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I'm just glad because that's going to end the longstanding misconception that phones are connected to satellites. They will finally be.
by copperx 4y ago
I'm just glad because that's going to end the longstanding misconception that phones are connected to satellites. They will finally be.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- moritzwarhier 4y agoI have never heard of this misconception, but fixing the notoriously unreliable mobile coverage by turning existing phones into "satellite (internet!) phones" sounds wild
- BurningFrog 4y agoPhones do receive data from GPS satellites.
- roywiggins 4y agoI've run into the reverse misconception, people think they need cell service for GPS to work.
- darkfirefly 4y agoI often experience very slow time to fix with cell service off (& having location off beforehand) - I believe this is due to Assisted GNSS/GPS which significantly improves the time for GPS to start working (the associated Wikipedia article states that ~1 minute often without it, and worst case ~12.5 minutes)
- roywiggins 4y agoYeah, assisted GPS is great. I remember ye olde GPS consumer receivers taking minutes at a time to find a location while modern phones are of course much better and a lot of it is down to having a network connection to help out. It got so much better so fast that it's easy to forget how janky it could be!
- MikusR 4y agoWifi only iPads and other tablets usually don't have GPS while the cellular versions do.
- fulafel 4y agoThis is half true, A-GPS makes it work much better.
- kzrdude 4y agoLocation service uses gps (and similar satellite networks), cell and wifi info combined, so they are kind of not wrong. But it's not needed for "GPS" but it's hard to cut through the layers for people?
- jillesvangurp 4y agoA phone connection does help for downloading all the data you need to interpret the GPS signals. It's called assisted GPS. Without a connection, it can take upto a few minutes for a GPS receiver to figure out where it is.
- bee_rider 4y agoYa know I am now realizing that I always assumed that I thought the link was phone -> tower -> satellite, and I’m just now realizing that that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. They are often off in the woods, though! Do some connect to satellites? Edit: apparently satellite backhaul is a thing but kinda rare.
- Cerium 4y agoI believe it is commom for the tower in this situation to have a point to point link to the another tower.
- toast0 4y agoBouncing off a geosynchronous satellite makes the latency awful, but it is an option. Fiber, copper, or point to point wireless are better options, though. Latency for bouncing off LEO satellites isn't too bad though.