Mobile Phone Location Accuracy

1. Introduction

Some mobile phones have built in global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for finding your position and magnetometer (Compass) for finding your orientation.

Compass

Mobile phone built-in magetometer can be used as a compass.

1. Tips

  1. Move away from metal
  2. Make "figure 8s" in the air with your phone

2. 88.io Compass

88.io Web Console comes with a web based compass.

https://measure.contacttrace.com.au/

3. In Depth

https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/calculators/magcalc.shtml#declination
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/calculators/mobileDeclination.shtml

GNSS

Mobile phone built-in GNSS capability is a major contributor to geopos.org's location feature. We are pushing it to its limits to get higher accuracy in shorter time.

Constellation Satellite Number
BEIDOU 35
GPS 31
GALILEO 24
GLONASS 24
IRNSS 7
QZSS 5

Need at least 4 satellites to give you latitude, longitude, altitude and time.

  1. Get unobstructed view of sky
  2. Get as many satellites a possible

Dual Frequency

For high precision get a phone with Dual Frequency GNSS support (e.g. high end Samsung and Huawei phones).

Centimetre Accuracy

In order to get accuracy down to centimetre level, Real Time Kinematic (RTK) or Post Processing Kinematic (PPK) can be used with your mobile phone.

We encourages citizens to build up their own RTK infrastructure in the communities.