gps

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gps

My old 2017 iPad was cellular capable but I did not have service. I used it exclusively to read and for gps directions while driving. It always showed the blue dot accurately on my location even when I was driving. I used it to navigate all over the west if I had service with my hotspot or not and I haven't had any problem with the GPS performance. The maps might be a little blurry when I had no service but the road and location were still accurate as long as I started the directions when I had wifi service.

Bought a new 2022 9th generation iPad with no cellular service and it is horrible for directions. Same technic, start directions when on wifi and using a hotspot while traveling and the blue dot lags behind my location sometime for many miles. When I turn off my cellular service on my IPhone while using maps it tracks my gps location fine if I have put in directions before I turn the cellular off. I am an Apple guy (iPhone, iPad, watch, iMac, laptop * 5 of us)but will have to migrate to something else that works if I can't get this working. Support says that it is working as expected and that the hotspot doesn't provide as good of service as cellular. Funny that they have the same cellular SIM card in them, actually the hotspot has AT&T and the phone has cricket which uses only AT&T towers but doesn't roam.

Any suggestions?

iPad, iPadOS 15

Posted on Apr 5, 2022 9:12 AM

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Answer 1

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LotusPilot

Community+ 2024

Level 10

288,962 points

Apr 5, 2022 9:18 AM in response to tdg47

Unlike your iPhone and WiFi & Cellular models of iPad, WiFi Only iPads do not have any GPS location capability with which to directly determine their location - and as such are completely reliant upon their active network connection to infer an approximate location.

Without benefit of GPS, your approximate geographic location is inferred from a “database lookup” of (a) your WiFi Network Name (SSID) or detected neighbouring WiFi networks - and (b) the “public” IP Address provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Without a network connection, your iPad cannot infer its approximate location.

If the mapped WiFi network name or IP Address are not available within the applicable databases, or if this information substantially differs between sources, then your approximate location may not be computed - or may wildly inaccurate. This situation often occurs if you are in a remote/rural location where neighbouring WiFi networks are scarce - or if connecting over satellite or VPN connections.

Network IP Addresses and WiFi networks are frequently mapped in urban and cosmopolitan areas (including “crowd source” techniques) and as such approximation of your location from lookup against these databases can be provide relatively high accuracy. As population and network density diminishes, this mechanism becomes progressively less reliable.

Your iPhone does have GPS capabilities - however, the iPhone’s derived GPS location is not shared with other devices via the hotspot tether.

All this has significant implications for non-static mapping applications; this is the source of your difficulty.

Your available options are:

Substitute your WiFi Only iPad for a WiFi+Cellular model; this does not commit you to provisioning Cellular service for your iPad, but does provide the needed GPS functionality for the iPad.
Add an external GPS receiver to your WiFi Only iPad. These are often used in marine, aviation and vehicular applications - and can be either directly connected via Lightning or via Bluetooth. Their are various third-party manufacturers, of which one is BadElf.

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gps

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