[Talk-GB] Location: High accuracy mode on android

[Nick Whitelegg]

Hello Andy, thanks for this. To clarify... I was mapping out in an area of heathland in east Hampshire, mapping footpaths and tracks so hopefully it should be pure GPS. On the edits history it's labelled as "Longmoor Part 1" and "Longmoor Part 2" in case anyone does want to query it later.


Would have been mightily annoyed if I had to undo 6-odd hours of mapping as it was a very productive day!


Apparently this "feature" has been corrected in Android 7. Good!


Nick


________________________________
From: Andy Townsend <ajt1047 at gmail.com>
Sent: 09 October 2016 12:46:13
To: Nick Whitelegg; talk-gb at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Location: High accuracy mode on android

Short answer: Probably not.

Longer answer:

There are two bits to this. One is where your phone got its location from and the other is what you actually added to OSM.

Taking the first bit first, it would depend on where the app got its location from. If the app said that it uses Play Services if "high accuracy" is set (in the app), then you've got to assume that is what it is using. If you're in the middle of nowhere then that location is going to be based on GPS only. If you're in a town it'll use wifi hotspots that Google users have seen previously as well. The third component, cell site location, is unlikely to give you anything more useful than the other two (when I last looked at the accuracy of that in town, which was pre 4g, it was more than 500m, so not much use).

The second bit is I would expect dependant on a whole bunch of things - I use GPS traces, Bing imagery, OS Streetview in addition to my own recollection of what things actually looked like.

If you were recording a GPS trace in the centre of a town, using mostly local wifi hotspots for location, and converting that trace to a way in OSM without engaging brain, then it could be argued that Google's locations are getting into OSM. As you aren't doing that, I doubt that it can (notwithstanding that I'm not a lawyer, and I suspect that a lawyer could argue about anything if necessary).

It does depend on the app of course - I'm writing this on a phone that runs Android apps but doesn't support Play Services, but that's a rapidly diminishing segment of the market unless Amazon decides to head-butt that plate-glass window again or possibly Samsung thinks they need to break free of Google. It also depends on user input - for example MAPS.ME does use Google Play Services but does allow user placement of POIs? prior to saving.

From: Nick Whitelegg
Sent: Sunday, 9 October 2016 12:11
To: talk-gb at openstreetmap.org
Subject: [Talk-GB] Location: High accuracy mode on android


Hi, just wanted to check something. Unintentionally I had location on High accuracy mode on android when mapping last week... Annoyingly it sets it to this each time you turn location on... And the documentation says it uses Google location services. Will this violate any copyright? Hope not as it will mean deleting mapping from last week. Don't think it will but thought I'd best check.

Thanks, Nick


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