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GPS Problems - iPhone 7 or iOS10?

AlpineDad said:
I only received my iPhone 7 plus yesterday, but have been using Waze to get me through Ottawa's nightmare rush hour traffic without any issues both last night and this morning.

Good luck solving this issue.
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Just because it worked those two times doesn't mean you don't have the same issue. It's a intermittent issue. Sometimes GPS works just fine, sometimes it doesn't.
[doublepost=1475601953][/doublepost]I'm going to advise everyone to contact Apple Chat Support and go through any of the troubleshooting steps that you haven't done with them yet. This will just allow you to be self assured that you have completed all troubleshooting. Once you have done all and let them know this, they will have you send in diagnostic files from your phone to them so that the engineering department can start finding a fix for this issue. I winded up being transferred to a SENIOR chat advisor who told me to send him a screenshot of whenever I would have this issue. He is going to send those over to engineering for me as well.

I think the key here is to let apple know what is happening to your gps in your phone. Because the more they are aware of this issue and get diagnostic reports from everyone, the faster this issue will be resolved.

I'm an Uber driver, so I just so happen to see how often this bug happens on a more consistent basis than your average driver. For the ones who think you don't have this issue, 9 times out of 10 you do. It's just that it's intermittent problem, so sometimes of some of my trips it gets me around town just fine no problem! Then some trips within that same day, it'll tell me how to get to my destination, but the directions will asssume I'm 2-4 streets in another direction. A work around this issue is to start GPS while sitting still. From there just read the written directions in GoogleMaps. Somewhere within there they may be off 2-4 streets, but if you know what street you're on just follow the written directions from there and eventually you'll be back on track. You'll just be doing it the old fashioned way. Looking a written directions! LoL!
 
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I'm having the same issues with the iPhone 7, 128GB, Silver on Sprint. Apple has replaced it twice in the first week, once as a retail replacement, once as an AppleCare replacement.
For the first and third phones I both set the phone up as new and also set it up with an iCloud restore.
'Factory' restoring from iTunes had no effect.
Trying the iOS 10.1 beta actually made things worse for the short time that I was using it.

The control for everything I have below was an iPhone 6s, 128GB, Gold on Sprint that performed nominally in the same situations and instances that I'll cover below. I have contacted AppleCare about this and we have gotten to the step of sending the diagnostic logs to the Apple Engineers and I should hear back soon™.

There is also an issue with the Bluetooth where it sometimes just won't connect to devices (August Smart Lock in this case.) and also won't let devices such as my car connect to it. After some fighting, however, it works. I'm only adding this information about bluetooth in the event it is also an issue that is plaguing people.
In the case of the August Smart Lock 2nd gen, I am able to deliver commands via HomeKit using Siri or HomeKit apps to the lock (which exclusively operates over bluetooth) in any circumstance, only because I have a nearby AppleTV that is properly set up to be a HomeKit hub. I can also enter via an August Keypad that has a direct exclusive bluetooth connection to the lock. These two other methods are my control. The August App, which does not use the HomeKit protocol for its connection to the lock and I use to control the automatic unlocking feature upon arrival home either does not connect to the lock or takes up to 90 seconds after ingressing the house through the use of the August Keypad. However, this does not seem to effect my Apple Watch as it seems to actually have a more reliable connection than my 6S, oddly enough.
With the issue with my car, my 6S would allow the car to connect to it with about a 95% chance of success. My 7's all had a 30-60% chance of success with a 90% chance of success on the second try when done manually. These are all approximations.
This makes me think that there is something also going on with the Bluetooth software for the phone which may be linked to the GPS issue. Wi-Fi has been a little spotty here and there, but I haven't noticed it enough to try to come up with any results.
Again, I'm including this as a, 'Hey, are you guys having this issue too?' sort of thing.
Paragraph TL;DL, Bluetooth is screwy for me too, how 'bout you?

Here's what's happening to me for GPS; I'll be driving down the road and randomly the blue location puck in Apple Maps will stop traveling and will start drifting perspectively east and west (not true east-west, just from the location where it dropped off) from the location where it lost its fix. I have the app 'GPS Status' by PocketGPSWorld.com and it has been super useful for diagnosing the GPS fix range. I'm not sure, however, if it is still available on the App Store because it seems to be only optimized for iPhone 4S and before.
This issue permeates into all other location services. I have tested it with Pokemon Go and Google Maps primarily, but seems to also effect things like the Philips Hue app for automatic light control.

ADDITIONALLY, this issue seems to occur when connected to an Automatic 2nd Gen (see Automatic.com). The connection doesn't seem, however, to effect the frequency or severity of the issue. The 2nd Gen adapter connects over Bluetooth and I think it is also able to communicate the GPS status over Bluetooth as there are devices that my company has used that transmit sub 1m GPS location information to iOS devices using Bluetooth with no setup aside from standard bluetooth pairing. While I have not tested this with a Trimble or anything with my phone and has only used this for iPads, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Automatic is also capable of this functionality.

Because this problem seems to exist even with the potential situation of a GPS assist from a Bluetooth device, my thoughts are that this is an A-GPS / Wi-Fi A-GPS issue with primarily CDMA iPhone 7/+'s.

