Quote:
Originally Posted by winmonewbie
So now my question is-if our phone DOES have a GPS chip does that factor into My Location? I dont think so, I think I've read that the service is Tower based. Could be wrong. AGPS has no effect on My Location for me, On or Off it works the same.
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My Location is an overloaded marketing term that has morphed into something that can mean any # of underlying technologies depending on who you are speaking to.
Google has a GeoLocation API that uses Cell Tower ID and optionally radio strength to figure out your rough location. They have this available for times when GPS isn't convenient and/or available. Getting the CellID and radio stength depends on APIs that the phone manufacturer and/or carrier need to make available. Some phones have it and others don't. Sometimes the carrier puts out an updated ROM with the necessary APIs. If your phone doesn't have these APIs then Google-based MyLocation won't work (it'll say unavailable) This is despite your phone potentially having full GPS and A-GPS available. The radio APIs are just something separate. Sometimes the stock ROMs don't have the APIs but some custom ROMs do. This leads to much confusion, especially when you throw in the fact that many people think MyLocation is using GPS/A-GPS. MyLocation can use GPS/A-GPS also if that is available. On WinMo, it is an option you select in the Google Maps popup menu. Depending on your version and settings, sometimes Google will do an initial less accurate location based on CellID then later when GPS kicks in, it will get a more accurate GPS location.
Also, the Google Gears API can also work with WiFi information and IP addresses to get rough location information, so sometimes that might be used.
Then there is the constant confusion people have with terminology where they think A-GPS means cell tower triangulation, it doesn't. A-GPS is using GPS satellite info plus some help from the network. That help could be getting the satellite location info or having the network do the location calculation or not using the network at all.
Actually probably all phones sold in the last couple of years have some form of A-GPS because it is required by E911. However not all phones/carriers expose the APIs to make it available to applications. More recently the phones have, in addition to exposing the A-GPS to applications, been making standalone hardware GPS functionality available as well.
There is also a separate A-FLT location API that some carriers have that actually is cell tower triangulation. Sprint has servers that do this, but only makes it available to developers or apps that are allowed to use their services. Sprint's MyFamily locater uses this functionality.
So with GPS, A-GPS, A-FLT, Google MyLocation, Google Gears GeoLocation, and now HTC location service (which sounds like it is based on Google APIs), throw in various APIs being available or unavailable, and different ROM versions, and you can see why discussing "MyLocation" can get so confusing.