How do accelerometers in modern smartphones allow you to use your GPS apps that precisely for really long distances in airplane mode?
In: Technology
Other comments covered the why. I’ll add that what you’re referring to is called dead-reckoning – position tracking using accelerometers and/or gyroscopes.
This is *wildly* inaccurate for consumer grade sensors. Useful for seconds to *maybe* minutes with a really well tuned system, if you expect anything resembling accuracy. Beyond that the drift will be extreme, as the error increases with the square of time – t^(2)
I’m not aware of any phone or app that actually does it. There was some talk years ago of Google navigation using it just to know that you made a turn, before the GPS can “catch up.” They still haven’t done it, nor have Waze or Apple Maps.
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