Finding Your Location

BackCountry Navigator gets its location from GPS Satellites. Make sure this location method is enabled in settings.

It all starts when you choose My Location(Center) on the location menu. This menu comes when you choose the location button on the toolbar. 

What happens next is that the phone is searching for satellites to get location from. 

If interested, you can choose "Satellite View" from the location menu to see what is happening. 

What if it seems stuck on acquiring and never seems to get a location?

Check to see if you are outside. A good view of satellites. Sure sometimes it works at my house near a window, but it is unlikely to work at the mall or your workplace. 

But other apps seem to get a location when I'm inside?

Some other apps may pay attention to "network location". BackCountry Navigator is looking for a real GPS location. 

I'm in Airplane Mode? Does that make a difference?

It does on certain devices. Most notably the Motorola Droid and the Droid X, but also is reported on many Samsung Devices. IF you have this problem, install GPS Airtime (also made by our company). It may just take care of this for you. 

I was out in the wilderness and getting my location took over a minute. This is usually about ten seconds back in town. Is this normal?

Yes. This only happens the first time you get your GPS location. Subsequent fixes on the same day are faster. This is referred to as a Cold start. Out in the wilderness, you don't have the benefit of Assisted GPS from cell towers to get that fix faster.  

Is it possible my phone GPS just doesn't work without cell towers?

While its possible, and in fact the employees will tell you this for all cell phones, it is rarely if ever true. Your Android phone is extremely likely to get a GPS fix. 

With phones from major manufacturers, I have not had a report of a model that was not capable of GPS reception. There have been some individual units that were defective. If this is true, TAKE YOUR UNIT back to the store. This is the only way phone manufacturers will learn that we take GPS quality seriously. 

Will phones that used to work with GPS stop working on occassion?

Yes. While we don't know all of the causes, it is likely that phones get bad aGPS data and seem to be stuck with it. 

There are two things that have helped:

• Simply power down the phone and then power it up again. (Usually by holding down the power button). 
• Doing a 'GPS Reset' with an app like GPS Status. 

People have reported that their GPS started working again after taking one of these steps.