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User profile for user: Stoaty
Stoaty Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Compass GPS coordinates wrong

Apologies if this has been posted before but I could not find it searching.

I live in London, UK and noticed today that the GPS coordinates shown by the compass application showed me as 12' east of the Greenwich Meridian. I know I am 12' west of it. I checked with a friend who lives close by with the same and it came up with the same result.

Is this just a bug in the program? I would just like to know as it will stop me worrying about it.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on May 5, 2010 1:15 PM

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User profile for user: wjosten
wjosten
User level: Level 10
95,351 points

May 5, 2010 3:34 PM in response to Stoaty

Good be a number of reasons for this, the iphone GPS is an assisted GPS, drawing location info from WiFi>Cellular Tower Location>GPS to determine your location. So, if the WiFi info is wrong or cellular tower location is wrong, well you get the idea. Try this, turn WiFi off & remove your sim(turn your phone off before removing your sim). GPS will still work but will take longer to determine your location without the assist of WiFi & cellular. What does it show now?
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User profile for user: Stoaty
Stoaty Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

May 5, 2010 11:23 PM in response to wjosten

It shows the same thing. The GPS coordinates in digital form is correct as it shows the correct location on the Map application but in the compass application the East/West convention on conversion to degrees, minutes and seconds is wrong. I also know it generates a negative value from testing with the iPhone SDK which is West not East. However, the compass application is saying this is East rather than West.

I wonder if someone has managed to write to code badly because I live at 0 degrees longitude. Rather than testing the whole number to determine East or West they have tested just the degrees?
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User profile for user: wjosten
wjosten
User level: Level 10
95,351 points

May 6, 2010 2:17 AM in response to Stoaty

One more thing to try, follow the instructions as mentioned in my first post, but this time, turn location services off, then go into Settings>General>Reset>Reset Network Settings. Now, turn location services back on, how does it show your location now?
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User profile for user: kjm-123
kjm-123
User level: Level 1
10 points

May 6, 2010 4:16 AM in response to Stoaty

I have noticed the exact same problem. If I type the coordinates displayed on the compass ( 51 31 4N,0 10 49e )into Google Maps it shows my location as being Rainham in Essex - if I change the "e" to a "w" and type that into Google Maps it shows the correct location of Paddington in Central London.

Looks like a coding error to me as well.
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Compass GPS coordinates wrong

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