Raw GPS Data

Question

Created Oct ’21

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Hey Apple so I and my team is working on a product for blind people and it uses GPS coordinates for it to work correctly. But we are currently facing these issues

How do we access the raw GPS coordinates from the iphone in our app
Is there any patent or a reason why we cannot do that in IOS but do it in android?
If we can get access to the raw gps coordinates without any filtration on those values from apple sdk or ios it will really help us to get the accuracy up by a notch and affect the performance of the device as its for blind people and gps accuracy plays a very major role in that .
If we cannot get access to the raw gps coordinates how do we increase our gps accuracy?

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Answer 1

Claude31 OP

Oct ’21

How do we access the raw GPS coordinates from the iphone in our app

You can't get the raw values. CoreLocation builds a mix of signals, and does not provide raw data.

See authorised answer here (and follow the advice to also tag your post to Maps and Locations tag)

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/19121

If we cannot get access to the raw gps coordinates how do we increase our gps accuracy?

To get best accuracy, set to kCLLocationAccuracyBest. It is also advised to set activity to .fitness:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55551981/how-the-get-a-higher-gps-accuracy-in-ios-12

locationManager.desiredAccuracy = kCLLocationAccuracyBest
locationManager.activityType = .fitness

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Answer 2

Scott J OP

Oct ’21

I’m curious why you would expect to “get the accuracy up by a notch” above what Core Location considers the “best” it can do. Those kids at Apple are pretty smart. I bet they read the GPS module data sheet and everything. ;-)

As for why the API design philosophy is different from Android, I imagine an interaction something like this:

Question: “What is my location?”

Android: “Here's a mishmash of low level APIs you can try. They may not work consistently across our frustratingly fragmented hardware base and it may take longer to implement a robust solution to your problem but at least you get lots of options to try out.”

Apple: “Here’s your location.”

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