Hi All, I'm currently in Europe and I'm having problems with the GPS; it is not working at all. I cannot get a location in any of my Apps with it. Whenever I try to use it, it searches for a minute and then I get a message saying "Your location could not be determined". I do have data roaming turned off, but I don't think it should matter for the GPS, I've used the GPS with the phone on airplane mode in the US before, and it's not working when I am connected to wifi.
I have used the GPS in airplane mode before. It was with a 3rd party app, not the maps app. It's possible that it aquired my location from wifi though.
Data roaming off DOES matter, because the maps are downloaded as needed over the network. It should work if you have a WiFi connection, but not otherwise.
Right but even without a data connection it should be able to find my location, it would just show it as a dot in the middle of a grey screen if I wanted to use the maps app. But it should still be able to show my coordinants in the compass, or in my Basic GPS app, or in Flickit, etc etc.
I believe the location system sometimes uses access points from which it receives signals to get a quick fix. It does this by sending the identification of the access point to a service like Skyhook. Skyhook actively maintains a database of access points and locations. If data roaming is turned off, location services can't get to Skyhook. I don't know how long locations service tries to get a true GPS satellite fix before deciding it's not worth the battery drain.
If you have airplane mode turned on, the GPS receiver is turned off. From the User Guide, page 137, "When airplane mode is on, ... No phone, radio, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth signals are emitted from iPhone and GPS reception is turned off, disabling many of iPhone’s features.
I just came off a cruise that had wi-fi, and I couldnt get a GPS fix either. I wonder if the GPS sat's that are used are USA specific? I dunno,....just thinking out loud here.