Hey I am beginning to look into making an android app. Trying to use the phonegap right now.
I was just wondering about the geolocation service. It seems the address is always a few block off of my actual location. Even if I have it set to enable hight accuracy. How come GPS people have in their cars know down to the location on the block they are on. Is there a way to get an accuracy like this with android? Or is it easier to get better data when moving?
Do you have GPS enabled? Android phones can get location based on network (GPRS, EDGE, 3G, UMTS, Wifi, etc) or GPS. If you have GPS enabled you'll get better location than only network, which gives you a range, a circle where you are in.
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Is it possible to get the coordinates only with the mobile network enabled?
I need to get the coordinates within 30 seconds. Because when the user clicks the button to hide, it can not be too long to get the coordinates.
I can not use NETWORK_PROVIDER to get the coordinates of the Wi-Fi network because the user will be on the street and not connected to a Wi-Fi network, but will have the mobile data network connected.
Is it possible to get coordinates over the mobile data network?
I know GPS_PROVIDER is slower than NETWORK_PROVIDER, so I'd like to know if it's possible as I said above. Thank you!
Is it possible to get the coordinates only with the mobile network enabled?
Yes. For example, navigation apps work while driving in open spaces, far from any WiFi.
I need to get the coordinates within 30 seconds
There is no way to guarantee this. There is no way to guarantee that you can get a GPS fix in any amount of time. There are plenty of places in the world where it is difficult to get GPS signals.
Android is constantly changing. Currently, the Fused Location API is being used for location detection. But in my experience, without a Data connection, the GPS signal is not being found anymore.
How do I use the device's GPS only whenever there is no internet available?
Fused location provider uses a hybrid way to find gps using a variety of sensors, WIFI/data and the actual GPS chipset.
It will find the location COARSE/FINE accuracy is up to your case. It will just take a while longer than with the internet connection. If indoors or in an isolated area, it may very well take over a minute or two. Sometimes if the data signals just don't reach the device, yes it can fail.
It does work without WIFI or DATA in most cases.
I have make an android application which help us to get GPS Location using A-gps in my android phone. I am getting latitude and longitude successfully in Metro Cities of my country, but when I am going to some forest area,GPS do not get location and for this I need to run GPRS of my phone,after running google map once in my phone ,GPS successfully gets latitude and longitude even if I closes my internet connection or remove sim card from my phone. But since I do not want to use google map, what should I do now and why it is happening?? Any help will be appreciable
It takes a long time (several minutes) to get the GPS location with high precision. However, if you enable network based location (e.g. cell tower, WiFi), it's way faster but with lower precision.
As a result, you should listen to all the providers with LocationManager, and figure out which provides the best location. Or, if your app targets Android 8 and above, you can use the Location APIs provided with Google Play Services, which hides the details as using LocationManager directly.
First make sure that it is not the fault of your phone or its operation system version.
Download a well working known GPS App, look if they get a GPS signal without internet.
Place it under very good cointions: free view to sky, outside dense city, at least an open place.
You should get a signal within one minute, maybe if the phone has a poor built-in GPS antenna, a bit more, wait some minutes.
If the well working foreign app still don't get GPS it's an Operating system bug.
If you get one, then it´s your fault, and it is worth for further investigation.
*first check your GPS working or not properly with **ANDROITS GPS TEST*.
if it finds and fixes satellite do not worry. as AGPS is fast , standlone GPS needs to have much more time to fix on its own especially in city as many radio waves disturbs GPS fixure.
better first fix with AGPS and then you can turn off data or internet, still it will work as it already had its location and satellites fixed.
with standlone GPS it takes huge time and battery.**
If your phone use GPS h/w to get the location information, it don't require any internet connection. It should be able to get the location fix using GPS without the help of internet. But it may take some time to get the location fix.
You can install the this free app from play-store to test the GPS of your phone : "TestYourGPS".
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eorsavik.testyourgps
I was wondering was there a way to track if the android device is inside of a building and retreieve what building by using the location manager? without having GPS being turned on.
Even if you had a Lat/Lon location, you would then use GeoCoding to get the address from the location, addresses may be shown as 2 or 3 buildings in a single location, my home address is shown as a range of house numbers including my neighbours. Without accurate GPS, you wont have enough accuracy.
Android device can get device location over the WIFI or from GSM antennas too, but this is not very accurate. Location technology that is "coarse" only knows where you are within several hundred meters. I think you can not get right results.
If you want to try it, you need to add ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION permission to the AndroidManifest.xml file.
I'd just like to ask for some clarifications regarding the GPS functionalities of android phones. When an application activates the GPS of a phone, will the phone need to be on a data plan or should activate the data traffic ( Settings > Wireless & Network settings > Mobile Networks > Data Traffic) for the GPS to get the phone's coordinates?
From Wikipdeia
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based satellite
navigation system that provides location and time information in all
weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed
line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. It is maintained by the
United States government and is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS
receiver.
If you talk specifically about GPS then it's nothing to do with the data plan or even with your service provider. GPS is totally independent of it. Think of a stand alone GPS receiver device e.g. Garmin GPS 10. It just connects to your laptop through Bluetooth (some with USB cable) and start sending GPS data to it. These devices normally output GPS data in NMEA format. Modern phones includes same sort GPS receiver circuit integrated in them. The thing different here is that these phones consumes GPS data for internally available rather than directly outputting in raw form. That's how you get GPS location information in iPhone and Android smart phones. On the other hand think of GPS navigation devices we use in our cars e.g. Garmin nuvi. It shows the location of car on the integrated maps. There is no sim card in it. Same is with GPS fitness watches.
A good question here is How GPS calculates the location? Best explanation I found is on HowStuffWorks. It's very easy and very well explained. Apart form GPS there are other positioning systems in the world, though GPS is oldest and most widely used. After GPS from US, there is GLONASS from Russia. Some phones support GLONASS too e.g. iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S III. Well there is nothing to worry for developers though. These phones internally use GPS and GLONASS to have high positional accuracy and gives the location in same way.
Other positioning systems includes Compass from China and Galileo. These are under development at the moment. For complete list check this Wikipedia article.
Edit: Location can be also be determined by mobile networks and wifi networks. For example Google Latitude tells your approximate location if you are connected with wifi and even you don't have GPS device connected. In case of location determination by mobile networks, the service provider may charge for location. Normally locations determined by mobile and wifi networks are not very accurate but location can be determined indoors which is a very big problem of GPS location calculation.
Hopefully it will help how things are working.
Cheers! :)
Atleast in India I can access use the GPS whenever I can see the sky, no data plan is required for me.
I haven't tried it on Android but it should be possible to get GPS co-ordinates without a data plan. My iPhone gets GPS locations even when out of reception, I can't see why android would be any different.