iPhone 15 Pro GPS is worthless!

[KennyCaphill]

Just here to whine.

Got the new iPhone 15 Pro and unless I have that thing up against the glass roof, the GPS on it is worthless!

Apple Maps/Waze constantly loses my position by half a mile. It has no idea where I am at in downtown Seattle. Sometimes I’m coming out of the parking garage at work, sometimes I’m in the middle of Elliott Bay!

Driving somewhere you’ve never been before? Yup! Good luck! The phone will have no idea where you’re at when you need to make a crucial turn!

GRRRRR!!!

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[Neil4Real]

GPS has been horrible with all my iPhones. 13 Pro, then 14 Pro and now 15 Pro.

 

[azerik]

Try rebooting the phone. I now do that about once a week and it’s a little better, not great, and crap that my new ‘flagshit’ phone sucks.
Mine sits on a MagSafe puck to the right of the wireless charger. Works ok until my kids phone is next to it. But it’s not the MME, it’s the Pro. Plus doesn’t seem to suck.

 

[Ride_the_lightning]

CarPlay is designed to use the car’s GPS, not the internal phone GPS. It sounds like that isn’t happening for some reason.

 

[VaporTrails]

Hmmm…. It appears that is definitely a thing.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254286513

TLDR, CarPlay will get GPS data from OBD feed. Your MME roof antenna should be giving good data, but the linked thread discusses some kind of digital wheel alignment.

Does a direct-connection make a difference? I assume you have already rebooted the phone and sync at this point.

 

[RyZt]

Put the iPhone inside the center console. This makes the phone realize that its GPS signal is trash and defer to the car’s GPS. This workaround has been working reliably for me.

I switched to iPhone ~2 years ago, and started having this problem. My Pixel never had this problem. If I start my driving near narrow roads and tall buildings, I put the phone in the center console preemptively, to avoid having to deal with the problem while driving.

As far as I know, both Android and iOS takes into consideration both the phone’s and the car’s GPS when using AA and CarPlay. This is my hypothesis. The car’s GPS is conservative when estimating its quality of signal, especially at beginning of drives. On the other hand, The iPhone is over confident. As a result, the iPhone doesn’t defer to the car’s location data when it should.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Try rebooting the phone. I now do that about once a week and it’s a little better, not great, and crap that my new ‘flagshit’ phone sucks.
Mine sits on a MagSafe puck to the right of the wireless charger. Works ok until my kids phone is next to it. But it’s not the MME, it’s the Pro. Plus doesn’t seem to suck.

CarPlay is designed to use the car’s GPS, not the internal phone GPS. It sounds like that isn’t happening for some reason.

What @Ride_the_lightning said. The iPhone 15, though, is by far the worst iPhone I’ve ever owned. I can get the gps to temporarily work by hard rebooting as Erik says, and/or by putting it on the dashboard. I just use native nav virtually exclusively now.

I should have videoed Apple Map’s shenanigans yesterday while driving in Hilo (Hawaii’s second largest city) approaching the cross island highway. I’ll not be testing that out again until I get reports of it being routinely useable on this forum. Not worth the aggravation.

 

[MarkP213]

Interesting. I have the 15 Pro Max and haven’t experienced any navigation issues in my Mach E, Expedition, or our Explorer, plugged in or wirelessly. It’s been working spot on, just like my previous iPhones. Currently using it in our rental car on O’ahu this week and is working fine, so far, here as well.

 

[Deleted member 16048]

CarPlay is designed to use the car’s GPS, not the internal phone GPS. It sounds like that isn’t happening for some reason.

This is not true, it uses car GPS as additional data to the devices location services. (Which is GPS, cellular triangulation, WiFi locations, iBeacons ect.)

Part of the issue that is consistent amongst users is that location services data itself needs to be purged from device to device.

Turn off location services and turn it back on again to clear it. This will generally resolve the issues you’re having.

 

[dmitry]

Put the iPhone inside the center console. This makes the phone realize that its GPS signal is trash and defer to the car’s GPS. This workaround has been working reliably for me.

I switched to iPhone ~2 years ago, and started having this problem. My Pixel never had this problem. If I start my driving near narrow roads and tall buildings, I put the phone in the center console preemptively, to avoid having to deal with the problem while driving.

As far as I know, both Android and iOS takes into consideration both the phone’s and the car’s GPS when using AA and CarPlay. This is my hypothesis. The car’s GPS is conservative when estimating its quality of signal, especially at beginning of drives. On the other hand, The iPhone is over confident. As a result, the iPhone doesn’t defer to the car’s location data when it should.

I think you’re right. The GPS issue has nothing with iPhone. CarPlay will connects the iPhone GPS most of the time even if the signal is weak. I noticed the CarPlay navigation works well when I keep my phone(iPhone 15 pro max) under the armrest where the phone GPS doesn’t work and CarPlay chooses car GPS or on phone holder close to the windshield where the phone GPS is good. Something under the car screen interference the phone GPS signal keeping it well enough for CarPlay to connects to it but not strong to let it work without issues. Something similar I have with internet connection in my garage, the iPhone connects to home WiFi even if the cellular signal is much better. As a result the internet connection is weak and if I want the internet working properly I should turn off WiFi on my phone completely. Same here, unfortunately the place where Ford designed to keep the phone is the worst one.

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

I used to have no issues with my iPhone using Wireless CarPlay when it was in my left pants pocket while driving. Then several months ago I found that it would be quite bad (the kinda of issues the OP states) and usually would settle down after a bit of driving (maybe half a mile or so). But I have this MagSafe mount on my display and when the phone is on it the performance is perfect (and it's very handy to have the phone at exactly the right spot and available). I've not noticed any greater issues with my iPhone 15 Pro than with previous iPhones.

Interestingly due to my right hand being unavailable to me right now (surgery), I keep my iPhone in my left pants pocket and it seems to do somewhat better there. I've not done enough testing to be sure of that, but anecdotally that seems to be the case.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Turn off location services and turn it back on again to clear it. This will generally resolve the issues you’re having.

Settings-Privacy & Security-Location Services for those who want to try it. Report back your results please.

 

[AliRafiee]

Put the iPhone inside the center console. This makes the phone realize that its GPS signal is trash and defer to the car’s GPS. This workaround has been working reliably for me.

I switched to iPhone ~2 years ago, and started having this problem. My Pixel never had this problem. If I start my driving near narrow roads and tall buildings, I put the phone in the center console preemptively, to avoid having to deal with the problem while driving.

As far as I know, both Android and iOS takes into consideration both the phone’s and the car’s GPS when using AA and CarPlay. This is my hypothesis. The car’s GPS is conservative when estimating its quality of signal, especially at beginning of drives. On the other hand, The iPhone is over confident. As a result, the iPhone doesn’t defer to the car’s location data when it should.

Just tried that after it was going all over the place. It worked!
Thank you.

 

[azerik]

17.1 next week ?

 

[markboris]

No issues here at all.

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