Develop Reference

Why is mock location jumping back to real position

I added a test provider using LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER as provider name like described here
https://mobiarch.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/testing-with-mock-location-data-in-android/
In Google Maps app, I see location jumping between mocked location and real location, and then back to mocked location.
Why is jumping to real location and how can I stop it?
Maybe I misunderstand how to use mock locations. I haven't found any official documentation available.

You most likely have your location settings configured in a way that your phone (and apps) can use both the location from the GPS sensor and the location from the cells and wi-fi. Since the coming of the Fused Location Provider, the way the system fetches your location got a bit murkier.
When you mock the position you are only able to mock the GPS sensor readings (this is also true for when you mock the position through the simulator settings).
So when the system feeds Google Maps with a position from the GPS sensor it gives it the fake one, and when it provides the position from other sensors it will be the real one.
To test that I'm correct, you can switch location settings to "Device only" and you should only get the fake positions.
Unfortunately there's no way to mock the other sensors readings.

Turn off Wi-Fi scanning / Bluetooth scanning in the Location Settings to stop jumping to preserve mock location.

Is Fused Location Provider good choice?

I am developing an application where I want to use Fused Location Provider. But I have some doubts, and couple of questions.
When GPS is off and I set priority to HIGH, does that mean that the GPS will be automatically turned on, or not?
Can I set UpdateLocation with Fused provider with HIGH priority on demand to save battery at least a little bit?
How can I know what Fused provider is using (is it a GPS or a network provider)?
And finally
Is Fused provider really the best choice for android location? Are there any negative points about it?
What is your opinion?
Thanks in advance.

When GPS is off and I set priority to HIGH, does that mean that GPS will be automatically turned on, or not?
No, it will not be turned on automatically. But if you use SettingsApi, will prompt a dialog to user and gives information that GPS is must be turned on. If user accepts it, the gps will be active automatically. Check the SettingsApi
How can I know what Fused provider is using (is it a GPS or a network provider)
If you use fused provider api with SettingsApi properly. It will make adequate the required settings for current location request.
Is Fused provider really the best choice for android location? Are there any negative points about it?
In my opinion, before fused provider you must deal with directly providers(Gps, network) But fused just asks you, "how accurate locations you wanna receive ?"

As in here https://developer.android.com/training/location/index.html stated very clearly that, the Google Play services location APIs are preferred over the Android framework location APIs (android.location) as a way of adding location awareness to your app. If you are currently using the Android framework location APIs, you are strongly encouraged to switch to the Google Play services location APIs as soon as possible. So I hope you got your answer.

I made a testing application for Gps, Wifi and Fused Location Provider and testing it for 2 days. It's better because it uses both of them and most of the time it's the one most accurate. Also, Gps data is a very noisy data that causes jittering, to solve this low-pass filter or other filters are used. One of the most successful filter used to get most accurate results is Kalman Filter. FusedLocationProvider use this filter same as RotationVector which is a fused sensor combines hardware and software. RotationVector uses accelerometer, gyroscope(if available), and magnetic field sensor to get and filter positition and azimuth data.
Location.getProvider for Gps with LocationManager returns "gps", Wifi returns "network", and FusedLocationProvider returns "fused".
When GPS is off and I set priority to HIGH, does that mean that the GPS will be automatically turned on, or not
Anything other than "Battery Saving" turns Gps on if available. This settings available on my Android 7.1.1 phone. Setting for location was different on previous versions of Android on user's side. As a developer to enable using Gps you should set mLocationRequest.setPriority(LocationRequest.PRIORITY_HIGH_ACCURACY);
PRIORITY_HIGH_ACCURACY - Use this setting to request the most precise location possible. With this setting, the location services are more likely to use GPS to determine the location.
Setting Priority also determines battery use level too.
Can I set UpdateLocation with Fused provider with HIGH priority on demand to save battery at least a little bit?
Yes, you can set interval of location request in addition to priority.
mLocationRequest.setInterval(UPDATE_INTERVAL_IN_MILLISECONDS);
mLocationRequest.setFastestInterval(FASTEST_UPDATE_INTERVAL_IN_MILLISECONDS);
How can I know what Fused provider is using (is it a GPS or a network provider)?
Location from Wifi never returns true for Location.hasSpeed() but Gps returns almost always true if you are outdoors. Also location.getExtras() have satellites tag which you can check for satellites which is only available for Gps. Speed may not be correct if you are walking or as far i've read so far, i haven't tried this on car, when speed it less than 5km/h it's not very accurate. I mean if you are using FLP and last location data contains speed info it's definitely from Gps.
Are there any negative points about it?
As of Android 8.0 and above there is location retrieving limit if you do not use a Foreground Service or get location on foreground while app is not paused for both FLP and LocationManager.
Also FLP requires GooglePlayService to be available on user's device and it should be above a particular version. 10 or 11 depending on which one you use. This can be trouble if you wish to publish your apps on a country, for example China, that bans Google Play Services.

The existing answers don't say why the FusedLocationProvider is better.
It is better because the API fuses from more data sources (sensors, wifi, context, history) in an intelligent and battery-saving way. Also, Google is always improving it by adding more data sources. If your app uses it, you get those improvements for free.

