FusedLocationProviderClient.requestLocationUpdates not getting altitudes

Question

I'm experiencing some strange behavior with our Android app using Fused location Provider Api.

In some devices this api is not returning the altitudes

I can check it on Moto G 2d generation but our users report the same behavior at least on Moto G 3d generation, Nexus 6 and Moto X Play. In the great majority of other devices altitudes are returning well so I'm pretty sure that my implementation of the Api is correct.

The funny part is that I realized that if I use android.location.LocationManager , for example, like this

mLocationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER, 500, 0, locationListener);

the app is starting to receive altitudes, not only on 'LocationListener' subscribed to 'LocationManager' but on LocationCallback of the Fused Location Provider Api as well. But this breaks the optimization made by Fused location Provider Api and seems silly to use both apis.

I can experience similar behavior if I use both google maps and our app. While using google maps our app is receiving altitudes but when google maps is closed Fused Location Provider Api stops to send altitudes as well.

When I'm talking about not receiving altitudes I mean that location.hasAltitude() == false and location.getAltitude() == 0

This is my implementation to request location updates:

LocationServices.getFusedLocationProviderClient(context);
LocationRequest currentLocationRequest = new LocationRequest();
currentLocationRequest.setInterval(500)
                .setFastestInterval(0)
                .setMaxWaitTime(0)
                .setSmallestDisplacement(0)
                .setPriority(LocationRequest.PRIORITY_HIGH_ACCURACY);
 fusedLocationProviderClient.requestLocationUpdates(currentLocationRequest, locationCallback);

It seems to me that FusedLocationProviderClient is not turning on some hardware stuff on this devices, so may be a bug on this Api, but I didn't found any one else reporting that, except this similar behavior:

Nexus 6 Fused Location Provider getSpeed returns 0

Thanks.

Answer 1

Since hasAltitude() returns false there are parameters missing to the FusedLocationProvider that would make it possible to provide a confident altitude. This depends largely on the manufacturers setup and devices capabilities which is one of the reasons the Provider exists.

The reason could also be an insufficient GPS-lock or something else but since you could narrow it down to certain devices I would expect that not to be the issue.

You can try (as you already did) other location data sources and check if their results return an altitude, but keep in mind that that might be less consistent. My first try would be the old Location provider.

But there is no way for you to fix the misbehavior of the FusedLocationProvider it is a manufacturer config fail.