Personal Hotspot Sends GPS Data to Wi-Fi iPad?

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Posted March 16, 2011 at 12:38pm by Shalom Levytam

Apple's new Personal Hotspot feature reportedly feeds GPS data to wi-fi iPad devices that are tethered to it, according to TabletMonsters.

Apple’s Wi-Fi only iOS devices have had location awareness for years via Wi-Fi location service that rely on identifying MAC addresses of nearby hotspots, and comparing those against a database of where those routers are located.

The location I’m getting on my Wi-Fi only iPad is most certainly not this. It is clear I am being fed GPS information from the phone, at what appears to be an interval of once a minute or so between refreshes (likely they didn’t do real time updating so as to go easy on the phone’s battery).

Although, one minute intervals isn't that often. It might be enough to sway some customers' purchasing decision towards the Wi-Fi iPad model instead of the 3G.

The feature can be seen demonstrated it the video below.

Read More [via 9to5Mac]

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Jompao - March 17, 2011 at 5:52am

So a pretty useless function as it willnot work with turn by turn navigation. You still need RoqyBT and a separate BT GPS receiver for that. Hopefully we will see a Cydia app that can provide the realtime GPS information from iPhone to iPad soon.

paul - March 16, 2011 at 5:47pm

The point is, cell triangulation or GPS (whatever) is being transfered from the iphone to a wifi only ipad. Not a miracle, just an observation. Don't get your panties in a bunch.

Jared - March 16, 2011 at 2:53pm

MyWi has been doing this all along! This is no miracle!

Eduardo - March 16, 2011 at 12:56pm

YES! this will save me $130! which i can use to get a 64Gb instead!

Eduardo - March 21, 2011 at 5:59pm

I tried this with my iPhone 4 and an original iPad, in South Africa, it didn't pick up any gps information at all on the ipad.

Mvakleko - March 16, 2011 at 12:48pm

I'm sure Cydia/jailbreak devs will step up 2 the challenge and show us the way its supposed to be :)