We stayed in a place with no WIFI (if you can believe that). But then again, we did call my daughter from a wilderness lake at 10,250 feet. That was just because of the novelty and surprise of having a signal in so remote a spot. Do cell signals bounce off the ionosphere or something? We were actually in a bowl surrounded by high peaks.
I posted a question (2 actually) about GPS a while back and John actually informed me that the iphone did not have the ability to find a GPS position without access to a cell tower-ie not a true GPS chip.That is, the "chip" does not access a GPS satellite. What I concluded from the remarks of several people was that the iphone doesn't and the iPad does have a true GPS chip. My own results would seem to bear that out. My iPad always had access to a GPS signal while my iPhone4 required access to a cell tower signal. I think I remember checking Apple's site and concluding that true GPS is only on the iPad. I'd sure like to straighten this out.
The signals can bounce. It is a high frequency, it has a shorter sine wave, so it's more line of site than TV or radio broadcast frequencies which can arc over obstacles, so the ability to bounce a cell signal is not as easy as lower frequencies but it can happen.
If it is a strong signal, maybe there is tower up on one of the peaks. If the signal is always there, I doubt it is from a bounce, those usually come and go.
I posted a question (2 actually) about GPS a while back and John actually informed me that the iphone did not have the ability to find a GPS position without access to a cell tower-ie not a true GPS chip.That is, the "chip" does not access a GPS satellite. What I concluded from the remarks of several people was that the iphone doesn't and the iPad does have a true GPS chip. My own results would seem to bear that out. My iPad always had access to a GPS signal while my iPhone4 required access to a cell tower signal. I think I remember checking Apple's site and concluding that true GPS is only on the iPad. I'd sure like to straighten this out.
I'm not attempting to hijack this thread-just thought this was a relevant inquiry. Here's what I have learned. I arranged to have someone from Apple support call me. The GPS hardware in both the iPhone 4 and the iPad WIFI + 3G is identical. It is a true GPS receiver augmented by WIFI+ cell tower assistance. Knowing this, I did the following: With the WIFI and cell data plans off, 3G on and 1-2 bars on the meter, over a total of 12 trials using GPS Lite (no mapping involved), the iPhone connected to the GPS signal in 15 seconds with little variation; the iPad connected in 30 seconds with +/- 12 seconds. Even when the meter said "no service", there was enough signal for the cell towers to augment the connection to GPS. Linking to the GPS frequently caused the meter to switch from "no service" to one bar. Curiously, in my basement with 1 bar I could get the iPad to connect faster than the iPhone at 1minute vs 2 minutes for the latter. Perhaps that reflects an antenna difference. Once, with the "death grip" on the antenna junction resulting in "no service", I gave up after two minutes trying to connect the iPhone to GPS. Various combinations of activating to my home WIFI, Cellular data plan and 3G gave no significant difference in how fast either device connected to GPS. These last results are interesting but I'm tired so I'll quit now.
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