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I'm trying to retrieve Location with 

mLocationRequest.setPriority(LocationRequest.PRIORITY_BALANCED_POWER_ACCURACY);

When I am connected to Wifi, there is no problem, but when I disconnect Wifi and let 4G determine location, I get no gps fix...

The thing is I receive Internet through 4G, so I don't understand why!

Any idea?

Juliatzin
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1 Answers1

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I think the issue here is the Google Location Services, AKA "Network" location, relies heavily on Wi-Fi networks to determine location.

Getting a location from the cellular network can be flaky, especially depending on where you are. If you are in the downtown area of a city, there are lots of cell towers around, so triangulation can better determine your location than if you're in a less dense area.

It's not really explicitly stated in the documentation, but it looks like using PRIORITY_BALANCED_POWER_ACCURACY probably uses "passive" use of the GPS radio, meaning that it will only give you data from the GPS radio if another app requested a location callback, so you basically piggy-back onto that request, and your app doesn't get blamed for any battery drain even though you get the location data.

The documentation states:

In between these two extremes is a very common use-case, where applications definitely want to receive updates at a specified interval, and can receive them faster when available, but still want a low power impact. These applications should consider PRIORITY_BALANCED_POWER_ACCURACY combined with a faster setFastestInterval(long) (such as 1 minute) and a slower setInterval(long) (such as 60 minutes). They will only be assigned power blame for the interval set by setInterval(long), but can still receive locations triggered by other applications at a rate up to setFastestInterval(long). This style of request is appropriate for many location aware applications, including background usage. Do be careful to also throttle setFastestInterval(long) if you perform heavy-weight work after receiving an update - such as using the network.

See here: http://developer.android.com/reference/com/google/android/gms/location/LocationRequest.html#setFastestInterval(long)

See this post as well: PRIORITY_LOW_POWER vs PRIORITY_BALANCED_POWER_ACCURACY for google play service v2

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Daniel Nugent
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