There are a lot of "lies" when it comes to location based ecosystem and permissioning on modern smart phones. 1. The fact is that some applications require any

There are a lot of "lies" when it comes to location based ecosystem and permissioning on modern smart phones. 1. The fact is that some applications require any access to the physical location(lat long) to function is a lie. For example many app just needs to know if you are at "home/work/fav place" without knowing the lat long of it e.g. function for Assistant based Reminders to be triggered. yet google or ios just make access to location a creepy sounding binary permission with a less creepy variation on preciseness of location access. In reality these should be two permissions. 2. The fact that some apps need background location access to function is a lie. Locations can remain on the phone only for many apps and this can be enforced as a permission or the OS. For example Navigation can be done by rendering the blue dot on a screen and that is technically doable at a privileged OS level service without exposing the lat long info to apps. The apps just need to provide tiles and relevant styles to render. Garmin like navigators have been doing it for years with hardware older than smartphones. Google lies to you when it says it needs your lat long to function. In reality its just needed to target you with ads. "Nearby" functionality could be enforced by sharing location in an encrypted fashion through P2P networks, though apple in fairness is doing better at privacy of location sharing; Google has none of this AFAIK and at worst they both retain the data(or atleast we have no confidence if they do or not). In reality background location access could be almost exclusively be made more private by being on device only for many apps. 3. The fact that Google/Apple are doing public good by providing location permission is a lie. Try turning off precise location in a Google supported Android, the experience is horrible. 4. Non PlayStore installations on AOSP by other providers could be somehow better for Location Privacy is a lie. I will never buy a samsung phone because they are very likely to install various Location, Wifi, BLE Service Providers for serving up data for Location or Location Inference which is lucrative to closed ecosystems of Apps by Big Tech(FAANG et. al). These services are more of black and back room deals that don't show up conspicuously in public discussions and undermine privacy. Better and more nuanced permissioning can really help a lot of location based apps to thrive. But Google and Apple have made anyone but their own apps have to choose between being creepy or not.