To help back this up I have noticed that my phone has the issue in the same frequency whether or not the Wi-Fi is enabled or disabled. However, when the Wi-Fi is disabled the severity seems to be much higher. When the Wi-Fi is enabled on the phone normally the phone is able to get a 10-25m fix just by knowing the BSSID's of nearby Wi-Fi access points and their signal strength. The behavior exhibited when Wi-Fi is enabled on the phone and it loses 'signal' is as if it is using Wi-Fi A-GPS to eventually re-triangulate, not use true GPS or normal A-GPS to get a proper fix.
This is how Wi-Fi only iPads and iPods are able to get any location services at all.

This leads me to believe that the issue is that iOS 10.0.2 has issues with an unknown cause where it prefers Wi-Fi A-GPS on occasion when standard GPS or A-GPS are available. I could probably write some more on this, but its late and I feel as if this is more than thurough.
 
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I am sure the issue with dropped 4G on Three UK is linked to the GPS problem some people on here are getting. It is confirmed that the Verizon issue messes up the GPS and phone signal, so I am guessing the Three network is doing the same thing. I cant do a run on ismoothrun and export it to smashrun without it getting GPS errors and messing around with my miles per hour.
 
purpleparrotuk said:
Thanks. Do my apps stay on if I upgrade and if I revert back do my apps stay the on? The reason I ask is that I have banking apps and Apple Pay setup and I don't want to have to keep registering them.
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An upgrade should be seamless but I would always recommend a backup Ideally to both icloud and iTunes especially if unfamiliar with betas.

I've never reverted.. It's more complicated and you will effectively do a restore and lose apple pay setup afaik

If you're concerned you can wait... Who knows if the update will be days or weeks. M inclined to think apple will want to get out this fix soon?
 
planetf1 said:
An upgrade should be seamless but I would always recommend a backup Ideally to both icloud and iTunes especially if unfamiliar with betas.

I've never reverted.. It's more complicated and you will effectively do a restore and lose apple pay setup afaik

If you're concerned you can wait... Who knows if the update will be days or weeks. M inclined to think apple will want to get out this fix soon?
Click to expand...

Done this tonight thanks. Looks like it hasn't fixed it though according to 4G thread :-(
 
Sandrat954 said:
I've been having the same issue with my iPhone 7. Honestly, I think it's an iOS 10 issue. Some iPhone 6 users who updated to iOS 10 are having the same issues as well. I'm hoping Apple puts out a software update for this because I so don't want to go to the Apple store lol. I'm an Uber driver so I see it happening all day long. It'll work sometimes, sometimes no. But it will put you in the area of where you are. So if you just read the written directions in Google Maps, you'll realize where you are and just follow the directions from there. Apple support set me up a reservation at the apple store but I missed it. I'm chatting to them now and they are trying to walk me through even more troubleshooting that I know won't work lol.
[doublepost=1475550832][/doublepost]
^^It's official! There is a batch of phones that have this problem. This person is in the UK! Most of everyone else is in USA
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I had this and the LTE no network issue and updated to 10.1 beta 2 and the carrier file is 26 and i now have no issues. I drove 7 hours from NC to DC with full connection and no GPS dropout issues. Unlike the drive down where i was out for almost 1/2 of the way.
 
I was just checking the forums to see if anyone else was having GPS problems. My 256GB AT&T 7+ was fine on a two day road trip (Waze mostly) but yesterday it kept putting me in the middle of the Pacific Ocean a few thousand miles from my actual location. Every map app I checked (Google, Garmin, Navigon, Gaia)would show the same thing. Interestingly non-map apps I checked (like Wunderground) would have the location correct. This was only happening in an area with no cell coverage. I tried restarts, sometimes that would briefly fix it, sometimes not, sometimes it would recover on its own.

Edit: screen capture of photos tagged out in the Pacific Ocean.
[doublepost=1475853961][/doublepost]I just checked the places photo map on my wife's 6+ (iOS 10 also) since she took photos in many of the same places. None of hers are out in the ocean. If it's software, it's at least related to the new hardware. (For the sake of completeness, we also had two other GPS units in the car and their tracks show no unusual deviations -- no GPS outages.)
 

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I've just been to the Apple Store as I noticed that my iPhone 7 compass was misaligned (whilst driving east I was apparently driving north). The genius in the store went out back and came back saying that he tried 5 devices out back and they all pointed in different directions, so he couldn't do much apart from escalate it.... I'm actually on holiday in FL, so I'll wait until I'm back in the UK and will try the Apple Store there. I guess could either be hardware, or the software isn't interpreting the inputs correctly.
 
After a few more days in the middle of nowhere (vacation in southern Utah), I found that this always started happening when I was in areas with no cell coverage. No cell coverage = no GPS about half the time. Actually the GPS had three states: (1) normal position, (2) lat correct but long way off, (3) no gps position at all. My collection of photos geotagged in the pacific ocean grows! I also noticed that after long periods in areas with no cell coverage, I had to go into airplane mode and back to get coverage when I returned. I noticed this after driving out of a canyon, facing a cell tower, and my phone still saying there was no coverage. Airplane mode on and off and I had 5 bars of LTE.
 
