find my iphone not very accurate

Find My iPhone depends, in part on GPS. GPS doesn't work very well in buildings. Depending on the number of satellites your phone is able to connect to, the accuracy of the location can be a couple of meters or a couple of hundred meters. This is a limitation of GPS technology. It is mitigated somewhat by the phones use of WiFi networks and cellular towers asn additional location services. It's still not always going to be completely accurate.

Using maps on my iphone 6 is almost useless. My phone cannot locate itself without wifi. Most of the time i appear streets away, if not several blocks. I have done a comparison with other people using the iphone 4s on cellular only and their phones will locate them to the exact building, but may be off 30-50 ft. I have noticed that if i connect to a wifi signal, even if just momentary, the accuracy is restored. Personally i believe the iphone quality is failing fast, every generation it gets worse.

Nothing may have changed in your home but a hotspot wifi signal(s) may have changed in your area. As mentioned some of that data comes from crowd sourced wifi hotspots which is entered into a data base. If a hotspot is removed or changed in someway it will result in an accuracy error until the data base is updated. How often that happens I do not know.

I shouldn't have to leave the wifi on. I never use to turn the wifi on my previous gen iphones. I have checked with others who don't ever use wifi, on older gen iphones, and the accuracy on cellular use is very good.

The point is, if you lose your phone and try to track it down, unless it's on WiFi, good luck finding it.

Unless apple steps up for the next gen and fixes all the bugs, I see my self venturing on elsewhere.

Is your iPhone 6 connected to WiFi or using your cellular data network? GPS location will be much more accurate with WiFi. I could see the described scenario happening if your iPhone 4 was connected via WiFi but your iPhone 6 is not.

bradtingram wrote:

I have noticed that if i connect to a wifi signal, even if just momentary, the accuracy is restored.

Leave the WiFi turned on. The iPhone uses Assisted GPS, meaning, that, while getting a satellite lock (something that can take up to 10 minutes under some circumstances) the phone uses WiFi and cellular towers to improve location finding.

here's a strange phenomenon I just discovered: while using Chrome browser I noticed the mac mini's location was off by A LOT. That shouldn't be because it's stationary and always on wifi. I usually keep my browser window at a zoom of 150% (not the icloud map's zoom feature), so I zoomed to 200% and sure enough, it 'calibrated' my map for my usage. The mini was on spot. I could see all the iphones on the account at specific locations familiar to me (instead of a random street or house). This method probably only helps if you can calibrate it with a stationary computer.

After figuring the browser zoom, I then used the maps zoom to my linking.

There's other factors involved in using this system to consider. People are looking at icloud's 'Find iPhone' page on their computer. The location of the device if not accurate. I had this too. But when I zoomed in with the browser's VIEW controls, it IS accurate. The device didn't move. It was always connected to wifi. So in essence, the GPS wasn't off. It was the browser's view % that changed and THEN it was accurate.

bradtingram wrote:

Unless apple steps up for the next gen and fixes all the bugs, I see my self venturing on elsewhere.

You should certainly buy the device that best meets your needs.

cesarfrommilwaukee wrote:

here's a strange phenomenon I just discovered:

I'm not entirely clear how this is related to the issue of GPS accuracy on an iPhone.