Questions about GPS

The GPS feature on the AWS2 simply gives the watch latitude and longitude. There are lots of ways that device can use latitude and longitude. The two most common are activity tracking and mapping (or navigation). The AWS2 uses the GPS coordinates to track you during fitness to tell you speed and then later show you a map of where you were.

The other feature, mapping, requires that the device contain map data. If you are offline, then this must be stored locally. If you are on the Internet, it could pull the data down dynamically to display a map. To my knowledge, the AWS2 does not support mapping with GPS. But someone could produce an app that locally downloads and caches map data to the AWS2 for mapping.

 

No one has one to confirm for sure, so this is just a guess...

Maps on the watch would have a small amount of cached data stored. If you lost cellular data on your phone it would show you where you are on the map until you moved outside of the range of the cached data.

If you left your phone at home, travelled miles from where you last used maps then there'd be no cached data and so no possibility of maps working.

It's worth noting that google maps on iPhone allows maps to be stored on the phone to avoid data charges. It's possible they could update their app so the watch can do something similar.

 

"Stored locally" means that the watch itself has a file on it with map data. Then, when it gets location from the GPS chip, it could display a street map with a dot do indicate your location.

Currently, the phone does not even store map data locally (unless you have enabled caching in a map app). So, if you turn of WiFi and LTE, your phone cannot display a map. The watch is the same way today.

In the future, maybe someone will create an app for the watch that can download selected map data so that it could show your location without the phone nearby. But, map data are very large files, so you would have to either tell the watch app which region you want, or the memory in the watch would have to be many-fold larger than it is today to store global map data.

 

Are the hikes stored locally on the watch?

If so, that would make sense... you choose the hike you want and it pulls up the map for that hike. Then uses your GPS coordinates to help determine where you are based off the theorized locations on the local map.