Markarian421 said:
After a few more days in the middle of nowhere (vacation in southern Utah), I found that this always started happening when I was in areas with no cell coverage. No cell coverage = no GPS about half the time. Actually the GPS had three states: (1) normal position, (2) lat correct but long way off, (3) no gps position at all. My collection of photos geotagged in the pacific ocean grows! I also noticed that after long periods in areas with no cell coverage, I had to go into airplane mode and back to get coverage when I returned. I noticed this after driving out of a canyon, facing a cell tower, and my phone still saying there was no coverage. Airplane mode on and off and I had 5 bars of LTE.
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Phones use a GPS augmentation system that relies on data. GPS isn't as simple as getting time and location from 4 satellites, a GPS device must obtain full constellation emphemeris data along with some other info like almanac data and vehicle state of health.

Typically a phone will use data connection to quickly download this information and get a location lock, even with spotty signal. If there is no data connection your phone has to get all this information from the satellite. The data rate of the signal is very low, and if you have a potty signal every time you lose signal the device has to start over. This can lead to never getting a location lock.

It should also be noted that emphemeris data is only valid for a certain amount of time. It would make sense if this was a carrier/data issue where GPS will work fine while emphemeris data is valid but once it needs to be refreshed something could be going on preventing it happening over data.
 
freeskier93 said:
It would make sense if this was a carrier/data issue where GPS will work fine while emphemeris data is valid but once it needs to be refreshed something could be going on preventing it happening over data.
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Every previous iPhone I've had worked fine in the same situation. Apps like Gaia rely on it. My wife's 6+ and a couple Android phones in the car worked fine while my iPhone 7+ was saying I was in the Pacific Ocean instead of Utah. And the Garmin and Delorme GPS units we had along had no problem either.
 
purpleparrotuk said:
I'm returning my phone because if this. Can't use running apps without my mileage being a mile out compared to my hubby's iPhone 7. For the same route. My route map looks like I'm drunk.
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I've been using various iPhones to map runs and walks for years. I have always been satisfied with the accuracy of iOS Location Services, but since I upgraded to the iPhone 7 that's no longer true, as I've been having the same problem as you. The tracks are all over the place and seem to jump wildly about. The net result is the phone thinks I've traveled farther than I really have in a given amount of time. I opened a chat with Apple Support and they had me report the issue to the Maps team. Someone from that team is supposed to contact me via email so we'll see what they say...
 
riflesforwatie said:
I've been using various iPhones to map runs and walks for years. I have always been satisfied with the accuracy of iOS Location Services, but since I upgraded to the iPhone 7 that's no longer true, as I've been having the same problem as you. The tracks are all over the place and seem to jump wildly about. The net result is the phone thinks I've traveled farther than I really have in a given amount of time. I opened a chat with Apple Support and they had me report the issue to the Maps team. Someone from that team is supposed to contact me via email so we'll see what they say...
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That's what they told me too last week but did never come back to me.
But from what I read it should be a software issue. Hope 10.1 will fix it
 
updated mine to ios 10.1 beta 3 but the GPS issue is still there and the apple support is very useless, I am so dissappointed...
 
Apple support chat hasn't been all that helpful. They directed me to reset my phone to factory and set up as a new phone. Going to try this, anyone have any luck solving this issue?
 
Beta 2 fixed my issue.

Beta 3 - the 4g drop seems to happen only once a day to me rather than several times a day like it did before the beta...go figure
 
Hello

Having lurked here for some time I was very pleased to discover this thread, and have just joined to share my experience.

I've been experiencing some serious GPS/Location Services issues at times with my iPhone 7 when using Strava App to log cycle rides (both on road and off road). I've since found the errors are the same with other activity tracking apps, so it's not specific to Strava.

At the slightest compromise of GPS signal strength (e.g. the barest foliage masking part of the sky, a shallow valley, etc) things can start to go wildly wrong in two ways:
  1. Location Services position becomes very noisy, evident on apps which don't apply much filtering (eg. Strava 5.*.*), which some points even being contradictory to direction of travel. This can remain even when back in completely open ground.
  2. Location Services position sometimes becoming wild inaccurate, with position far away from actual location.
These screenshots of a 51 mile ride recorded as 58 miles (!) illustrate this. There are two tracks on the same path, one on the outward leg, the second the return.:

Passing small trees/bushes (the same trees/bushes that were there in each direction!)


Open terrain with light foliage in places:


Completely open view of sky:


These are scenarios which would not affect even a phone GPS receiver behaving normally (my iPhone 4 has never suffered, even on the same routes... I'm not describing very dense cover or being next to tall buildings).

I've visited my local Genius Bar where the phone was restored with factory files (apols if I'm missing the correct term!) but it's not fixed it. Being unsure if hardware or software, a replacement unit has been ordered for me.

My handset has some sentimental value since it was (through reservation booking chance) the very first handset out the Edinburgh, UK, store on release day ...so the notion of swapping it for an anonymously boxed handset-only unit to then discover the issue is software makes me hesitant how to proceed.

Jason
 
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