Bad Behavior of Phone GPS

sounds like you didn't have sufficient data signal.

What app were you using? What phone? What data plan are you on?

My phone seems to take longer to pinpoint me when I'm out in an obscure area than when I'm in downtown London, etc. I sometimes have to wait many minutes. Last year, for a protracted period of time (at least half an hour, I think) it insisted I was in Paris--where I had changed trains 2 or 3 weeks earlier--when I was actually in the middle of St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands.

I try to remember to fire up the phone and turn on Maps2GoPro ten minutes before I'm due to arrive in a new town. That helps but is not always sufficient. I don't put a European SIM in my phone, so I don't know whether it can make any use of cell-tower signals

Download Google map to use offline, no data used.

The answer is in your title. Bad behavior. Gremlins.

Once after a full day of multiple stops and sales calls when Google maps had worked perfectly, it took us to the middle of a field and said we'd arrived. The address requested was still in there correctly, and yet we were nowhere near it. Another time it took us off of I90 in Chicago, took us for a little sightseeing in Chinatown, and put us back on to I90. Traffic was light so it wasn't to avoid a jam.

Sorry I don't have a solution. GPS is such a wonderful thing but it does mean we stop paying attention to our own navigation skills.

GPS is such a wonderful thing but it does mean we stop paying attention to our own navigation skills.

This.

There are many ways and reasons why your gizmo may have failed you right there and then. You don't provide enough detail for anyone to make a good guess as to the exact reason because there are so many possible ways for it to fail. The technology is good, it's USUALLY quite reliable. But whether you're using a phone, tablet, or dedicated GPS unit, all can fail at any time - and do.

I love my electronic toys as much as anyone (I generally travel with several) - they're great. But only a fool would always rely 100% on any electronic device (and blindly follow what it's telling you without having the slightest idea where you actually are and where you'e going). OTOH, printed maps never fail. That's why any smart person will always have a good map along to use as a reality-check against your gizmo, or as a replacement for it if/when the device fails completely.

It's not a question of "if" your device will fail, it's a question of "when" - it is inevitable. If you're just walking from the beach to your hotel on a lovely day, your device dropping out briefly might not be a big deal. But if you really need the ability to navigate reliably -- say, to get to the airport in a limited time in order to catch your very expensive and non-reundable flight home -- and your gizmo suddenly becomes as inert and useless as a stone, you could be in for a heap of trouble. Been there, done that - never again. Paper maps don't fail at random times when you really need them. Something to remember.

With my phone it helps navigate better if I disable Wi-Fi

I like to have a fairly detailed map even when I'm using GPS or phone navigation. Not only does it help when your phone is behaving badly, it helps me visualize the directions so its easier to follow along or I know when my GPS is leading me astray. On my next trip (Spain) I'm going to me using maps.me, offline. I've heard now from a few people that they like it better than google maps. Supposedly there are more capabilities.

The nice thing about paper maps is they never misbehave.

Rosalyn,

As David mentioned above, there's insufficient information to even make an "educated guess" on why your phone GPS failed. A few thoughts that come to mind....

• did you have cellular data available? While the GPS will operate without data, it won't be able to load maps unless you have an offline "Maps" app as mentioned above.
• was the phone providing any kind of "error" message?
• did you try the phone out of the car, where it had a clear line-of-sight to the satellites?

Most phones these days have both GPS as well as GLONASS (Russian system) available, so it's puzzling that it wouldn't connect.

I usually pack along a back dedicated Garmin GPS unit, which has European maps. If my iPhone fails or I don't want to use data to get the maps, I just switch that on.

I like to use HERE maps with the map of the country/region PREVIOUSLY downloaded (back at home before I ever leave for my trip). Then your phone will work without any wifi or cell network, but will feed just from the satellites.

But -- as for my trip to Scotland two weeks ago -- we also brought a country-wide paper map (to see the overall picture easily) and a printed atlas (to see any detailed roads we needed). I like to have the option to use either paper or digital, depending on what I'm doing/feeling like.

Thanks to those of you who made helpful suggestions about sites we can use before getting lost in a new place at night (!).
As it happens, we did have a paper map, but just of the whole country. The hotel had no maps of the town (their bad), though we were able to get one at the TI office the next day. Even local paper maps often do not have small street names, so no panacea. In fact, that is the situation in which the gps has been a godsend; I.e., getting us to destinations in medieval towns, through tiny, maze-like streets. But only when it can connect.

I feel your pain, Rosalyn. I have a smartphone and find it helpful in getting oriented and verifying that I'm walking in the right direction when street signs are scarce. But I prefer a paper map most of the time.

This year I discovered that--probably for budgetary reasons--there are very few tourist offices in Ukraine. As in I couldn't even find one in Kyiv. The three major-destination hotels (in L'viv, Kyiv and Odesa) all had maps for me. But I also went to three smaller cities, and only one of those hotels had a paper map. I think the issue is the other three are not major tourist destinations, so it doesn't pay someone to print the map (can't sell enough advertising to cover the cost).

And then there are the maps with little drawings of key buildings plunked right down on the map, where they cover up street names and even, in some cases, the streets themselves. That cartography technique seems to be growing in popularity, especially in the western part of Europe. It gave me fits in Spain. If I want to buy art, I'll go to a gallery. The main purpose of a map is to allow the user to find his way around the city.