iPhone 14 Pro Models Feature Improved GPS Accuracy

[cicalinarrot]

But you no longer have to (and are completely unable to) deal with a SIM card! Isn’t that fantastic news?!

It’s going to take me a while to get over the way they presented that one. I don’t “have to” deal with a SIM card on my 13 Pro, but I *can* and taking that away from me is *not* an upgrade.

They didn’t even make any excuses about bigger battery or more water resistance. The best they could come up with is implying that we’re all too stupid and clumsy to handle SIM cards so they’re going to take that problem out of our hands.

Frankly, I hate that sim cards still exist, they are an incredibly outdated standard. I’ve repaired phones and in recent iPhones, they take almost as much room as a third of the motherboard, they are mechanically stressed and the first place water comes in.
But the whole idea of e-sim is even dumber. They should just work like a regular account does, with some increased security. So I hope the e-sim is a step in the wrong direction that may, one day, head us to change again to the right one.
Still, a very apple-like decision, consumer never gets the last word.

 

[blurryautopilot]

Great upgrade. Navigating in certain cities was basically unusable before even always owning the latest and greatest flagship iphone or watch. I’ve had so many instances, even recently, where I can stand right next to someone with the same exact phone and our phones will tell us we are standing in different locations and give us different walking directions. Not talking about some middle of nowhere podunk town either. Right in the heart of Manhattan. Getting walking directions in the city was nightmarish before this. It was better to just look at the street signs to know where you were.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Apple friend. It has everything to do with tall buildings not being very good at passing very faint RF signals.

New York City: GPS Running Accuracy Test Rabbit Hole

Two weeks ago I was in NYC for a slew of events, product pickups, and meetings. Most of which you’ve heard about by now. Be it the DJI Mavic 2 launch, the Garmin Vivosmart 4 announcement, or the Fitbit Charge

www.dcrainmaker.com

 

[Futurix]

"Pre-operational" means unavailable?

It means not available worldwide yet.

Reporting errors in Apple Maps is nearly useless. I’ve had it take months before even getting acknowledgement of something I reported. I’ve reported things several times and get notifications that they have been corrected only to go check and see nothing changed.

I reported changes in my German village and everything was updated within a month.

 

[Frixos]

Reporting errors in Apple Maps is nearly useless. I’ve had it take months before even getting acknowledgement of something I reported. I’ve reported things several times and get notifications that they have been corrected only to go check and see nothing changed.

I have had the same thing! I report, they say they’ve updated it, but months later and it’s still not fixed.

 

[falkon-engine]

I bet your 6GB iPhone pro max is much better than my 4 GB iPhone Pro. Bothers me that usually if a pause a YT video to take a picture, the YT app refreshes.

That sometimes still happens on the 6 GB iPhone Pro Max! Not as frequent as on the 4 GB models, but it still happens much more frequently than on the 8 GB iPad Pro (which almost never has any forced app reloads)!

I'm basing my request for 8 GB on the iPhone Pro off of the experience with the iPad Pro.

 

[Frixos]

That sometimes still happens on the 6 GB iPhone Pro Max! Not as frequent as on the 4 GB models, but it still happens much more frequently than on the 8 GB iPad Pro (which almost never has any forced app reloads)!

I'm basing my request for 8 GB on the iPhone Pro off of the experience with the iPad Pro.

Wow, that’s disappointing.

8GB RAM, 256GB base, USB-C, on iPhone 15 pro, and I’ll buy it in a heartbeat!

 

[macsplusmacs]

Sure…family members. Are you one of those people stalking someone that ruined AirTags for the rest of us?

Dude. My father-in-law, who insists on driving still, got lost going to home depot. We found him on Find My immediately after he called, scared, and we drove out to him, I drove his car back, and he got a ride home from my girlfriend.

Maybe you were joking, sad that people's minds go to stalking, though.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Mine works. Maybe your dash mount is anomalous. Try it in your hand pointing the camera end toward the front of the car.

I…ok. Thanks Steve. I’ll avoid holding it in that way.

