I’ve seen many people complaining about the GPS location being wrong. My situation is a bit different and should help the devs to debug this. For the record, I am using an esolutions S9 with v1.3 and I don’t use advanced privacy.
The problem is: I moved to a new city about 2+ months ago, and often when I open a maps application (google maps PWA, Magic Earth, organic maps) it shows the GPS location for my old house. If I wait it will eventually find my correct location.
At first, I thought that the device must have a “default home” location that is used before the GPS gets a signal. I figured that if this were the case, the default value would be reset after a week, but 2+ months after my move, I still often get the GPS showing my old home.
Then I thought: Maybe they are using some kind of wifi triangulation, and it is using the old known address of my router before I moved. However, I really don’t think that /e/ uses wifi triangulation, and if they did, where are they getting their data from?
What is unusual about your question is that you are suggesting different apps, google maps PWA, Magic Earth, organic maps are all getting the wrong answer.
Without going into the conversation too much did you try the app GPSTest.
If the device has a GPS hardware issue I can imagine the software coming up with a best “first guess” assuming “live data” will arrive soon. Mobile carrier triangulation is certainly a significant part of the equation, in one #gps thread a lack of fix was actually put down to the carrier: Location doesn't work later modified to: Fix to not working location
In my case GPSTest never gives better than an “amber” fix. In this case, with Magic Earth, I expect that the gps data is given a relatively low priority perhaps until verified. I think I always found the device comes good in 24 to 48 hours of active outside use, so this seems different from your question.
I was having inconsistent locations showing up when using find-my-device. Usually about 1 km away. I checked off all the settings in MicroG Location except Use Nominatim (I figured this had little to do with the problem) and Use /e/OS’s location System. When I did this the FMD app has been working fine. So, thanks for the advice.
One thing I found out when testing the app is it even reports the phone’s location when Fake Geolocation is turned on. So, if I ever lose the phone this will be one primary method to find its location.
/e/os used to rely on Mozilla location service, now it’s BeaconDB. What you could try is to install neostumbler and contribute in your area - i.e. activing scan and wait for GPS fix to come, then upload your report, that may overwrite your wifi location after a couple of days. I’m not sure this case is fully covered as BeaconDB is still considered to be in a beta state. You could also check that your microg settings regarding location is set to BeaconDB - set to /e/os service at the bottom of the page, and to BeaconDB in the 3 dot menu at the top right of the page - if you are on latest release, that should be the case.
Hmm read again your post and you are on 1.3…I’m not sure you have access to those settings in this case.
I also noticed that in microg location settings, wifi locations can be stored in the device itself, worth trying to deactivate that setting or cleaning that storage…
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