Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Odds and ends, Troubleshooting, iPhone
Testing the iPhone's fake GPS
Which is great if you just want to know where you are (which is what it was designed for, obviously). But not so great if you're actually trying to do something you'd need GPS for (like geocaching). Two drawbacks here -- I've been trying the Locations feature around Chicago, and I've found that if I try it more than once, or am moving, the app picks up a little better on where I'm at. Also, I've been in Chicago, and Mac|Life is in San Francisco, so it would be interesting to know how this works out where we might really get lost-- out in the country, farther away from cell towers.
Still, while it's not as precise as real GPSers might like, the Locations feature is pretty amazing for what it is. Your iPhone doesn't know exactly where it's at, but it knows close enough to get you where you're going.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mark said 8:50PM on 1-28-2008
Woot! for mentioning geocaching!
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blinkcowz182 said 8:56PM on 1-28-2008
I live in a developed suburban area but when I do the locate, it puts a circle on the map about 40 miles in diameter. If I'm closer to the city, it usually a lot close. It's nice to have but GPS is still must have on iPhone v2.
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Ryan said 9:17PM on 1-28-2008
It sounds like a great feature. If it can work in the middle of nowhere, it would be great for those times when you just want to know where you are on a long trip. I can tell that it wouldn't be good for Geocaching, as it's hard to find a cache with perfect accuracy, let alone .5 mile accuracy... ;)
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James said 9:30PM on 1-28-2008
wouldn't it have been nice if it had real GPS though - I mean how much do you think it would have cost extra - using gps and mobile (cell) towers is clever and all - but it would have been nice if it could use GPS for minimal coverage areas or to be more exact. oh well maybe in 2.0 along with 3G, 802.1x, a keyboard, 20GB and no 18 month contract (hey I can dream!)
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PhysicsGuy said 9:42PM on 1-28-2008
...except when I'm on with my iPod touch in LA and it puts me either in Mountain View or Berkeley, which is bad in two ways:
1) They're both NOT in LA.
B) They're not even close to each other.
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stickybit said 9:48PM on 1-28-2008
Living in northern virginia I travel out to west virginia, north to new jersey and all around the dc metro area. I've been using the locate me feature daily, dozens a time a day more to see if it works that anything else, and it works. In more populated areas, I'd have to assume that there are moe cell towers and more wifi signals so the circle is smaller (more accurate) and out in the hills and in between uber populated areas there are less of each and therefore a wide circle. It's not gps, we know, so why expect it to be gps. It is what it is and it's good at what it does, so it seems.
I was walking around Federal Triangle (DC) last week and I used the feature, it found me in the middle of a 10 block area, I zoomed in, found myself based on street signs, and was able to get directions to an address with little to no work at all.
It is what is!
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aj_robins said 9:49PM on 1-28-2008
If you're in a hilly area, which can potentially see far away cell towers, the faux gps can be a bit off. For me, I've seen it 3-7 miles off (right now, it's around 7 miles off, but it was only 3 miles off a short while back).
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Robert Silvernail said 9:53PM on 1-28-2008
I live out in Rural Michigan, between Grand Rapids and Lansing, and when I press location, it usually gives me a radius expanding out with the cell tower in the center. It's not the most accurate, but if you just need a general idea of where you are and not exact location, it works fine.
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llahbocaj said 9:56PM on 1-28-2008
I live in Manhattan and it can locate you down to which end of the block you're at here. I tried it at home and the difference was 36 feet between location position and google maps position.
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Sam Gross said 9:59PM on 1-28-2008
That's exactly what I've always said about the GPS. It's not amazing, like real GPS, but it beats pretty much everything else. In the D.C. area it works very well, but out in the everglades it was slightly iffy, unless you moved, in which case the blue circle became much tighter around you.
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Jim Huber said 10:07PM on 1-28-2008
GPS will be great if we have it on V2, BUT; GPS doesn't
work without line-of-sight to multiple satellites; in some locations (inside a building), the faux GPS may work better than the real thing. Hopefully, V2 will have both.