 

[tobybrut]

Frankly, I hate that sim cards still exist, they are an incredibly outdated standard. I’ve repaired phones and in recent iPhones, they take almost as much room as a third of the motherboard, they are mechanically stressed and the first place water comes in.
But the whole idea of e-sim is even dumber. They should just work like a regular account does, with some increased security. So I hope the e-sim is a step in the wrong direction that may, one day, head us to change again to the right one.
Still, a very apple-like decision, consumer never gets the last word.

SIM cards are a result of Qualcomm losing the 4G race. Up through 3G, there were two standards, one built on Europe's GSM and one built on Qualcomm's CDMA standard. Qualcomm had the support of Verizon and Sprint while GSM had the support of AT&T. When 4G came around, there was competition between Qualcomm's UMB and Europe's LTE. What won the day for LTE was Verizon being bought out by the French, who championed LTE. Qualcomm's biggest supporter was swallowed up and LTE won by default. The irony is that Qualcomm is still the largest supplier of LTE chipsets, despite having "lost" the 4G war.

Qualcomm's CDMA standards did not use SIM cards. If UMB had won, our phones wouldn't have any SIM, eSIM or regular tray version.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Frankly, I hate that sim cards still exist, they are an incredibly outdated standard. I’ve repaired phones and in recent iPhones, they take almost as much room as a third of the motherboard, they are mechanically stressed and the first place water comes in.
But the whole idea of e-sim is even dumber. They should just work like a regular account does, with some increased security. So I hope the e-sim is a step in the wrong direction that may, one day, head us to change again to the right one.
Still, a very apple-like decision, consumer never gets the last word.

Yes, I agree completely, thank you. I do like eSIM. Apple could have just said what you said about space and water ingress, and then gone on to explain what they’ve done to make it so that I, a person with a data SIM provided by work in my iPhone right now, might *actually* not *HAVE* to deal with that SIM card anymore.

But oh wait, yes I do *have* to deal with it, but now I get talked down to by Apple for doing so.

eSIM is no more ready now than true wireless earbuds were when Apple told us we no longer need the headphone jack and therefore will no longer be allowed to use it. Probably even less ready.

And the fact that they are only forcing this on US users makes it even more transparent that their excuses are just that, and that this is simply a power play to force US operators to use eSIM.

If the operators did actually make it easy to use eSIM that would be one thing. But they don’t, and this just puts more power in their hands, and anything that gives these telcos even more power over everyone is unquestionably a bad thing.

 

[Antknee]

Did this make the keynote? I didn't get to watch the whole thing, but am surprised I didn't hear about this on that day - I would think this would be a great selling point. Unless Apple thought it would take away from the Apple Watch ultra exclusivity?

 

[PixelsMaster]

Did this make the keynote? I didn't get to watch the whole thing, but am surprised I didn't hear about this on that day - I would think this would be a great selling point. Unless Apple thought it would take away from the Apple Watch ultra exclusivity?

I only remember them highlighting this with the Watch Ultra as well.

 

[DaphneDiane]

can Google Maps take advantage of this new feature?

I don't mind using Apple Maps, but it's been over a year and Apple Maps still doesn't show my home or half of my street.(new built homes.... the builder and everybody on my street have been sending reports to Apple on a regular basis)

Have you tried sending the updates to TomTom, OpenStreetMap, or other upstream sources? Apple uses 3rd parties for sourcing map data, see Apple Map acknowledgements. A street intersection got removed near me took a while (years) for both Apple Maps and Google Waze to notice it was gone even after several submissions, was a pain because they would keep trying to route me down it. I eventually submitted it to openstreetmap and Apple Maps updated shortly after, though don't know if that was a coincidence.

 

[falkon-engine]

8GB RAM, 256GB base, USB-C, on iPhone 15 pro, and I’ll buy it in a heartbeat!

Yes, at that point it's just "take my money" lol.

 

[hagar]

Problem is Apple Maps is **** in my country and at least 85% of the world.

But that’s totally irrelevant for this feature as this will also improve Waze, Google Maps and any other app that requests your location.

 

[ELman]

I hope the standard 14 has the same 5G radio as the Pro. It will be disappointing if Apple starts separating the two models to this point.

 

[TheMountainLife]

Why? What are you doing that runs out of RAM?

