phonegap geolocation always fail on timeout

Question

I'm using sencha-touch 2.0 and phonegap 2.0.0 in my app to retrieve user's location. When runing on my locahost, everything works just fine. However, when loading the .apk to my android 15 api's device (using eclipse and the adt plugin), every call to getCurrentLocation or watchPosition never returns...

here is my code:

geoOn: function(){
    var geoReady = navigator.geolocation || undefined;

    var onSuccess = function(position){
            Top5.app.alert('Geolocation success '+String(position.coords.latitude) + ' ' + String(position.coords.longitude),'Geolocation');
            var scope = Ext.getCmp('nestedList');
            scope.updateDistance(position.coords);
    };

    var onFailure = function(error){Top5.app.alert('Geolocation failed: '+String(error.code) + ' '+String(error.message),'Geolocation');};
    if (geoReady) {
        this.watchId = navigator.geolocation.watchPosition(onSuccess ,onFailure,{timeout:6000,maximumAge: 3000,enableHighAccuracy: true});    
    }
    else{
        Ext.device.Geolocation.watchPosition({
                 frequency: 3000, // Update every 3 seconds
                 callback: function(position) {
                        this.updateDistance(position.coords);
                 },
                 failure: function() {
                   console.log('Geolocation Failure!');
                 },
                 scope:this
        });
    }
 },
 geoGet: function(){
     var geoReady = navigator.geolocation || undefined;
     if (geoReady) {

         var onSuccess = function(position){
             Top5.app.alert('Geolocation successful!!!');
             var scope = Ext.getCmp('nestedList');
             scope.updateDistance(position.coords);          
         };
         var onFailure = function(error){Top5.app.alert('Geolocation failed: '+String(error.code) + ' '+String(error.message),'Geolocation');};
         navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(onSuccess,onFailure);
     }
     else{}
 },
 geoOff:function(){

     var geoReady = navigator.geolocation || undefined;
     if (geoReady) {
         navigator.geolocation.clearWatch(this.watchId);
         this.watchId = null;
     }
     else{
         Ext.device.Geolocation.clearWatch();
     }

 },
 updateDistance:function(coords){
     Top5.app.alert('updateDist','');
     var scope = Ext.getCmp('nestedList');
     var lat = coords.latitude,lon = coords.longitude;
     var store = scope.getStore();
     var i,record;
     for(i = 0; i < store.data.all.length; i++)
     {
         record = store.data.all[i];
         if(record.data.locationX){
            record.set('distance',Top5.app.getDistance(record.data.locationX,record.data.locationY,lat,lon).toFixed(3));
         }   
     }
}

UPDATE: So I walked out of my building and it worked... I need to go outside more often.
However, when I'm disabling the gps, I thought geoLocation will find my location using wifi connection - but it failes (I'm setting enableHighAccuracy: false). Why is that?

UPDATE: Let me rephrase my question: Does navigator.geolocation.watchPosition suppose to work both with GPS signal and wifi/g3 signals? How can I detect user location using internet connection only? currently, my code is working only with GPS, and when that option disabled or signal is blocked, geolocation isn't working.

Answer 1

You just need to add enableHighAccuracy: true, maximumAge: 60000 and then reboot your device.

Answer 2

I had this happen to a working app after updating PhoneGap to version 3.6.3 from 3.5. After trying many other suggestions Arthur's answer worked. 15 seconds seemed too long to me so I used {timeout: 2000}. I'm guessing the new version is slower as my code worked fine before the update on the same devices. Thought I'd post as well as upvote him as everything I found in Google was about initial setup and mostly irrelevant to my situation.

Answer 3

Try removing the Phonegap plugin geolocation plugin from your project. You won't need to make any changes to your JavaScript code as your device will fall back on the standard HTML5 navigator.geolocation functionality which has the same method signature.

Assuming you're using PhoneGap 3.3, you just need to run:

cordova plugin rm org.apache.cordova.geolocation

Answer 4

From my trial and error analysis, its most likely: 1. The version of android you're using. On Lollipop and lower you may need to go to the phones location settings and enable high accuracy settings (using gps, wlan and mobile networks to get location). I had to do this on a kitkat phone. 2. As others have mentioned, you can try changing the settings of getCurrentPosition by either enabling/disabling highaccuracy and adding a timeout. 3.If you're using ngCordova, make sure you installed it right and the location functions are actually being called. Use console to verify

Answer 5

Try This Solution:

window.setInterval(checkPosition, 5000);

function checkPosition() {
 function onSuccess(position) {
    document.getElementById('result1').innerHTML = position.coords.latitude;
    document.getElementById('result2').innerHTML = position.coords.longitude;
 }

 // onError Callback receives a PositionError object
 //
 function onError(error) {
    alert('code: '    + error.code    + '\n' +
        'message: ' + error.message + '\n');
 }
 navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(onSuccess, onError);
}