answered 2019-05-16 16:50:42 +0200

DrYak
9624 ●93 ●134 ●128

http://www.sympato.ch/

updated 2019-09-17 19:19:17 +0200

update : microG+UnifiedNLP now works with 3.1.0 Seiteminen

Regarding Sailfish

Out of the box, Sailfish native application (e.g.: Pure Maps) taking a long time to lock GPS is the expected behaviour, because out of the box Sailfish only exclusively rely on GPS sattelites and it takes quite some time to find them (several minutes, exactly like on a car's satnav without an up to date ephemerids table).

To change behaviour:

• Settings App -> under Connectivity section -> icon Location

• in Location tool -> under Accuracy section -> select High-Accuracy positioning

  (Or play around tith Custom settings)

This will cause your phone to gather information around it (visible GSM Cell Towers, Wifi Access point) and send them to Mozilla's servers, this helps find the position before the GPS sattelites get locked upon, and also brings extra information for faster GPS bring up.

Now the Sailfish native application will almost immediately lock upon starting... well as long as Mozilla knows of which cell towers and AP are visible around you (of course if you're somewhere Mozilla doesn't know about, they won't be able to recognize your position based on the visible towers).

(Back when your XA2 had Android installed, this is exactly what the "Google Play Service" (com.google.android.gms) did, except using Google's server instead of Mozilla's, and except that it is constantly doing it even if you don't want it too, enabling Google to track every inch you move and market the crap out your behavior to advertising agencies).

Note: I've occasionally run into situation where location refuses to use any sattelite, despite having more than a couple of dozens in view. Cold reboot seems to fix this.

Regarding Android Apps

You have two solutions to get this working in Alien Dalvik:

• install the actual Google Play Service from Google

  (Note: I haven't tried it personnally)

• install MicroG (an opensource program which re-implements the same APIs) which uses the UnifiedNLP infrastructure provide several plugin to do similar GPS assisting.

  To get UnifiedNLP reliabily working, keep in mind that the current alien-dalvik doesn't give android apps access to 3G/4G cell status, only to Wifi AP.

  • So either use some UnifiedNlp backend that exclusively rely on Wifi AP (e.g.: Apple's servers)
  • Or configure your UnifiedNlp - e.g. Mozilla's - to only use Wifi and ignore 3G/4G Cell towers.
  • Whatever you choose check microG settings -> Self-checks
    • After a while "UnifiedNLP has no last known location. This will cause some apps to fail" should dispear
    • You should not get "No UnifiedNlp location was provided by the system within 10 seconds"

  Once that is set up position works much better :

  • Apps that directly talk to the GPS hardware will always work (things like GPSTest is able to see GPS satelite, Google Maps will eventually lock the position)
  • Apps which rely on assisted position should get a rough position estimates, most will get updated to a more precise one as soon as the UnifiedNLP kicks in (though some might fail to kick UnifiedNLP, try running Self-Checks to force it running) (most of the ridesharing / vehicle renting apps I've tried: Uber, Kapten, Pick-e-Bike, Lime, Circ, Tier, Bird, Mobility, SBB).
  • Some might still crash due to other missing API (Mobility in my case).