How can I get rough location (country) forAndroid Tablets

I'm looking for a way to know the country-level location.
How to do it on a phone, or devices that have cellular network connectivity or GPS is clear. But what about devices that don't have that?
I know from Google Analytics that Google has that kind of location information,
How?
How can I get that information as well? Maybe from the play-store locale or something?
By "Tablets" I mean devices that have no GPS and no GSM / cellular network connection.
10x

Use the WiFi aproximated location. It checks your IP adress and tries to locate it geographically.
please see this or this.
a quick summary of the WiFi location method form one of the posted links:
How it works: Unless you opt out, your phone is periodically sending anonymous data to Google with, among other things, your last known location and any Wi-Fi network you were connected to at the time. The accumulated data builds on a database begun by traveling Google Streetview cars that recorded Wi-Fi networks available along their routes (the cars no longer do this).
When using this method, your application will ask for the COARSE LOCATION permission on installation.

Since there's no clear indication (at least none that I've found) whether or not Google estimates location based on IP as a last resort, my 'getCountry' logic would be as follows:
Location location = LocationClient.getLastLocation()
If (location == null) location = getLocationByIp()
where getLocationByIP() will use a publicly available, RESTful free web service such as http://freegeoip.net/
Open to suggestions here. If line 2 is redundant I will be happy to drop it.
Cheers
(Y)

What's location provider "passive"? Seen on HTC Desire with Android 2.2

Before I go into location based mode I check for existence of any location providers by calling
List<String> android.location.LocationManager.getProviders(boolean enabledOnly) //enabledOnly = true
and checking the size of the resulting list.
Now I tested my App on a HTC Desire with Android 2.2. The system settings don't allow any location tracking (GPS and mobile is turned off).
However, the list get returned has 1 entry, whose value is "passive". What is it? Can I work with it? The provider seems to be slow / not working.

From the Android API reference:
A special location provider for receiving locations without actually initiating a location fix. This provider can be used to passively receive location updates when other applications or services request them without actually requesting the locations yourself. This provider will return locations generated by other providers.
So no, it's not likely to do you any good if there are no other location providers available.

Google Maps & apps with mapview have different current positions

I have a mapview where I want to track the user's current location. GPS as well as 'use wireless networks' is activated in my phone settings.
Nevertheless, since I'm indoor I don't get a GPS fix, therefore the location is determined via network; wifi spot is available.
I have the Google Maps app running as well as my application running.
Strangely, the current location differes between Google Maps and my application, where the Google Maps is very accurate while in my app the location is somehow off a few 100 meters.
In my application I basically do the following (for debugging purposes now):
1) initially place one marker on the map: geopoint retrieved via locationManager.getLastKnownLocation(LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER);
2) initially place another marker on the map: geopoint retrieved via locationManager.getLastKnownLocation(LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER);
This will put the last known locations of both providers onto the map (eventually last known from outside my app).
3) then for the regular updates (since I don't get a GPS fix anyway indoor here), I do:
locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER, 0, 0, baseLocationListener);
You can see for the frequency and distance I pass the 0 param in both cases.
In the app manifest, the following permissions are granted:
android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION
android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION
android.permission.ACCESS_MOCK_LOCATION
Actually my baseLocationListener does get called, which I see in the log, but the updated location is somehow the same as the last known current position (of LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER), same lat/lng.
I thought maybe I overlooked something or missed a parameter or setting, or my code has a bug. Therefore I installed some other (3 in total) LBS apps from the Android market that also show the current user's location. The current locations displayed in those apps are equals to the one in my application - and they're all some 100 meters off - but at least all the same.
See the screenshot here:
screenshot http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/8679/mapproblem.png
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/8679/mapproblem.png
Now I am wondering:
1) as I understand, getLastKnowLocation is system-wide and not app-wide, why are there differences between the location in Google maps and all the other apps?
2) does Google Maps not update the lastKnownLocation of a provider?
3) does Google Maps use a different custom location provider (i.e. due to licensing reasons) other than GPS_PROVIDER or NETWORK_PROVIDER as they are in the SDK?
4) how do achieve the same accurate result with the NETWORK_PROVIDER like Google Maps does?

I think I found an answer, although not a solution. It seems that the problem is in the data quality of the different map provider that are used for Google Maps and MapView in SDK, which differ.
The map tiles coordinates don't seem to be very accurate, just like in the public google maps web api / tiles.
See this screenshot for an example, where I pinned the same geo point.
screenshot http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/2793/gmaps2.png
http://img339.imageshack.us/i/gmaps2.png/
The map using the public map api is off a few hundred meters.
Seems that we just have to live with it ?! :(

I know your post is one-year old, but the answer I think is that: Google map data in China is offset or distorted. I notice that you are in South China. The China government requires that for some security reasons. Here is the Google search results.
The transformation algorithm is unknown. Probably you can Google it, and wish you good luck.

The Map and Satellite images in Google Maps is off by a couple of meters, but I don't think it should be off that much. This seems to be a couple hundred meters.
Depending on how you acquired your position will dictate what position you get. From what I understand, these are the three levels of acquisition.
GPS
Network
WIFI
GPS and Network are determined by triangulation. GPS being the most accurate.
WIFI is done using a "whois", an address is acquired and then geocoded, being completely inaccurate at times.
Some phones say they are GPS, but they are most likely Pseudo-GPS like the iPhone 1.