Abstract:
Smartphones have become an essential
companion in most of the communities. Yet, we may not be quite
aware of the capabilities and services that these devices could
provide. As a result, features such as location services are underutilized
and mostly used for navigation and location sharing.
This study explores the limitations of embedded GPS receivers
in smartphones with reference to the performance of a
consumer-grade hand-held GPS device. The location
coordinates obtained with the GPS unit and six smartphones on
five locations over ten consecutive days revealed that over 70%
of smartphone records provide the location coordinates within
0 to 10 m accuracy. Furthermore, at certain locations, over 75%
of records have maintained the coordinate accuracy within 0 to
5 m. Hence, the use of smartphone location information in place
of standalone GPS readings, can be recommended for moderate
location accuracy requirements, such as geo-tagged data
collection. Nevertheless, hand-held GPS units provide better
approximations than the smartphones, for elevation readings at
the studied locations. Accordingly, further investigations are
recommended, to evaluate the discrepancies in elevation
records, provided the ambiguities generated while recording the
elevation measurements from the hand-held GPS units are
minimized.
