How can I check the current status of the GPS receiver?

Ok, so let's try a combination of all the answers and updates so far and do something like this:

• Add the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission to your manifest
• Get an instance of the system LocationManager
• Create a GpsStatus.Listener that reacts to GPS_EVENT_SATELLITE_STATUS
• Register the listener with LocationManager with addGpsStatusListener

The GPS listener could be something like this:

GpsStatus.Listener listener = new GpsStatus.Listener() {
    void onGpsStatusChanged(int event) {
        if (event == GPS_EVENT_SATELLITE_STATUS) {
            GpsStatus status = mLocManager.getGpsStatus(null);
            Iterable<GpsSatellite> sats = status.getSatellites();
            // Check number of satellites in list to determine fix state
        }
    }
}

The APIs are a bit unclear about when and what GPS and satellite information is given, but I think an idea would be to look at how many satellites are available. If it's below three, then you can't have a fix. If it's more, then you should have a fix.

Trial and error is probably the way to go to determine how often Android reports satellite info, and what info each GpsSatellite object contains.

You could try using LocationManager.addGpsStatusListener to get updated when the GPS status changes. It looks like GPS_EVENT_STARTED and GPS_EVENT_STOPPED might be what you're looking for.

With LocationManager you can getLastKnownLocation() after you getBestProvider(). This gives you a Location object, which has the methods getAccuracy() in meters and getTime() in UTC milliseconds

Does this give you enough info?

Or perhaps you could iterate over the LocationProviders and find out if each one meetsCriteria( ACCURACY_COARSE )

Maybe it's the best possiblity to create a TimerTask that sets the received Location to a certain value (null?) regularly. If a new value is received by the GPSListener it will update the location with the current data.

I think that would be a working solution.