in Airplane mode but location still traceable?

willhub

willhub

willhub

Caporegime
Joined
3 Jan 2006
Posts
25,188
Location
Chadderton, Oldham
Has anyone noticed when in airplane mode and you're actually in a plane you can still track your location on the map?

I thought airplane mode would stop this? Quite a cool thing though
 
On some phones airplane mode does stop it but GPS is passively received so on some devices it isn't disabled.

Additionally some (usually cheaper or ultra small) devices only work with enhanced or assisted GPS functionality and can't use positioning services in airplane mode.
 
So really a phone's communication won't actually affect a plane? I've turned it off before and been able to receive messages on Messenger.
 
on all the phones I have had gps is seperate from communications, so you can have the gps on alone which just collects data and does not give out any signals.
so airplane mode has nothing to do with it
Very interesting to see where you are flying over
 
There’s no uplink transmission required to receive GPS data, so airplane mode doesn’t to disable it.
willhub said:
So really a phone's communication won't actually affect a plane? I've turned it off before and been able to receive messages on Messenger.
Click to expand...

Was that over a WiFi service provided by the aircraft?
 
Terminal_Boy said:
There’s no uplink transmission required to receive GPS data, so airplane mode doesn’t to disable it.


Was that over a WiFi service provided by the aircraft?
Click to expand...

No, just 3g lol, it was probably only about 10,000ft up in the air maybe a bit higher.
 
The big problem with using a phone on a plane is you're traveling too fast for the base stations to keep up with you and the network can get rather confused...
 
GPS is not transmitting anything id not expect airplane mode to turn it off... you need to turn on nefarious activity mode to stop things like that
 
mrgubby said:
The big problem with using a phone on a plane is you're traveling too fast for the base stations to keep up with you and the network can get rather confused...
Click to expand...

Yup, 3/4G networks can only handle handovers when the phone is travelling under 320kph. Being airborne, the phone can communicate with many more base stations that it should normally be able “to see” because there’s terrain or buildings to block the signal. This causes all sorts of signalling issues for the network and they usually respond by barring the phone from camping on any base stations for a period of time.
 
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