GPS navigation

Although most people are familiar with using GPS navigation while in their home area, GPS navigation can easily become your most useful tool when traveling or Wilderness backpacking. They can give you live directions while driving, hitchhiking, cycling, hiking, walking or catching public transport. They can help you stay on the well beaten path. But better still, they can tell you where you are, allowing you to get hopelessly lost in the medina of Marrakesh, and then allow you to wander out when you feel like it. Or tell you the name of the small church you are cycling past on the Rallarvegen. Or for those who like every second of their day planned, you can load up your daily sightseeing route, and make sure you keep to your schedule. They can give you confidence to explore!

These days, practically every smartphone (and even some feature phones) offer GPS. Many cars also offer a trim package that includes built-in navigation, and via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay newer ones can often display your phone's navigation apps on their screen. You can also use stand-alone devices designed for a variety of specific uses such as driving, hiking, or boating.

GPS devices with cellular or internet connectivity can determine their position in as little as a few seconds of being turned on, using nearby cell towers or Wi-Fi networks to obtain a rough position and download data about the satellite network. But standalone devices must download all the required data from the satellites; if it's been more than a few hours since the device was last used, this can take up to 30 seconds (or potentially much longer if conditions are poor, such as not having good view of the sky or moving rapidly).

Using GPS navigation apps on your smartphone can be the easiest and most convenient way to navigate when out of your home country. It can save money over buying a standalone GPS device and new maps for it, or renting one from a car rental company. Several smartphone apps are able to give an approximate location using known locations of Wi-Fi signals when they cannot get satellite data. However, if you don't have a data connection for your phone, or when it is out of range, their performance can be limited or their maps unavailable. If your app can't give you directions, that's usually what's wrong. For use in challenging conditions, a dedicated GPS device with physical buttons may still be a better choice than the touch screen of a smartphone.

Some apps allow download of maps before departure or while on Wi-Fi, avoiding the need to have a live data connection or to consume data on mobile telephone networks while moving. However, you need to have enough storage capacity in your phone. On the other hand, if you have a weak and useless Wi-Fi connection, you may want to turn it off or move further away, and start using cellular data.

Most of the apps mentioned here cannot be used in China and South Korea, due to national security laws requiring navigation to be provided only by local apps. In China, the most common navigation apps are Baidu Maps and Amap, while South Korea uses Naver Map and Kakao Map. In addition, while Western GPS navigation apps are not banned in Russia, they may not be up to date due to Western sanctions on Russia. Instead, Russians use Yandex Maps for their navigation needs.

Some still choose a standalone navigation device, rather than using a smartphone app. There are several reasons why a smartphone may not be the best navigation device: small screen size, short battery life, overheating, piecemeal map coverage, lack of water resistance, no Wi-Fi or cellular data in remote locations, and risk of theft.

A standalone device has county-wide map coverage, and can have better controls and screen brightness adjustment. Most are made by Garmin, Magellan, and TomTom. Also, hand-held units (not meant for city or highway driving) can be waterproof, and run from standard batteries. Should you lose it, you don't also lose your photos and other critical phone information. And in most cases, you can still call for help and check your location on the smartphone when the navigation device runs out of power or fails in other ways.

You will need to set the device so it works as a GPS. This will depend on the type of GPS you are using. But the basic way to use a GPS is this: once you've got it working and you've got the destination set, all you need to do is drive and GPS will work out your location as you drive. It will then use your location on the route to determine where next you will need to turn or drive on so you can continue along the GPS's route to the destination.

Check the settings for what routes the device will prefer. If you have a flight to catch or driving conditions are bad, you probably want the "fastest route" instead of "shortest route", but if you want to enjoy the landscape and come in touch with the life in regions you are driving through, you instead might want to avoid the fastest route. There may be other options or possibilities to finetune. Sometimes unpaved roads are not even shown by default, so if you want or need to use them you need to explicitly enable viewing them.

It is advisable that you use your GPS software for some time in familiar areas, so that you get used to it and any quirks it may have. Try also to get into conditions similar to those that may pose challenges at your destination.

Although a GPS navigator makes navigation and orientation very much easier in many situations, in some circumstances the information given may be misleading. For example, you're traveling from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. You enter into the GPS system that you're going to Philadelphia, so the GPS successfully takes you to Philadelphia. But for the GPS "Philadelphia" is not the town, but some more or less arbitrary point in the town (perhaps the geographic midpoint). It will take you there, even if that means driving away from your intended destination by obscure alleys. Giving a suitable exact address avoids this problem.

Enclosed areas, narrow streets, and unusual topography can cause problems for GPS navigation, which may be less reliable than usual in these areas, as the device gets information from fewer, sometimes none of the satellites. A GPS needs a good portion of at least half the sky to work effectively—clouds and bad weather are not an issue though. Your device may mislead you if signals are blocked by skyscrapers or even the canopy of the Kakamega Rainforest. However, GPS signals can be imagined like sunlight, the more that gets through the better, but a dark room and you are lost.

Lack of accuracy when off-road can apply to both smartphones and standalones. If the device is running a program for driving, it assumes you're on the road (especially Waze), and adjusts the "location cursor" accordingly. Google Maps has a walking mode, but you risk damage to your smartphone if watch it while walking in the terrain. If you can afford it, have three devices capable of receiving GPS: a standalone device for driving, a durable standalone waterproof device for walking and hiking, and a smartphone.

