What does Cell Network Search do?

I don't have all the links handy, but I found the information on the web at several Mac and cell phone tech news sites. Android and other phones also collect similar location based data and location based data is considered to worth billions of potential revenue for future marketing and targeted features (like traffic based navigation).

Go ahead and disable the compass calibration - your compass will still calibrate just fine. The traffic service sends location based information to Apple, and one rumored use of that data may be a future traffic based navigation service for the iPhone.

These are the optional services that collect location based information from your iPhone and send it to Apple for their use. This information used to be collected secretively, stored on you iPhone and periodically uploaded to Apple's servers. After all the uproar about that in the past, these are now opt-out services.

I disabled all of those settings in Location -> System Services the day I updated to iOS 5, and my iPhone and iPad have continued to work flawlessly, just as they did before. My compass still calibrates when needed, my maps and other traffic apps still get their information, and the cell phone radio still instantly connects to available towers as I move around. Traffic has nothing to do with using traffic based apps or services on your device and disabling it will not affect those apps or services one bit.

Those services have nothing to do with any feature, app, or function on your device. Your phone, nor any cell phone in history, needs a location based database to connect to cell towers. The radio simply detects the towers in range and handshakes with them to establish connection, and hands off to the next nearest tower when you move out of range of the current one.

Google a bit and you'll find lots of technical information about the various uses and proposed uses for location based data being collected by Apple, Google, and other cell phone makers. I'm not necessarily against the practice, and am glad that at least now Apple has at least made it transparent and given users the option to opt-out of these services since that was not possible to do so prior to iOS 5. However, these things must use some battery if on, and will transmit some data, just as the option to automatically send diagnostic&usage data does (although they seem to be programmed to use wifi, not cellular data, and may only dump their data to Apple when syncing as in the past).

As I say, just try it. Disable everything in that Location -> System services section and see if your device behaves in any way, shape or form differently from how it behaved with them on. Those settings have no effect on your device, your apps or how any device features work. They just quietly collect location based information for Apple's use (or potential future use - some of which may be very nice, like a real-time traffic based nav. service).

If you read through all the hundreds of posts earlier in the year after the whole "locationgate" businees hit the press, you can figure out that these now openly acknowledged services relate to the same information Apple has been collecting from its mobile device users for over a year or more.

http://www.macstories.net/news/breaking-apple-responds-to-location-log-scrutiny- with-extensive-qa-response/

(see item #8 in the QA)

The actual press release from Apple - http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27Apple-Q-A-on-Location-Data.html

While there is less information on the overt Location System Services listed in iOS 5 specifically, it seems pretty clear to me that all they did was move the information from a hidden log file on your phone to openly acknowledged services that you may opt in or out of.

I know some people think something like cell tower search somehow enhances thier phones connection, but stop and think about it for a mintue. A cell phone is just an omni-directional 2-way radio. It takes a fraction of a second for it to scan the assigned carriers bandwidth to detect tower signals, handshake with the strongest available signal and establish the cellular service connection. Why on earth would it need to run a program to check its location with some database of tower locations and then start scanning for one? That whole process would be phenomenally slower and more complex than just having the radio constantly scan for the best signal within it's assigned bandwidth and with which it can complete a handshake with.

The cell tower search feature provides location based info to Apple to aid in their location services by non-GPS fix (ie. cell tower triangulation), as well as giving them data to potentially sell back to the carriers about use and connection congestion of their networks. Eg. where and when is the most iPhone use occuring on AT&T, or Verizon, which cities have the most consistent use, are they using corporate towers, leased towers, or internationally roaming somewhere. And don't forget, google collects similar data from Android users so the carriers could purchase access to data that lets them compare what their vairious device users are doing, where and when. That lets them target sales, promotions, specific regional advertising, infrastructure build-out schedules and all sorts of useful things.

The one I do not know about is the compass calibration. As I say, disabling it does not impede your compass app from actually calibrating when it prompts you to, not does it affect any location based display feature in the Maps app (or in my Motion GPS app or any other map app I have). Since the reason the compass needs calibration in the first place is due to electronic interferance, perhaps it provides information on where/when iPhone users are experiencing interference, and where location based services might experience errors. Note that Android users can now get map location data inside malls and such, which must use cell signal triangulation (since no cell phone I've ever used gets a GPS signal inside a big building like a mall), and those are also likely to be areas with tons of interferance, so location based services inside buildings (ones with internal cell service antennae) might benefit from such data.

Again, I'm not inherently against this data collection, and people can choose to participate if they think it worthwhile or if they see some of the potential uses as benefitting them in the long run. I however have disabled all six of those Location Based System Services just because I don't want them running. Even if they where to only decrease my battery life by a tiny percentage, I'd prefer to not have them running at all.

And we won't even get into the economic/social philosophy of why I should blindly particapte in something for nothing, when that something gains the collector of the data potential huge revenue gains over the long term.

