Turn on WiFi to improve location accuracy

iOS is beginning to grate on me.

For a long time I have referred to the iPhone range as “Fisher Price” phones — an accurate, if rather flippant — description, I feel. There is a reason you give your ageing parents an iPhone. It just works. There’s a lot of elegance and simplicity built right in. The familiarity of the home screen button is reassuring to everyone from a 2 year-old to a 62 year-old. 

Me? I use everything. BlackBerries, Androids, Windows Phones, the lot. My primary device is an iPhone, though. I have to standardise on something because the moribund mobile networks require it. 

My preference would be to select a phone either at random or for a specific function each morning and walk out the door. This is possible but it requires a 60-second arse about with sim cards, assuming all models will work with the same sim card. 

So I had to choose something: The iPhone. 

For the most part I am content with it. But simmering just a few millimetres from the surface is a significant amount of frustration at way in which I am forced to jump through the Cupertino-defined hoops. 

I can’t see when the next train is. 

I can’t get a quick glance at my inbox. 

I can’t glance at the headlines. 

Oh, I can, if I set it all up in the Apple-defined way of course: A bolt-on pull-down menu of alerts. An after-thought to try and compete with the uber-flexibility of Android.

I do look on in pure personal rage at Android friends who just glance at their phone and are immediately up to date. Or who turn over their phone when it rings because they’re ‘busy’ … and the phone understands that. I can get the same experience by pressing a few buttons. 

First world problems, obviously.

The rage boils over, though, when I have deliberately switched off WiFi for some reason and an application tries to use the location feature. Sure enough, every flipping time, a helpful little prompt appears: “Turn on WiFi to improve location accuracy.”

Well of course.

It will also take 2% off my battery. Which is why I’ve switched it off.

The prompt is incredibly helpful to the mobile phone newbie. Not for me though. Two or three times a day, I get this interruption. 

This is probably because I am over-managing my iPhone experience. I should probably just leave the flipping WiFi on, right? 

I don’t think it will be long before I find it time to hop to a new primary device.

I am obviously considering Android — especially the Sony Z2. I am very impressed with that device. 

And I am looking carefully at the world of Nokia Microsoft. I have my eye on the next generation PureView. 

Until then I will … turn on WiFi to improve location accuracy as prompted.