How does your smartphone know your location? - Wilton L. Virgo
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GPS location apps on a smartphone can be very handy when mapping a travel route or finding nearby events. But how does your smartphone know where you are? Wilton L. Virgo explains how the answer lies 12,000 miles over your head, in an orbiting satellite that keeps time to the beat of an atomic clock powered by quantum mechanics.
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Meet The Creators
- Educator Wilton L. Virgo
- Animator Nick Hilditch
- Script Editor Alex Rosenthal
- Narrator Addison Anderson
by Gary Dalton
Gary Dalton
Lesson in progress
Smartphones know location based on data besides that provided by GPS.
GPS is only one of the location data available to smartphones. The title of this TED-ED would be better stated as how does GPS work. Smartphones also use previously mapped Wi-Fi and cell data.
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Stanley Golphin
Lesson completed
When you have a data connection, your phone uses Assisted GPS, or A-GPS. This uses the locations of cell phone towers and known WiFi networks to figure out roughly where you are. ... A-GPS doesn't work without data service, but the GPS radio can still get a fix directly from the satellites if it needs to.
Nicholas Ainsworth
Lesson completed
my phones has a app for that. Use a iphone
