Location services

[AmandaEK]

Hi everyone, newbie here so please bear with me...

I hope I'm not repeating this (I looked and couldn't find the answer on the first few pages.) Can someone give me a basic rundown of the different location services? Namely, Google Location Services, Standalone GPS Servies, and VZW Location Services. I use MapMyRun a lot and I'm assuming this uses GPS. Do I need Google and VZW for anything?

 

[dezymond]

Those basically let the company know where you're currently at. So if you google something, say a store, it searches for the one closest to you. GPS is well...GPS and if you give it permission to look it up through GPS it will pinpoint your exact location instead of the cell tower you're connected to (general area).

 

[dezymond]

And I pulled this off android developers website:

Knowing where the user is allows your application to be smarter and deliver better information to the user. When developing a location-aware application for Android, you can utilize GPS and Android's Network Location Provider to acquire the user location. Although GPS is most accurate, it only works outdoors, it quickly consumes battery power, and doesn't return the location as quickly as users want. Android's Network Location Provider determines user location using cell tower and Wi-Fi signals, providing location information in a way that works indoors and outdoors, responds faster, and uses less battery power. To obtain the user location in your application, you can use both GPS and the Network Location Provider, or just one.

 

[AmandaEK]

Interesting. So the cell tower is general, not exact, uses less battery. That's what I had with my evil blackberry and hated it. Thanks for the clarification!

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