As you say, perhaps the configuration is defaulting to not embedding GPS data. Which is sensible enough. IIRC there was a bug existing since at least 2.3 in which GPS data could be corrupted. 2.3 is fairly old, it may be worth while investigating the possability of running a third party ROM on your phone. I've used Cyanogenmod (or derivatives) for years on 2 different handsets.

Update: example of the bug

In reply to Re^5: Use perl to extract GPS coordinates from a cell phone image. by marto
in thread Use perl to extract GPS coordinates from a cell phone image. by Anonymous Monk

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