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iPhone 4s location wrong... Why?

My location on my 4s is completely out, it says I'm about 30 miles away from where I actually am. It does this 90% of the time! And I'm not sure what I can do to fix it. My iPad 2 and other family members iPhone 4 on the same wifi etc. doesn't have any prOblems with this.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5

Posted on Nov 4, 2011 2:47 AM

Reply
369 replies

Dec 20, 2011 2:46 AM in response to jmgg0025

No, I don't think the latest IOS fixes this problem, as I have not updated my IOS. However it looks like the problem has now been resolved. I am convinced that the problem was not in the phone, but more likely in the mobile base stations and how their data was used by the iPhone. I suspect that either the base stations were updated or that possible the software that does the triangulation was updated, this could reside in various locations, the phone itself, the base stations, or with apple. Interested to hear if anyone is still getting the gross location error, gross error means wrong country not 10 - 20 mile error, which is another issue, which corrects itself given a little time waiting for the system to better triangulate its position.

Dec 20, 2011 3:42 AM in response to markfrompoole

This may help to explain the problem".....


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 the crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations. In addition, if you are 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 a crowd-sourced road traffic database. The crowd-sourced location data gathered by Apple does not personally identify you.


So if Apple made some mistakes with this system then this would account for the gross error locations, remember that my tests showed that the gps worked, but we mainly use the assisted gps system that includes the crowd sourced wi-fi and cellular location services.


This is the link to the full article. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4995?

Dec 20, 2011 4:26 AM in response to markfrompoole

markfrompoole wrote:


This may help to explain the problem".....


So if Apple made some mistakes with this system then this would account for the gross error locations, remember that my tests showed that the gps worked, but we mainly use the assisted gps system that includes the crowd sourced wi-fi and cellular location services.



Mark,

your explanation for the problem seems to be the most possible since now. I agree that it was something outside our iPhones or iOS version since it appeared mainly (but not only) in one night and it got solved by "it's own". Maybe the solution came as you imply from a correction at apple's database. That is very encouraging that it won't happen again.


I tested my phone several times today in very difficult situations in areas whith almost no cellular coverage. Every time i got the correct location.

Dec 20, 2011 4:41 AM in response to richardfrommatlock

Well, it started with me on 14th Dec - same as most others but I seem to be located in Poland. Apple support not any use when I called them, Genius Bar at my local Apple Store said that it was a known fault and it would be fixed in 5.1 Meantime I am really ****** about it, messes up all the apps that use location, near me, facebook etc.

iPhone 4s location wrong... Why?

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