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Zombie Flanders said 10:16PM on 1-28-2008
I'm in Chicago too. I think the 'If it doesn't work, try, try again' is the way to go. When it works, it's been pretty impressively precise. When I'm on the ground floor of my work, it knows the difference between the front of my building, the middle, and the back (the building is half a block long). But I work 20 stories up, and it's stymied up there, even on multiple tries, to get my location any closer than the Loop in general (from the lake to the highway interchange).
On or near the ground, though, it's been impressively close once it homes in well.
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Fritz Laurel said 10:34PM on 1-28-2008
I LOVE this feature. It's more of a geek thing than anything else, but I think it's cool for some reason.
I've had great success all around LA with it pinpointing my location.
One note -- I live in the hills north of LA and when I'm downstairs at home, I get a really crappy cell signal and the fauxGPS reports that I'm 2 miles down the street where the nearest cell tower is. I guess it's the only tower it can contact, so there's no triangulation (monoangulation? - lol) to be done.
But, when I go upstairs, it totally pinpoints my exact location to within 10-15 feet as I get better reception the higher I go.
Cheers,
FL
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olivier said 10:46PM on 1-28-2008
In Brooklyn, the first attempt localizes me in a 2-mile radius, a second click on the icon finds my (almost) exact location.
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Evan Rose said 11:00PM on 1-28-2008
Mike,
I am, not "I'm at" and it is, not "it's at."
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Drew said 11:45PM on 1-28-2008
I live in Manhattan and the accuracy is--unsurprisingly--very good. If WiFi is on so that the iPhone can triangulate both cell towers and the omnipresent WiFi signals, it can basically pinpoint my location to within 30 feet. If I am near a Starbucks or other T-Mobile hotspot, it can get me exactly.
When traveling out of New York, I have found the accuracy generally good. Interestingly, this weekend I was in Miami on the beach and the accuracy was awful. No matter where I went up and down Florida's east coast in a 40-mile range, the accuracy when I was on the coast was awful. It regularly reported me several miles inland or else gave me a target circle with a gigantic radius. I am guessing that since the system is based on triangulation, when you are on a straight ocean coast, then essentially 180 degrees of the field around the phone has no cell towers by definition, so the triangulation doesn't work well when it only has the land-side towers.
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Julie said 12:29AM on 1-29-2008
For me, the faux GPS is remarkably accurate when I'm at home. More accurate, in fact - by ~50 ft. or so - than the Google Maps pushpin. Same goes for my brother and sister. Thing is, we're in very different locations - Muskego, WI; Madison, WI; Austin, TX. Seems Google has ID info for each of our home routers.
Question to all the commenters - is the accuracy any better for you when you're at home or in close physical proximity to a wireless router?
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Chris Devers said 10:12AM on 1-29-2008
The estimated accuracy is supposed to be within about a kilometer via GSM (and as a kilometer is about 0.6 miles, this is consistent with the Mac|Life report), but with a WiFi connection it's potentially accurate within 100 meters. Do a Google search for "Skyhook" to learn more about the company doing the WiFi location triangulation.
Doug Clinton said 5:26AM on 1-29-2008
It seems to me that the point of the location is much more to provide location-based searches rather than pinpoint accurate navigation.
Hit the location button to find out where you are and then do a search for "Starbucks" and you'll see all the one's in your surrounding area (if the screen can hold that many pushpins, that is)
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Joey said 6:30AM on 1-29-2008
I tried it in London—worked like a charm. Plus, it was really cool with my mates around me, and we wanted to get a cup of coffee somewhere near Piccadilly after a meal at one of the small back streets of Covent Garden, and when I used the iPhone's location function, they were completely amazed. It was accurate down to our position on the road. They were even more impressed with it showed us the nearest Starbucks complete with a route. Now everyone wants to get one.
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