Amy's dashboard

My Loopt doesn't update to the right location either. My co-worker and myself both have the 2G iPhone and we can sit in the same office together and her phone will update with the right location and mine shows me like 5 blocks away. We're in the same spot! I don't understand. I hope this gets fixed, I really like this application.

Hi Micheal,

Location on the iPhone is magic! It uses various information about your router (like the name of your network and something called it's MAC Address) to determine what router you have. It then looks up the location of your router in a public database that was built by Google and Skyhook. Your location will be incorrect until the public database is updated.

Depending on where you live this could happen quickly or slowly. In my experience, however, it get's fixed in a week or so. You don't have to do anything =]

Hope that helps,
Aroon

I also have a location problem. I recently moved and took along my wifi router and have a new connection with my room mates cable service. The problem is that every time I am on our home network it reports the exact location of my old apartment, when not on our wifi (on Edge or 3G) it reports the accurate current location. At first I thought our router was set up with that address but no, it does not have an address. I also have had this router move with me 3 times in the last couple of years. What could be causing the old address with my home wifi? Is there something I can look into?

I actually have the 3G phone, not the 2G. We have 2 other co-workers that have Loopt on their phones (one is a 2G and the other is a 3G) both of theirs are working fine on locating them.

Hi Amy! Location services can be a bit of voodoo magic sometimes..

sounds like you might have a 2G iPhone and your co-workers might have a 3G iPhone. Is that right?

Here's why you might be experiencing what you describe:

3G iPhones have built in GPS which helps pinpoint your location very accurately no matter where you are. It's about the best location finding experience you can ask for.

The 2G iPhones, on the other hand, try to estimate your location using a variety of methods, primarily by triangulating your location using both cell towers and wi-fi access points. This method relies on the things your cell phone can "see." That is to say, if your cell phone can see 3 towers and 2 wi-fi access points then it can use that information to try to figure out where you are. Just like a pilot in a place, however, what a cell phone can see changes based on environmental conditions like whether a microwave is running or if there is a lead wall between you and a cell tower. So your cell phone might be seeing 1 cell phone tower for a while and then see a different one for a while and then later jump back to the original one, so on and so forth. This will cause the phone to think that you're moving around.

Unfortunately this is simply a limitation of the location services available on the 2G iPhone for now.

I hope that answers your question. Lemme know if there is anything else I can help with! =]

Aroon

My location on loopt keeps changing even though I'm in the same spot (office location). We have 3 other iPhone users on Loopt in the office and they show correctly on my phone. I have the Location in settings set to update, but it still keeps moving.