• escew@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    Last I checked airplane mode does not disable GPS as it is a passive service. The phone will track your movement and then send it all next time you connect.

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      You must know something I don’t.

      AFAIK, GPS works by fetching signals from satellites.

      If you disable your Bluetooth/wifi antenna, you won’t know your relative location to other devices. If you disable your cellular antenna, you won’t know your relative location to cell towers. I presume that you would need some of that data to know your position relative to satellites but maybe I’m missing something. Maybe it receives data from satellites directly? Seems unlikely

      • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yes, GPS works by measuring your distance from several GPS satellites (based on the timing of the signals they send). If a few distances are known, it narrows it down to a point (the satellite orbits are known so you know where they are at any time).

        I’ve owned several stand-alone GPS receivers before phones started to include the feature.

        You can download offline maps to phones so that you can navigate without any phone signal.