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iPhone X - no altitude


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Barberpole
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Hi,
Anyone running in the problem of not having altitude readout with the iPhone X?‌  We've tested on 3 brandnew phones, all no luck. My previous iPhone 6s worked flawless. Some other apps also don't seem to display altitude when SD is active. When using external BT GPS it's working fine..

A‌nyone have a clue?

R‌egards, Dennis‌‌
Frnashx
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Barberpole - 2/12/2018 5:25:20 PM
Hi,
Anyone running in the problem of not having altitude readout with the iPhone X?‌  We've tested on 3 brandnew phones, all no luck. My previous iPhone 6s worked flawless. Some other apps also don't seem to display altitude when SD is active. When using external BT GPS it's working fine..

A‌nyone have a clue?

R‌egards, Dennis‌‌

I have the same problem with my iPhone 7plus. No altitude  indication and sometimes it stopped logging due to poor GPS signal. It happens only in the air. As soon as I am on the ground (but still in the plane with running engine) GPS signal is good. It looks that when I switch to airplane mode, GPS signal is slightly better. With my previous iPhone 6 I always had perfect GPS signal with altitude indication.

Flying Dutchman
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Frnashx - 2/21/2018 7:52:12 PM
Barberpole - 2/12/2018 5:25:20 PM
Hi,
Anyone running in the problem of not having altitude readout with the iPhone X?‌  We've tested on 3 brandnew phones, all no luck. My previous iPhone 6s worked flawless. Some other apps also don't seem to display altitude when SD is active. When using external BT GPS it's working fine..

A‌nyone have a clue?

R‌egards, Dennis‌‌

I have the same problem with my iPhone 7plus. No altitude  indication and sometimes it stopped logging due to poor GPS signal. It happens only in the air. As soon as I am on the ground (but still in the plane with running engine) GPS signal is good. It looks that when I switch to airplane mode, GPS signal is slightly better. With my previous iPhone 6 I always had perfect GPS signal with altitude indication.‌

My iPhone 7 running iOS 11.2.6 on SkyDemon version 3.9.109 has also issues indicating altitude. It also stops sometimes logging the flight and resumes when the GPS signal is working again.

Michiel Verbeek
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I’ve used iPhone for air navigation for several years now. (Skydemon, Air Nav pro, easyvfr basic). No problem on any iOS device. Until now. Bought an iPhone X. Problem, it shows the lat-long position, but NO altitude. Tried it on three iPhone X’s (also Dennis’s iPhone) All the same problem, with all kinds of altitude apps.

Contacted Apple. Senior engineers now say that the gps is not for active tracking. I was really angry and confused. Could not believe their answer. Have now done additional diagnostics. Contact appointment for tomorrow to read out my iPhone X and 5s.

Have also contacted PocketFMS to ask if they have experienced problems. They will now contact Apple trough their developers to find out more.

As it seems at the moment all air navigation apps are then obsolete for iPhone X users.

Can Skydemon maybe also contact Apple development for enquiries?

Does anyone use Foreflight to test and maybe get them to contact Apple?


Hope to hear from you soon.
Hartmut
Hartmut
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aeverbeek - 3/5/2018 3:59:33 PM
I’ve used iPhone for air navigation for several years now. (Skydemon, Air Nav pro, easyvfr basic). No problem on any iOS device. Until now. Bought an iPhone X. Problem, it shows the lat-long position, but NO altitude. Tried it on three iPhone X’s (also Dennis’s iPhone) All the same problem, with all kinds of altitude apps. Contacted Apple. Senior engineers now say that the gps is not for active tracking. I was really angry and confused. Could not believe their answer. Have now done additional diagnostics. Contact appointment for tomorrow to read out my iPhone X and 5s. Have also contacted PocketFMS to ask if they have experienced problems. They will now contact Apple trough their developers to find out more.As it seems at the moment all air navigation apps are then obsolete for iPhone X users. Can Skydemon maybe also contact Apple development for enquiries?Does anyone use Foreflight to test and maybe get them to contact Apple?Hope to hear from you soon.

IPhones are consumer devices. My understanding is that the internal GPS antenna is weak and that it relies on wifi source triangulation to improve it's fixes or the Telephone network (found that on the web). Once you leave the cell of your telephone network your fix is lost.You are better off with a more reliable GPS source: The best is bluetooth GPS . https://bad-elf.com/collections/bluetooth-gps

mfairfield
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I've just bought the iphone XS max. My previous iphone 7 plus was fine - no issues at all. With the new phone I'm losing the altitude data intermittently. So annoying. Has there been a fix at all or is it hardware related?
Tim Dawson
Tim Dawson
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It certainly isn't app related.
Sergeij2000
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Tim,
i also have the mentioned problems with my iPhone 8, which i bought in October last year. I use it quite often when i‘m operating in the Berlin CTR. GPS started to show the problems mentioned by the other posters after iOS was updated to v12 around the same time (or shortly after) SD showed the problems on the iPad, which you got fixed...

BR
Jo
Tim Dawson
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It's probably worth my mentioning that if iOS doesn't give us your altitude, there is nothing we can do about it. It's a hardware or operating system issue. Some people like to download a simple GPS testing app called GPS Device Data (or similar) which shows exactly what data iOS is making available to apps, in order to narrow down the problem.
Eduard
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Tim Dawson - 11/15/2018 1:13:10 PM
It's probably worth my mentioning that if iOS doesn't give us your altitude, there is nothing we can do about it. It's a hardware or operating system issue. Some people like to download a simple GPS testing app called GPS Device Data (or similar) which shows exactly what data iOS is making available to apps, in order to narrow down the problem.

If it is OS related then you should worry cause if iOS users can no longer use SkyDemon then you will loose a large user base. I use SkyDemon for some years now and never had issues up until now. I use both the internal GPS and an external GPS (Garmin GLO). I also experience the problem that sometimes the whole flight log does not show a correct altitude (within acceptable variation due to GPS altitude detection) Not just a dropout but the whole flight. It does detect the ascending and descending phases of the flight correctly. When I look at the flight profile afterwards it does show the correct positions and corresponding changes in altitude but the altitude values are way off. For example 3ft up to 700ft is recorded as -13ft up to 13ft. 

I can't remember when the issue started to manifest itself but as another member already mentioned it started to appear after iOS 12. I'm not sure but I do know that I had no issues prior to iOS 12. 

I'm using an iPhone 8+ and older iPhone 6. Sometimes paired with a Garmin GLO and the altitude issue also occurred when using the external GPS. So it is not related to the GPS hardware. I really do think this is a software issue and probably is related to a change in iOS. 

 

Edited 12/6/2018 4:10:42 PM by Eduard
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