I'm not OP but I could have a Teams or Discord call running in the background and the phone will suspend the app if I go to pull up an email or look up something in Safari if I don't return immediately. Another example is apps needing to be in the foreground if you're downloading content for offline viewing. I do this often with Plex, Spotify and Youtube. Its silly that I can't allow the screen to go to sleep or respond to a message because my download will be suspended.

iOS is too aggressive with its ram priority and either needs to add more of give an option to sacrifice performance and battery in order to multitask. I have the 13PM 1TB. With all the extra space I wish it would use part of the storage as swap memory like on Mac OS or page file on Windows.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I'm not OP but I could have a Teams or Discord call running in the background and the phone will suspend the app if I go to pull up an email or look up something in Safari if I don't return immediately. Another example is apps needing to be in the foreground if you're downloading content for offline viewing. I do this often with Plex, Spotify and Youtube. Its silly that I can't allow the screen to go to sleep or respond to a message because my download will be suspended.

iOS is too aggressive with its ram priority and either needs to add more of give an option to sacrifice performance and battery in order to multitask. I have the 13PM 1TB. With all the extra space I wish it would use part of the storage as swap memory like on Mac OS or page file on Windows.

At the end there you get to why I ask the question. Given that designers have been paging to (now fast) memory for many years, to me it would seem most probable that OS issues are more likely than simply inadequate RAM. But certainly what you describe does sound like the way inadequate RAM presents.

 

[kyjaotkb]

SIM cards are a result of Qualcomm losing the 4G race. Up through 3G, there were two standards, one built on Europe's GSM and one built on Qualcomm's CDMA standard. Qualcomm had the support of Verizon and Sprint while GSM had the support of AT&T. When 4G came around, there was competition between Qualcomm's UMB and Europe's LTE. What won the day for LTE was Verizon being bought out by the French, who championed LTE. Qualcomm's biggest supporter was swallowed up and LTE won by default. The irony is that Qualcomm is still the largest supplier of LTE chipsets, despite having "lost" the 4G war.

Qualcomm's CDMA standards did not use SIM cards. If UMB had won, our phones wouldn't have any SIM, eSIM or regular tray version.

Verizon being bought out by the French? Do you mean the British company Vodafone?

 

[tobybrut]

Verizon being bought out by the French? Do you mean the British company Vodafone?

Oops, you're right. Vodafone is UK-based. Thanks!

 

[stainless]

I wonder how the eSim is going to work for international travel!? In China you can’t just get an eSim, that requires paperwork vs getting a physical Sim and that’s also why the Chinese version of the iPhone 14 has an Sim slot!

 

[abhibeckert]

Kind of obvious that GPS doesn't work as well in cities with high buildings. But apart from that: Is it really easier to look at a phone in your hand than on a street sign? In - of all cities in the world - Manhattan, where streets are arranged in a grid and named chronologically. Did I just fall for some excellent trolling or can't some people find their own behind without a maps-app?

First of all, the vast majority of people in the world are not in Manhattan.

Also - there's a handy street sign about 10 paces from where I'm sitting at my desk as I type this... but I can't read it, because there's a pesky building wall in between my desk and the sign. And because of dumb kids in this neighbourhood (school a block from here), it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone has climbed up there and rotated the cluster of signs by 90 degrees.

So yes, it is easier and more reliable to look at a map on my phone than trudge down a flight of stairs, out the door, and look for a sign.

The wall also blocks GPS, but wifi positioning is able to pinpoint my location within a hundred feet or so. It would be convenient to have more accurate positioning than that. And when the power goes out to the city block, wifi location tracking goes down too.

It sounds like this new GPS frequency doesn't cost anything to use, so why not use it?

 

[JustSomebody12]

Can we expect lower battery consumption when using GPS?

Not necessarily: consumption may be lower because it requires less time to locate the user, but on-device computation should be higher.

 

[abhibeckert]

It means not available worldwide yet.


I reported changes in my German village and everything was updated within a month.

Same here in Australia.

 

[stylinexpat]

They have had these in Asia on Asian smartphones for years now 😳🤦‍♂️🙈 7 years later they will also offer us x50 and x100 zoom that Huawei offered like 6 years ago on their smartphones