Using a Mavic with shoddy phone GPS...?

[SteveB]

Hey all,

I haven't bought a Mavic yet, mostly because I'm unsure on one particular point: the importance of phone GPS.

I use a China-designed and, obviously, produced Android phone with a fast processor and ample memory; it is serving me well but it has one weakness: abysmal GPS. I mean it's bad (and cannot be fixed - I've tried with apps and settings and looked into hardware fixes). For all intents and purposes, it's non-functional*. I would not enjoy "having to" buy a new phone in order to use a Mavic. My questions, then:

Can I safely use a Mavic without decent phone GPS? I am unsure if the controller has its own GPS and if so, when that's used. I believe I know that Follow Me, for one, will not work without solid phone GPS.
And what influence, if any, will poor phone GPS have on Return-To-Home? I believe I read that RTH uses Mavic-GPS but I am not sure.

Thanks for any and all answers. Of course, I realize a phone with excellent GPS, ideally an Apple, might be better for using a Mavic, but kindly humor me?


Steve


* indoors (next to window) no lock, ever. Outside, open area, (half-)minute long periods of multi-kilometer wild variation interspersed with short accurate locks (~5 sec)

 

[Bunny Too]

The only issues you would run into is having to cache your maps before hand and you would not be able to use follow me mode (unless you got a Bluetooth GPS dongle and attached that to your phone.) There are many people here who use an iPad without GPS.
Regards,
-d.

 

[JLane]

The only issues you would run into is having to cache your maps before hand and you would not be able to use follow me mode (unless you got a Bluetooth GPS dongle and attached that to your phone.) There are many people here who use an iPad without GPS.
Regards,
-d.

Although you don't really need GPS to actually download the map data. As long as the phone is able to provide even a very rough GPS location, the app will use the phone's data connection to download the map data for that area. And if the phone's location really is that far off, you can always manually scroll the map or tap the button to center the map on the Mavic's location (using the Mavic's GPS position).

 

[JLane]

@SteveB as you correctly noted, Follow Me mode relies on a good GPS lock on your mobile device. I believe that's the only flight mode that needs it. All other flight modes and operations will work without GPS on your phone.

Even normal RTH procedures don't need your phone's GPS. The Mavic records the Home Point itself when you take off or when it's able to get a GPS lock. You can also manually tell it to set a new Home Point at the aircraft's current location. The Mavic will return to the last set Home Point co-ordinates, regardless of your phone's GPS, even if the phone or RC are completely disconnected or powered off.

I think the only other feature that uses your phone's GPS is if you want to set a new Home Point to your RC's current location. That does use your phone's GPS, so if yours is really bad, I wouldn't recommend trying to set a Home Point to your RC location. You can still always set a Home Point using the aircraft's current location as mentioned above. (Just fly the Mavic to overhead your position and set it there, if that's where you want the new Home Point to be)