by Liana Lehua
I am loving the addition of the “Current Location” feature in Google Maps. I live in a large city and have had great success in locator accuracy. It’s when I travel that this feature has already proven useful.
When I am away from home and have a rented car that I have to park in an unfamiliar place, I use locator to pinpoint where I park. When I have to get back to my car after a day of walking around and sightseeing, for example, I can get my new location and map to my last “dropped pin”. No looking at my buddy and asking, “Dude! Where’s my car?”
How are you using locator?
Oh. I forgot to mention. Unlike GPS, I don’t have to be standing outside to use it.
I’m very sorry to say that I find it very inaccurate for north-west metro-Boston. I’m wondering how accurate it is for Andy. I had such high hopes. I suppose it’s possible that I commonly use a tower that’s new or not in the database.
I’ve never been circled by Google’s great blue. That said, I love the pin drop feature and many I’ve shoed the update to see grossly over-impressed with the page-like roll-back effect.
Andy always complained about not being able to go from direction mode to search mode. I after had the same frustration but not any more. It’s a clear toggle now.
For those that have jailbroken phones, you can get “Locate Me” from the Installer.app to do the same exact thing as this feature. It works very well and is lightning fast.
Tech Show dude - “Locate Me” isn’t quite the same thing. It only uses cell towers. iPhone Google Maps supposedly also uses a large database of wifi hotspots to supplement the cell towers. One would assume that that gives Apple’s offering a better chance at being accurate.
Locate Me is somewhat accurate in my Los Angeles suburban neighborhood. It gets me in the vicinity of where I am on testing, but it’s always a couple of blocks to 1/2 mile away. That seems in line with what Google was offering on other cell phones prior to the Apple release.
I’m not quite ready to un-jailbreak, but if and when I do, I will compare the two for accuracy.
I was amazed to see the accuracy of the location feature in pinpointing my home. I have no cell service here and there’s no way my Airport base station has been mapped by someone driving around. Nonetheless, the location found for me was probably 400 feet for my actual location. I expected miles away or worse. I’d love to know how it really was done!
DMG - why do you say “there’s no way my Airport base station has been mapped by someone driving around”?
You’d be surprised at how many people, both commercial and hobby oriented, are driving around mapping hot spots. Unless you’re on private land with no public access anywhere within the extreme range of wifi sniffers, chances are someone’s mapped you.
Most of the equipment out there will find you even if you have SSID broadcasting turned off.
The Locate Me feature works accurately in my neighborhood (located in the Midwest), but go about a mile or so north, it shows me about 1/2 mile to the west of where I actually am (by way of the center of the target. The target can cover a 2-4 mile area in some locations when I try it and yet still be off by a considerable distance (a mile or more) while trying it in different counties around where I live. But there are times the feature will be fairly accurate, but not consistently that I would feel comfortable with it showing me where I was if I was in the middle of PODUNK USA. Maybe there aren’t enough towers triangulating the locations in some areas and this creates the confusion on the phones location.
I think people might be missing the point of this feature. It’s not designed to replace GPS (although it works better than GPS in some cases) - it’s designed to give you a rough idea of your location so you can plot your way from point A to B.
In my San Francisco condo, the feature is accurate to within 100 feet. In my home at Gig Harbor, WA near Seattle, the Locate Me feature was off by a few blocks. But in either case, it was close enough that if I needed directions, I’d be able to get there.
It works remarkably well for most people. I personally am glad Apple did this rather than install a battery-hungry GPS in the phone. Now if we could only cut and paste the results
Scott - I don’t disagree that this is better than a battery hungry GPS. But I also think that unless it reliably gets you within a couple of hundred feet of where you really are, what’s the point?
For “directions”, the best locate me tool is a pair of eyes and the street sign on the corner. Much more consistently reliable than the randomness of accuracy you get with this cell/wifi triangulation business.
Okay, I can think of one scenario where this is kind of useful. I’m in a part of town I am not familiar with and want to find a Starbucks and I’m too lazy to type in the address I am at in Google Maps. This feature will pull up the general area on the map to shorten the search.
Hardly a feature that will make people say “oh, I need an iPhone”, and a lame enough feature to make those who want GPS, regardless of the battery drain, say “iPhone’s not for me”.
I won’t complain about any functionality they can add to my device, but this is one I just can’t get excited about, not even slightly.
Ditto on the cut and paste - the most frustrating missing feature in my mind.
DL the point is that all I need in a strange place is an idea where I am at - what direction I need to go - and where the major freeways are and I can figure it out. In the woods all I need to know is where I am relative to a body of water or road.
In most cases, neither GPS or Locate Me is required. Look up at the street sign, type in your address and go. Which is why I thought adding GPS was a rediculous idea. Since this doesn’t add another component, additional weight, additional expense or drain battery, it’s the perfect middle ground. Most everyone I’ve spoken with is pretty happy with it.
Scott says: I think people might be missing the point of this feature. It’s not designed to replace GPS (although it works better than GPS in some cases) - it’s designed to give you a rough idea of your location so you can plot your way from point A to B.
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I realize it is not GPS and I don’t expect Locate Me to be that exact, by showing I am within a few feet of where I actually am.
What I do expect is for it to at least be within blocks, a 1/2 mile, or maybe within the same mile section of where I am, not show me as up to 2 miles away from where I actually am located with the phone at. That is not exactly what I would consider a basic rough idea
Steve your experience is not in any way typical. If you are in an area with few mapped wifi spots then I can see why this might happen. Maybe you should buy an N95. That way, you can enjoy three hour battery life, and five minute waits for the GPS to acquire satellites - then you can look at the substandard map as long as of course you’re standing outside.
I wrote:
“…there’s no way my Airport base station has been mapped by someone driving around”?
DistortedLoop replied:
“Unless you’re on private land with no public access anywhere within the extreme range of wifi sniffers, chances are someone’s mapped you.”
Indeed I am located on private land and a considerable distance from a street. I suppose the question is what is the “extreme
range of wifi sniffers” and whether one could pick up my 802.11g airport base station. If the range were at least 1/4 mile then it would be possible.