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Re: GPS/location and other background processing

 

I don't think that is quite the problem, GPS has got every chance to work, the problem is the starting time, I don't want it to start thinking about a location when I do something that needs one. I want it to already have sorted it out before I ask for it. The principal should be "don't make the human wait for stuff". There has to be some kind of event that starts it to get a fix prior to me doing something that requires a location, that could be a regular wakeup every x minutes, it could be that it starts looking when the phone gets woken up, or if the browser is started, or if the accelerometer indicates that the phone has stopped moving for a while, or something else. Whatever it is, I want it to have done it before I press the shutter on the camera, or open a web page with location services.

Alan.



On 29/02/16 21:12, Felipe De La Puente wrote:
I think that the weak link here is the GNSS assistance mechanism used in ubuntu.

Having a good assistance method the time to first fix should be within seconds or worst case a couple of minutes. Am I right?

If the system is able to achieve <1min time to first fix, then you don't need to give the last known position to the client apps anymore.

Now, let's say you are inside a building, then you need an alternative method to determine your location, like using visible cell towers or hotspots.

Best Regards,
Felipe.


On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 5:46 PM, Alan Pope <alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

    Hi Thomas,

    On 29 February 2016 at 15:35, Thomas Voß
    <thomas.voss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:thomas.voss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
    > On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 12:38 PM, Alan Bell <alanbell@xxxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:alanbell@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
    >> it isn't really about that, it is about providing less broken
    location data
    >> to applications that ask for it. The current situation is that
    if an
    >> application requests location data it gets given random
    coordinates of
    >> somewhere you may have been to in the last week or so.
    >
    > Hmmm, I'm surprised by that statement. The service hands out the
    last
    > known good location, together with a timestamp
    > and the accuracy aged out. If applications fail to handle the
    > respective data correctly, it is not the service at fault here.
    >

    I spent a week in Germany last week. At lunch time we wandered outside
    from the exhibition centre and opened HERE maps to find a nearby kebab
    shop (don't ask). Ogra pulled out his MX4 running rc-proposed and used
    HERE to find a local shop and navigate to it. Our destination seemed a
    ludicrous distance away from our current location, until we noticed
    the current location on the map was actually the hotel we left some 5
    hours previously. Cue a few moments of stabbing to refresh the app to
    make it realise we've moved (quite a bit as it happened).

    While this may be "Working As Designed", it's not "Working in a
    meaningfully useful way". Having a location which is "aged" by over
    half a working day is pretty useless on a mobile device. Other
    platforms don't do this (in my experience), neither should we, battery
    life be dammed, frankly. I want the map to show me where I am now, not
    where I ate breakfast sometime in the past.

    >> Then it thinks about
    >> refreshing the location and refining it over the next few
    minutes or so if
    >> the application is one that asks where you are again and again.
    If it could
    >> take a peek at the satellites every so often then it would
    enable several
    >> additional classes of application and would be less broken for
    things that
    >> only ask once.
    >>
    >
    > That's incorrect. The service keeps on delivering updates to
    > applications that have requested continuous location updates.

    Then there is a bug in the platform. The browser (in which HERE runs)
    is a default app and the location service is also pre-installed. There
    is an issue here which clearly need nailing as I'm certain we're not
    the only 3 people in the world to experience this.

    Cheers,
    --
    Alan Pope
    Community Manager

    Canonical - Ubuntu Engineering and Services
    +44 (0) 7973 620 164 <tel:%2B44%20%280%29%207973%20620%20164>
    alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
    http://ubuntu.com/

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