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POWhy is Geolocation in Mobile Safari way less accurate than the location in a native App?
 

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  1. POWhy is Geolocation in Mobile Safari way less accurate than the location in a native App?
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    <p>I'm using the Geolocation API (often referred to as "HTML5 Geolocation") to get the current position of the user. It is updated automatically if you move (checked every second). Primarily targeted (and currently tested) at iPhones, but should work on other mobile devices too. You can see an example here:</p> <p><a href="http://jsbin.com/uyoyey/" rel="nofollow">http://jsbin.com/uyoyey/</a></p> <p>The accuracy, which you can see in each line after the pipe, is around 3000 (meters) when I'm testing (outside). Which is quite bad obviously. The native Maps-App on my iPhone is way more precise. Approximately around 10 to 30 Meters (by looking at the map and where I am standing. Checking long- and lat-values in another app also gives more accurate numbers.</p> <p>When I now switch back to Safari the accuracy jumps to 10 to 30 but reverts back to 3000 after a second.</p> <p><strong>Questions:</strong></p> <ol> <li>Can you replicate this behavior?</li> <li>Why is the location so far off in the first place?</li> <li>Is there a difference between accessing GPS-Data via Geolocation and CLLocationManager (which I think is used by native apps)?</li> </ol> <p>Thanks!</p> <p><strong>Update 1:</strong><br> I'm getting more accurate results when testing on other places (larger city) but am now wondering if the native Apps also use Motion Tracking to update the location. Which would explain why the Maps App can track my steps while Safari doesn't recognize them.</p> <p><strong>Update 2 (03.08.11):</strong><br> In an email-conversation with <a href="http://quirksmode.org/" rel="nofollow">Peter-Paul Koch</a> he wrote that Safari mainly uses wifi for Geolocation to preserve battery life. Which may explain the differences.<br> Im still not entirely sure what is going on though.</p>
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    1. USSteffen Wenzel
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    1. COI've also made tests, described in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8257160/is-it-possible-to-get-maximal-gps-precision-on-mobile-browser/8259335#8259335 As for android, all seems that precision of geolocation is with premeditation limited. However, on Android you can use other browsers. On iPhone I've received higher precision with GPS than with WiFi, but still, I would research on restriction made on browser itself.
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      1. USDanubian Sailor
 

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