Google Maps Location Puzzle

Eagles1905

Hi all,

A mate and I attended a gig in London on Saturday evening - whilst messing around with google maps on the train home I had mobile data on (4G) and could see my live location travelling back down south between London and the Coast no issues. My mate had since ran out of mobile data so when I tried to track his location (via location sharing) he appear over 110 miles away in a park in Coventry!? Is this a default location for a device not connected to a 'mobile data' source?

Out of interest he has never been to Coventry and looking back on my movement history on google maps I had a few odd locations appear, some I have never been to either?

toshi

There are a couple of ways to determine your location with your smartphone.GPS, Wifi database, Cell database .

As your friend stopped the data, then I assume that your friend uses Wifi database as well as GPS? Then your friend did not get GPS signal well (Bad weather etc), then the location was decided with WIFI database.


Then if your friend used the WIFI at train, the WIFI location of the train was registered at Coventry, your friend's smartphone only picked up the location from the Wifi location database. So your friend was at Coventry! Does it make sense ?

When I went from London to Brussels with Eurostar, my location occasionally was pointed at PARIS GARE DU NORD lol.

Eagles1905

That actually makes a lot of sense, my home wifi hub seems to route all traffic via Leicester and I live down near the south coast. I was curious more than anything and it killed a few mins on a delayed train home! Thanks for getting back to me.

forgotmyname

Checking my home location sometimes shows as Scarborough, which is well over 100 miles away from my location.

Tried posting links to a spot in Spain for someone in another thread and it kept changing the location to Bristol which is nowhere near me also.

Another issue with google maps, try sending a link to someone, its hit and miss.

Lorian

His Location was not set to accurate mode (no GPS used) and Coventry was the break-out location of the train's Wifi, maybe.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Who cares, don't let this google track you!

toshi

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth wrote: »

Who cares, don't let this google track you!

Wow, I really love this kind of comment, that's why I always have to come back here:T. Actually you can use some Android devices without Google tracking Account (Google Play services) without scarifying daily use. If you like to, you can still use Google Apps without logging in, such as Google map, Youtube etc. as well)

In terms of location service, my Android devices does not use Google location services, instead they use Mozilla location service.

Instead of Google Play service, you can use a free and opensource alternative, microG.

The easiest way is to install microG for Lineageos to your Android device. The microG project is a free and open-source project for Propriety Google playservce alternative. The microG instllation used to be really messy, and complicated. (I needed to understand many things, including Android location service )

Good news is that installing microG for Lineageos is as easy as installing LineageOS, this is the out of the box experience.

Anybody who is familiar with CustomRom can install microG for Lineageos. Technically microG for Lineageos is much less resource hungry, i.e. older devices friendly as well.

References
https://location.services.mozilla.com/

https://lineage.microg.org/
https://microg.org/
https://www.lineageos.org/