Yeah, I have come to the conclusion that the phone itself is misleading, and in fact completely wrong on its setting page, because when you go to Settings-->Security & location, you can see the setting for "Use wireless networks" under "My location sources". The secondary text says "Location determined by wi-fi and/or mobile networks", so it sure does look like it uses WiFi for positioning. But, alas, I have determined and agree that the phone does not use wifi for positioning..... Yet. I did find this interesting article: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/01/skyhook-location-sdk-for-android.ars indicating that the SkyHook SDK is now available for the android platform, so hopefully we will see some wifi based positioning apps in the near future.
On Feb 9, 9:58 pm, LB Coder <[email protected]> wrote: > The "Use wireless networks" function has nothing at all to do with wifi. It > works using cell tower locations. The wireless provider knows the > coordinates of all its towers, and therefore knows where you are (within a > certain non-impressive degree of accuracy) based on what tower you are > connected to. > > On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 6:08 PM, Skip <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I posted this early this morning and I still haven't seen it, so if it > > shows up twice, my apologies. Feel free to delete this one. > > > Does anyone think the wifi based location determination actually > > works? I guess I imagine that it would work like this. In the office > > where I work, there are a couple of wireless networks. And once I go > > inside the building with my phone,the GPS quality goes to crap since > > it is indoors--no surprise there. It can literally be off by BLOCKS, > > perhaps a half mile or more after I've been inside for a while. I > > would like to think that the phone would somehow know that, OK, I > > don't have a decent GPS signal, so let's see if I can get a decent > > wifi location. Sure, it's not going to tell me what room in the > > building I am in, which GPS would be able to do if there wasn't a roof > > on the building, but I am OK with that. I just want locale to know > > what building I am in. So now I have to make circles of about a half > > mile in radius (a mile in diameter) to be sure my location in locale > > doesn't look like I've left and gone to the default profile since the > > GPS accuracy decreases once you go inside a building and it starts > > looking like you are hopping all over the place. > > > So, where does the Wifi database live? How can I test it to see how > > accurate it is--both in terms of feet and inches and in terms of > > completeness of the database? Can I add new wifi access points to the > > database? How can I see, for instance, if my home access point is in > > the database? What happens if I move and take my access point with me? > > How do I update the database? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
