What does the Cell Network Search do on the iPhone 4s?

The find my iPhone feature of iCloud does not depend on the location services settings at all. You enable find my iPhone by turning on that feature in your iCloud account settings. It will allow you to track your iPhone from your iCloud web account (or another iOS device using the find my iPhone application from the app store), and it will do so regardless of what the status of the location services setting on your lost phone is.

However, in order to be able to use find my iPhone, the lost phone MUST be:

1. powered on (if powered off or the battery has run out, it will NOT be findable)

2. it must have an active data connection (wifi or 3G, but it must have a data connection to allow communication with the iCloud servers). Without an active data connection, it will NOT be findable.

3. if it has been plugged into iTunes and restored as a new device (which anyone can do) it will not be findable

So, while a sometimes useful and convenient feature, any remote network tracking system/software is not something you should rely upon. Always use a passcode lock on you iPhone as well, as without it, all anyone needs do is go into your iCloud account settings and turn off the find my iPhone switch.

Yes, go ahead and turn it off. It SENDS location based information to Apple for their use (marketing, trouble shooting, who knows all or what). Basically it records the tower ID of the towers within range of your phone as you move around throught the day and sends that back to Apple. Since the location of the towers is known, they then get information about where people are most using iPhones during the day, what the loads in different areas are, and other stuff that lets them learn about how and where iPhones are being used.

It has NOTHING to do with how your iPhone actually functions normally, so you can disable all of the services listed there ifyou wish.

Compass calibration MAY be useful in some cases - I know when I was trying Waze, it often could not get a reliable position fix until I re-enabled compass calibration. I don't know why that was, as all I know about compass calibration is it supposedly allows for a more accurate correction between geographic and magnetic north. But at least with Waze, it clearly assisted Waze in getting and holding a location fix when driving, in areas and at times when without it on, Waze was unable to track my movement, or sometimes even get a fix at all.

Setting time zone - IF you were traveling across time zones, and were out of range of a cell tower (so no cell signal to correct your clock) or your clock failed to change correctly once you had cell signal again, then turning this on may help correct the clock. Note that from posts here, usually you just need turn it on, let the clock correct itself, and then can turn it off and the clock will be fine (it just helps when you've shifted multiple time zones with no cell signal for the phone to correct itself by during the journey).

The other four in that list, I have never enabled as you just don't need them for anything, and they do use power every time they use location services and everytime they send data.

iPhone uses this to speed up locating you. Has nothing to do with making/receiving calls.

Michael Black wrote:

Yes, go ahead and turn it off. It SENDS location based information to Apple for their use (marketing, trouble shooting, who knows all or what). Basically it records the tower ID of the towers within range of your phone as you move around throught the day and sends that back to Apple. Since the location of the towers is known, they then get information about where people are most using iPhones during the day, what the loads in different areas are, and other stuff that lets them learn about how and where iPhones are being used.

What?

Quoted from Apple:

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.

While the carriers know where their towers are, Apple maintains their own database.

Even though it's not entirely correct 😎.

Well, anybody can know where the towers are (public information on file with the FCC). And CNET and others have reported that these services are actually being used by Apple, Google and other smart phone developers to record patterns of geographic tagged usage patterns for their devices. They are building up databases based on frequency of use by geographic location to use in marketing, promotions, where to spend their ad money and probably a whole host of information.

Nothing I have read about the cell tower search function in System Services has anything to do with aGPS and wifi location determination by the end users device. It reportedly does not harvest any information related to that - it collects and sends tower ID information to Apple about what towers you are within range of.

P.S. and unless I see information otherwise, yes, my answer was correct as well.

Then perhaps you ought to read this & forget about what "CNET" and others are sayting:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4995

Because the simple fact is, your answer is not entirely correct, like it or not.

I have read it before. I also know that Apple has openly admitted that they collect that crowd based information for marketing and other internal purposes (it is supposedly kept strictly anonymous). That is one of the reasons it is now an opt-out feature, unlike before. I think it is just niave to think they only collect that information to aid you, the end user, in your location based apps and tools.

That kb article merely gives one use, the one perhaps most pertinent to the end consumer user, of that information.

Regardless, it can be simply disabled, and I doubt that most users will notice any difference at all in how their location based apps and services work - I know I have not.

Then the next time you post on this subject, make sure you distinguish between "your opinion/view", and what Apple officially says.

That was a good answer. now my question will turning the location services on help the Find My iPhone service locate a lost iPhone? or it has nothing to do with that. If apple can locate the tower cells they will probably use that information with find my iPhone, so what do you think?

cool, thanks for clarifying. But then how does it locate the location of the phone, it has got to be I am guessing via the GPS, right?

ademsemir wrote:

cool, thanks for clarifying. But then how does it locate the location of the phone, it has got to be I am guessing via the GPS, right?

The iCloud servers will query the iPhone for its location. The iPhone can determine its locations by GPS (if it can get a satellite signal), by cell tower triangulation or via wifi node (wifi nodes and their approximate location are kept in a database by Apple - the iPhone tells the iCloud servers the name/machine address of the node it is connected to and the servers look up the approx. location of that node in the database).

Even if using a GPS signal, the iOS itself and Apple's own software can bypass the user settings to access location services - the LS setting merely determines how/which 3rd party software can access location services.