When you cross time zones, the GPS will automatically update the time and ETA. However, if you're setting up the route, and the destination is in a different time zone, your ETA is still in your current time. Example: You're driving east from Chicago (Central Time) to Detroit (Eastern Time), and you must be there by 3 PM. If your ETA during setup in Chicago is anything beyond 2 PM, you will be late.

China uses its own coordinate system, which is deliberately obfuscated and different from the international standard, apparently for national security reasons. This means that various foreign GPS navigation programs have problems in China, with locations displayed about 100–700 m from where they should be. Wikivoyage's practice is to use standard (WGS84) latitude and logitude coordinates in all articles, including articles about China, which means that our coordinates should display correctly on OpenStreetMap and other mapping programs that use WGS84, but may display incorrectly on Chinese mapping apps. However, some Wikivoyage articles mistakenly use some Chinese (GCJ) coordinates, which will display incorrectly on Wikivoyage maps and other OpenStreetMap-based maps. The Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau use WGS84 coordinates, but for some reason some mapping apps still have problems, especially near the border with mainland China. The result of all of this for travellers is you should be careful when using GPS navigation in China, including Hong Kong and Macau—be on the lookout for offsets of 100–700 m, especially when doing anything that involves interaction between Chinese and foreign data or software. For more details see the Wikipedia article Restrictions on geographic data in China.

Also consider that the accuracy of satellite navigators depends on the provider of the signal. Any country in possession of the satellites can lower the resulting accuracy according to their will, which is especially relevant in times of conflict or around conflict regions. This is also explicitly stated in certain military doctrines. Also, it is not unheard of that GPS scramblers are used in case of high level meetings of politicians to lower GPS accuracy to reduce the danger of any attack, ground or air – or in any conflict just to cause trouble or to make a political point. This might in general not be an issue, but in case you are hiking near the border between Georgia and Russia, you might wonder why suddenly the accuracy of your hiking position drops. Then, you will need a reliable offline map (see OsmAnd above) and map reading skill.

If you're driving, be careful of dangerous or remote roads. River crossings, mountain passes and poor road surfaces aren't always taken into account by all navigation software. Do a sanity check to make sure you're taking the main road. Try and navigate to an address or a known place. If you're carrying bikes on the roof, don't drive under a low bridge just because a car GPS says this is a fine route. Pay attention to the roads.

If you're using a GPS navigator for backcountry hiking, you just lifted the stakes in the game. You need to check the veracity of the route before you go – against a known reliable source. Open mapping data is often done by armchair mappers from aerial imagery – and mapped trails may lead into fences, steep country, and cliffs that aren't visible from this imagery. Some navigation or orienteering skill and some experience with the device will be needed to identify and handle these situations. And like all electronics, the device can fail, and (you know Murphy's law, don't you!) it may fail at the worse possible moment. Especially paper maps may use coordinate systems other than WGS84 (which is used by the GPS), thus giving a mismatch in positions unless correction data are used. Check beforehand. If you're in England, France, or Spain, don't forget to double check east (+) and west (-) longitude coordinates, as these countries have both. Satellite navigation uses quite a lot of power. Carry a spare battery. Remember that batteries are consumed quickly in the cold. For longer voyages a solar power charger may be an option, but whether its capacity suffices (also in cloudy weather and other less-than-ideal circumstances) and it keeps working is an open question.

Some manufacturers (such as Garmin) market specialised devices specifically for marine use. The underlying satellite signal is the same, but a marine GPS stores nautical charts (usually purchased separately) instead of highway maps. If you take this on the autobahn, it'll display valid coordinates but tell you that you've run aground.

If you're on a boat with a non-marine device, reverse problems apply: some devices may put the marker on a nearby road on the assumption that the location in the water must be due to signal problems. To see the smallest rocks you may have to zoom in so much that you don't get any overview. In low visibility conditions, remember that boats, swimmers, birds and that half-submerged log are not on your map. If you sail in the night and the person navigating is simultaneously lookout, make sure the brightness can be adjusted to dim enough (which is much dimmer than you could imagine in the day).

The device should be usable for the intended use. A device used by the driver should allow him or her to concentrate on the driving. A device used outdoors should be rain and moisture resistant. The controls should be usable also in the field and the display bright enough in sunshine and dim enough in the night.

The device may fail. Also, the signal can be interfered with, such as probably by Russia now and then in the Finnish airspace. You should have some backup, usually including paper maps and paper notes about where you are, including time of and direction since last update (depending on circumstances, good mental notes may be enough). A traditional compass and a flashlight may be a good investment if you plan on traveling far away from infrastructure.

Consider using a computer or tablet with a larger screen for route planning. You can get a wider view than a screen on phone or small GPS. Then you can transfer the route to your smaller device once your planning is done. On a boat you may want to use that larger screen also for actual navigation (check that the devices can communicate: there are different connectors and protocols). It is still hardly ever as large as a paper chart, and zooming out can hide important features.

For technical reasons, it is not possible to track your position using GPS (or GNSS) alone as transmissions only go in one direction: The satellites transmit a time signature and your receiver uses that to calculate your position – that's it. Thus, an old-fashioned hand-held GPS device without mobile network connectivity is not a concern for your privacy.

Things can change quite dramatically, though, when using navigation on your mobile phone. The navigation app has access to your location, and may record your location history or even share it with service providers. Most modern phones allow you to limit which apps have access to your location information. These permissions and limits are found in the phone settings, and it is worth checking to limit apps with location access if you are concerned about privacy.

L5 signal is slowly being introduced into consumer devices (as of 2023, it is supported by some mainstream phones and other devices). GPS accuracy will be accurate to within a few centimeters, and will work much better in areas with partial sky-cover.

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