Odd mapping omission in Specialized app

[mschwett]

Interesting thought. Wouldn't have guessed poor coverage where the map trace ended. Wide open area with lots of homes and businesses nearby.

Besides, I record all rides and ride near that spot often. Never a problem before yesterday.

Haven't yet ruled out a chance encounter with a passing space-time discontinuity or rift in the subspace tachyon field. Those were the usual suspects when weird stuff happened on Star Trek.
;^}

idk if android is similar to iPhone but i bet it is, and the location services are provided by the OS using best-available information, including maps, wifi proximity, cell pings, and (mostly) GPS. you can definitely get good location without cell service and i'd be very surprised if android didn't do that. it would be a big problem.

my bet is a specialized app glitch in which whatever protocol it uses to collect and record the location data from the OS failed, but the unrelated protocol by which it gathers ride data over bluetooth from the bike did not fail. these are two different subsystems and i bet they can fail or succeed independently

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

my bet is a specialized app glitch in which whatever protocol it uses to collect and record the location data from the OS failed, but the unrelated protocol by which it gathers ride data over bluetooth from the bike did not fail. these are two different subsystems and i bet they can fail or succeed independently

Thanks! Fits the observations. I've now done all the things Samsung said to do to keep the S25 from dropping its GPS link. We'll see if it happens again.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

@mschwett is right. Phones (Android/iPhone) use network assisted A-GPS, which improves the location service accuracy in urban areas. While bike GPS computers have to rely on the satellites only. For this reason, newer Garmin or Wahoo computers sport Multi-Band GPS, which intercepts two different radio signals from the same satellite for increased accuracy.

A-GPS has been as perfect as I could rely on the car satnav using my Android phones for a dozen of years. Now you cannot trust anything (except for the inertial navigation or dead reckoning, hehe). Again, the issue you Jeremy reported must have been caused by some glitch between the Specialized App and the phone location services.

On Sunday, we were riding through the Poligon. As it is a former military range, it is very easy to get lost there. Our Garmins and Wahoos worked perfectly, still we could make some navigational mistakes!