Location curser bug on iOS 6.1.x on PE v1.5 when no WiFi signal present

[Steve]

Awesome app guys, I really love it and its making my euro trip go much more smoothly. However, I’m having a quite annoying reoccurring issue on both my iPhone and iPad. If I have a wifi connection, hitting the “show cursor” button on and off does exactly what it should. However, when I’m off WiFi, if I turn off the curser it will not come back on until I have wifi again. Once I have wifi, everything works fine again. I’m able to reproduce this quit easily in both devices by just disabling the wifi and turning it back on. Since this is intended to be an offline map, and that’s how I’m using it, this is causing some problems! Just last night I was stranded in Prague (metro shuts down at midnight, doh!), and I had to buy some nasty food at a KFC so I could get wifi to “reset” this bug.

It appears that the GPS is completely disabled when this happens. Not only does PE not work, but other apps that use GPS are also disabled (I.e. “GPS Data” app). Once I get on WiFi and hit the “show curser” in PE, the other apps start working again.

My specs:

iPhone 4S, iOS 6.1.3, PE v1.5
iPad mini, iOS 6.1.2, PE v1.5

Anyway you could look into this and possibly a quick update? I still have a few weeks left on my Eurotrip and overly much appreciate relying on your app!

-Steve

[GeoMagik]

Hi Steve,

This is normal. Most non-dedicated GPS devices (smartphones, etc) use AGPS or Assisted GPS technology. This uses WiFi and/or cellular signals to assist in the initial GPS location detection.  The GPS still works well without WiFi/Cellular but the initial location fix can take a bit longer. From our experience this is usually 30-40 seconds, but in some cases can be up to 2 minutes.

When you enable the GPS in PocketEarth you should see the GPS button turn from black to gray while it is waiting for iOS to detect and give it your GPS location. Once it has the initial fix, the button will turn blue, and should continue to update and track your movements accurately and quickly.

Also note that Airplane mode will prevent the GPS from working.  See this post for some related information.

[Steve]

Thanks! It was actually the airplane mode thing. I left it in airplane mode to avoid roaming charges, but when I turned that off and just disabled voice and data individually it worked fine.

[Eric]

I am having the same problem but it did not fix when I turned airplane mode off. Any other thoughts?

[GeoMagik]

@Eric:  I am not sure what else could be happening.  If you leave the GPS enabled for a minute or so, it doesn’t begin to receive accurate location fixes?   Does the GPS button appear gray colored or does it give you an error message?

Note that the GPS does need a fairly clear line of sight to 2 or 3 of the GPS satellites. This means if you are inside a dense building or between very tall building on the street it may not be able to find your location, or may loose updates until you are out of such a location for 30 seconds or so. These are limitations of the GPS system in general and the hardware on these devices and shouldn’t be specific to PocketEarth.

[Author]

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