What does Cell Network Search do?

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.

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.

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.

I too have been searching for this information to no avail. I have a genius bar apointment tomorrow, and I am going to ask them...

Did you guys ever found a answer for this? I realised since I disabled it my signal takes a longer time to lock on when I come out of a no signal area.

I'm on Vodafone and i noticed it only after the 5.0.1 update (it may have been there before) AND a hard reset. Only after a reset did it appear - before it was not there...odd.

Great answer, pretty much all I needed to know.

anyone have updates?