Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 September 14

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September 14

Using smarthone's GPS without data plan

Is every smartphone able to use its GPS without a data plan (I mean connecting to Google Maps and such)? Could telco companies block this ability to make the client spend more?

The GPS function itself would not use the data allowance, however all that you could get out of it is location coordinates, not an actual map. It is the map data (tiles or vector data) that show where the phone is and the surroundings that do use data. You could feasibly get around this by using a maps app which stores or caches its data offline on the phone, and just uses the GPS to locate the phone on the stored map (downloading the maps over wifi). --Canley (talk) 01:27, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

See this page, under the heading "Offline Maps". --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm aware that a GPS without a data plan is technically possible. I just want to know if a telco could 'lock' you artificially to their data plan. OsmanRF34 (talk) 17:40, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that's possible (locking the customer out of the physical phone's GPS capabilities - aside from Apple, as stated below (though I can't verify that because I'm far from an Apple expert...)); and I couldn't find any documentations of this ever happening. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 18:10, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I've bought offline cycling maps for little money (small single digit EUR), and they work fine with the iPhone's GPS. Similarly, the iPhone compass application will always give you your location in latitude and longitude. The GPS is independent of the data connection, and the GPS API is available to all developers. The question is if you have any applications that make use of it. The Telco cannot block GPS directly. However, if they provide your phone, they can conceivable lock out this feature. However, that would be quite pointless, and I've never heard of a case where this has happened.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:03, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

A question: Have you ever gotten GPS on an iphone to work without some sort of data connection at the same time? I never have. It's well known that the iPhone's GPS downloads a lot of the meta information for a GPS connect directly, either from the tower itself, or over the internet. Its location based services work on a few levels (local cell, local wifi, actual gps, etc.). I've never heard of the GPS working completely on its own though. Shadowjams (talk) 11:03, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

The GPS receiver needs no connection to any tower or wireless link. It receives data direct from the GPS satellites completely free of charge. Of course, some phone companies may restrict access to the inbuilt GPS receiver, as noted by Shadowjams above. Does Apple really not allow any access without paying? (I keep well away from Apple. I regard it as a rich man's company!) Dbfirs 11:17, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Last year I visited an exurban valley with a clear sky but out of range of SPRINT towers. My HTC EVO V4G lost its location. I figure it's because of a poor receiver that can't synch quickly without aGPS but you could be right that the company blocked it. Anyway I biked up a hill into Norwood, New Jersey and it worked again. Jim.henderson (talk) 11:38, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

When you say it lost it's location, did it just lose access to Google Maps to display that location? I assume that you haven't downloaded any maps. Dbfirs 11:49, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I have a Samsung for which I currently have no data plan (nor even a phone plan, for that matter), and the GPS still works. But just the GPS, meaning that if you run an app whose specific purpose is to query the GPS, then you can see latitude, longitude, and velocity. No maps, not even of places where I've used the maps before (unless I'm connected to wi-fi of course — that's independent of any data plan). --Trovatore (talk) 18:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I suppose you should be able to make this phone work with other maps then. There are several offline apps available. 83.49.194.226 (talk) 20:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

In my case in New Jersey it plain didn't give me a location when out of range of towers. Apparently others have had experiences more in line with theory than mine. Guesses include, maybe my particular HTC phone has a crummy GPS chip that becomes impractically bad when deprived of aGPS, or maybe Virgin Mobile, my carrier, fixed it so it wouldn't work when out of contact, or maybe I didn't wait long enough before giving up and seeking a more urbanized locale to get connected. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:44, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

How to add blank lines to an HTML Blog Post

Check out this blog post. It was pasted in from a Word Document, and it seems like every time I do this, it strips all the blank lines between paragraphs. I have this problem less when writing the Blog Post myself in the WordPress window, but I'd like to be able to add blank lines between the paragraph so it isn't a wall of text to the face. Checking the code itself never seems to work; the blank lines are there when viewing the blog post from the editing window.

Help? --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 05:38, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried <br /> yet? →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:03, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

You can also wrap your paragraphs in <p> ... <p> tags. →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:05, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Neither of those have worked. When I add the code (be it <p> or <br />) in the HTML editing window and either save or view it in Visual Editing window, it purges that code and adds <div> code that doesn't work. --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 07:59, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I edited your post slightly for clarity, replacing "<" with "&lt;" and ">" with "&gt;". --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:20, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

MS-Word generates horrible html, so if you copy-pasted directly from MS-Word, that may be the cause of the problem. Have you tried copy-pasting your text from the MS-Word document into a plaintext editor such as notepad, and then copy-pasting again from notepad into the Wordpress editor, and then add the necessary formatting? This should remove all MS-Word-generated html. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

This works! Thanks! --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 04:33, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

US websites not available

For the last two days, I have been unable to access my Gmail account because Google.com is unavailable. (Google.co.uk is accessible as normal, but my mail is at Google.com and the redirect fails.) I've discovered that two other American websites are unavailable: Hotmail.com and USPS.com (-- there could be others, but these are the only ones I've found to fail so far). Pinging these websites results in either "Request timed out" or "Ping request could not find host". My ISP says that the problem is most likely my router and that these sites might have a larger packet size. I'll try rebooting the router, but does this explanation make sense? Dbfirs 17:15, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Please paste the result of running tracert www.google.com into a new pastebin and link to that here. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:05, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

(Sorry for the delay -- I've been out. ) I should have mentioned that tracert just returns the message "Unable to resolve target system name www.google.com". Exactly the same message for hotmail, microsoft and usps. Does this mean that the DNS server is not interpreting the url? I should mention that my internet connection can be very slow at times, so perhaps something is timing out? Dbfirs 20:29, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Flush the DNS cache. If that doesn't fix it, change your DNS settings to use OpenDNS or Google's public DNS. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:45, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks for the suggestions and useful links (I can never remember how to get to the many options). Flushing the DNS made no difference, but using OpenDNS instead of my Internet provider's DNS server solved the problem. Now I know where the fault lies -- they wanted to sell me a new router! Thanks again. Dbfirs 07:56, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It probably still is the router. You are probably leasing your local IP address by DHCP from the router, and it would send you the addresses of which DNS servers to use. That's often the router itself, acting as another layer of caching between you and your ISP's nameservers. If the router is bad somehow, it might be failing in that regard. I could (perhaps should) have asked you to set your Windows DNS servers directly to the ISP's, cutting out the middleman that way - you'd get those numbers either from the router's own config screens (it gets given then when it leases its address from the ISP by PPPoA) or from the ISP's help website. It's very unlikely that the ISP's nameservers are defective, as all their customers would be unable to access those sites, which obviously they'd notice. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 09:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Because I get my internet access delivered via a series of microwave links, there are several other routers between mine and the DNS server, so I'm not sure which address is the ultimate DNS server. I suspect that it is one of these links that is failing to deliver the correct response, probably because of delays in transmission, but it could be partly my router too -- it is getting old. The problem occurred only with sites in the USA (presumably uncached locally). Anyway, your suggestion solved the problem. Dbfirs 07:58, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Resolved