you prevent this from happening?

Step 1: Download & Install TopNTP from Google Play

TopNTP, a free Android app by developer Zappa, uses data from Derek Gordon’s NTP server and aGPS almanac and creates a customized gps.conf file for your Android device. This file replaces your old one and is used to lock in to your location when using GPS. With a custom file, your GPS should get a much better, faster lock on satellites.

NOTE: This does require your Note 2 to be rooted. If you’re not already rooted, you can check out my rooting guide for instructions. Also, make sure to back up your Note 2 before continuing.

Step 2: Create & Install Your Custom GPS Conf File

To create your custom gps.conf file, open up TopNTP and dismiss the popups. From there, you have a few settings that you can configure, from the location to the type of file you want. I set a specific location, but you can leave it at global if you want. I left the other two settings as is (Generic, Google).

Once you’re ready, you can tap on Install to reboot your device so that your customized gps.conf file can replace the old one. If you want to restore your old settings, go to Settings and choose Restore your backup to go back to your ROM default files or Reset your custom profile to setup the app again from scratch.

And that’s pretty much it. If you ever change or update your ROM, this patch will likely be overwritten, so just make sure to redo the patch if you’re experiencing GPS problems after that.

How Well Does It Work?

Once my Note 2 restarted, I definitely noticed a difference in my GPS lock. What would previously take seconds (or sometimes even minutes) was now instantaneous. Test it out for yourself and see what kind of results you get.

Did it speed up your GPS lock? Let us know!

Map images via Geckolandmarks