I recently stumbled upon this feature, and in an attempt to improve the battery life of my 2-year old 3gs iPhones running IOS5 turned off the Cell Network Search. I think this option may be using more power than we think, because the battery life on both our phones improved noticeably. If there's a downside to this, I haven't noticed it. Good luck.

I may be able to shed some light on the compass calibration option. If you disable this feature but leave the location services for the compass app "on". Then open the compass app, go to "info" you will see that the "True North" option is greyed out. However with the option enabled it is possible to choose " True North". So this option appears to have something to do with helping the phone find where true north is, because i can confirm that the compass calibrates fine, with the option disabled and magentic north being used 🙂

Hope this helps

James, my guess is that you need to know where you are in order to know where True North is given that True North and Magnetic North are at two different places and Compass can only really find magnetic North.

So without knowing where you are, you can't really "calculate" the direction for True North.

Having said that, I am pretty sure it will be better to use GPS, which compass has the option in location services, to locate your current position instead of using the Compass Calibration setting...so this setting is as dodgy as the Cell Network Search setting.

Great answer, pretty much all I needed to know.

I just wanted to mention an issue I ran into yesterday as I was trying to use a service through the app NHL Game Center. I had paid to have live games on my PC, Xbox, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Well, it worked fine on my pc & Xbox. Even on my sons iPod Touch. But it wouldn't work on my iPhone or iPad. I decided to look into it and came across Cell Network Search and once I disabled it, I was able to see the games on my iPhone. Now, the reason I want to mention this to you is so that it can help in your efforts to narrow down the search as to what Cell Network Search really does. The app does use location in order to black out certain games in your area. But until I turned off the Call Network Search, it would say that Network Connection was not available. Then one I turned Cell Network Search off, I would get all the games that were being played for that day. Because this option of Cell Network Search is not on the iPod Touch, it was never an issue and was able to view all games right away as the case on my pc and Xbox. Anyways, just thought I'd let you know of my findings. Have a great day.

I ran into the same issue last night where I wasn't able to view any hockey games on my iPhone but this time, when I enabled Cell Network Search, it worked and wouldn't work when it was disabled. Now I'm really confused. First it the Game Center app with the Live games feature would only work correctly when I disabled Cell Network Search and now it will only work when I enable Cell Network Search. Sorry for the confusion but that's what is happening now. There is no explanation.

anyone have updates?

Nothing concrete, but as a part of this thread, the following KB article was cited: iOS 7: Understanding Location Services

In it, towards the end, it says:

Crowd-sourced Wi-Fi and cellular Location Services

If Location Services is on, your device will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple to augment Apple's crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations. In addition, if you're traveling (for example, in a car) and Location Services is on, a GPS-enabled iOS device will also periodically send GPS locations and travel speed information in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple to be used for building up Apple's crowd-sourced road traffic database. The crowd-sourced location data gathered by Apple doesn't personally identify you.

Given this, I would assume that the "cell network search" is part of that crowd-sourcing. The phone is transmitting cell tower, Wi-Fi hotspot and GPS data to Apple in order to maintain that database of locations. I assume that the "traffic" setting is for its reporting of GPS and speed information.

If you don't want to participate (maybe to preserve battery life, or if you don't trust the anonymity of the data), turning the settings off shouldn't hurt. It will simply mean that your phone won't contribute to the database. If you are in a populated area where there are lots of iOS users, it won't matter at all. If you are out in the country where you might be the only iPhone for miles around, then the database for your location may not get updated much, possibly affecting accuracy. You may or may not care about that.

WRT the compass setting, I think the reader who mentioned the "true north" setting has it right. I think the Compass app uses your location (received via all the usual means) to look up the current magnetic-north deviation from an on-line database. It will use that to correct the compass. If this isn't something you care about, go ahead and turn it off - you'll get an accurate magnetic compass reading but without the ability to compute true-north from it.

Oh, the fact that an Apple store employee didn't have an answer for you is no surprise here. I have a small piece of painter's tape over the front-facing camera lens. The Apple store employee I showed my iphone 6 to (for a different reason entirely) said, 'Why are you covering that sensor?' I said, "It's the camera."
"No," she (incorrectly) argued, "That's the sensor." I despair. Really? An Apple store employee? I guess she hadn't made it up to "Genius" level yet.

Michael Black wrote:

You can disable every single feature in that section and your iPhone or iPad will continue to function exactly the same way it always has.

The only one that has anything to do with your use is the time zone feature, but you'd only actually need that one on IF you were outside of range of any cellular towers and wanted your time zone set by your GPS location. If you turn it off, but leave the time&date setting on "automatic" then your time zone will be determined by the time signal received from the wireless towers your device connects to.

Just an update on this, in iOS 9.3 Settings > Display & Brightness > Night Shift > Scheduled > From/To, the "Sunset to Sunrise" option won't be presented unless Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Setting Time Zone is enabled.