More info from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/socalhiking/comments/mqtxrg/video_o...

He had GPS coords in photos turned off. He sent the photo before he got lost, then his phone died, then he realized his predicament. Yeah, hikers who know WTF they are doing generally don't end up in the news like this. This is distressingly common on the 10,000+ ft peaks near Los Angeles, like these folks: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/hikers-survival-san....

Wow, that article is something else. As an avid hiker/mountain biker, I cannot imagine going unprepared into the woods in the best of conditions, let alone in blizzard conditions. The fact that they only had a sleeping bag and an American flag to keep warm is so stupid it’s beyond belief.

All to plant an American flag on the top of a mountain. I truly hope the hiker didn’t actually lose any fingers or toes but I do hope they were made to reimburse SAR cost and fined for littering.

Happens a lot in Scotland, fortunately the volunteer mountain rescue teams here are excellent. An example:

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands/2014978/...

Edit: There are ~20 deaths per year on Scottish mountains

Yeah, they were even urged by some experienced hikers (who had microspikes etc.) to turn around near the trailhead due to treacherous conditions. Serious contenders for outdoors Darwin award.

I think this is a good example of the Dunning Kruger Effect -- however poorly it matches with what the original article proved -- of "when you're a beginner, you don't realize how much of a beginner you are."

A non-expert climber figures a tough hike is basically like any other hike they've been on, only a little harder. They don't recognize how large the gulf is between a tough hike up a mountain and a treacherous life-or-death situation.

Getting coordinates from towers doesn't work the way most people think it does.

First, there are still many many areas in the US where your phone will only be able to get a reliable signal to one tower, and those areas also happen to correlate well with areas that people like to go for outdoor recreation.

Second, you have to have somebody involved that knows the right specific questions to ask, and you have to have a representative at the phone company that's not a fleshy automaton. Search and rescue efforts tend to be coordinated by local law enforcement (usually sheriffs or park services), and training varies a lot. So, for practical purposes, this information is often not available.

Third, the information you get back requires some interpretation. It's not like the phone company sends back a map with a nice circle on it; you get some values back from one or more radios at one or more locations (possibly with or without orientations for the radios, and possibly that information is current and reliable or not). Then you have to plot those values, and then you have to take into account fun little quirks of physics, like the part where canyons of some kinds of rock can bounce a signal really well and cause somebody to be closer to the tower than the data would suggest. Other formations act like big reflectors.

Zero of the searches that I have been on have included helpful information from cell towers.

I think all smartphones have a real GPS receiver, which means cell signal is not necessary at all to get location information; just a view of the sky, which is likely to be the case if you're lost outside.

Tree cover and valleys as well as phone placement or orientation can have a massive effect on gps signal

Very true, but on a search like this, narrowing a location down to even a couple miles GREATLY reduces the search area.

They use 'assisted GPS', which requires cell service for a reliable reading

Assisted GPS just helps with a faster initial acquisition. You can put your phone in airplane mode to test it out. It might be a little slower to acquire, but you'll get good accuracy.

That is not true, A-GPS just speeds up the time to fix by supplying ephemeral data via a sidechannel. It just takes longer to receive via GPS if it is out of date or you have moved position considerately since last fix

I have relied on gps with downloaded topo maps in areas where there is literally no cell reception. iPhone X using AllTrails fwiw, I feel like it must have a real gps radio packed in there somewhere.

Indeed it does have a true GPS satelite receiver. Actually, the iPhones are quite accurate.

The iPhone 12 utilizes the GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, and BeiDou constellations. Utilizing more satellites means determining location more quickly and returns better accuracy especially in marginal environments.

Have you ever used Garmin back in the day, or a USB GPS receiver? It can take a minute or so to get enough initial information to deduce a location at a low datarate. AGPS gets some or all of that information (I'm not sure) from another source, usually a cell phone network so that first location is deduced much faster. Modern phones have GPS receivers, but use AGPS. If a modern phone has no network signal, it will still get a GPS signal, it will just take longer to get the first location.

Not to be confused with other technologies such as skyhook [2], which was used in iPhone 1 and other older devices to fuse radio signal strength, known wifi hotspot locations, etc as a kind of pseudo-GPS. It was only relevant for a few years.

Wikipedia [1] has a nice short explanation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless

However, without cell service, they fall back to the sky, and the result is usually good to within a few tens of meters.

The downside is that it can take much longer to acquire a fix.

The picture was sent before he went missing. It wasn't an SOS, he was simply sending a picture to his friend.

From the TFA: "The hiker, 46-year-old Rene Compean, sent a photo to a friend before becoming lost"

My understanding is that he _did_ communicate to his friend that he was lost and his battery was dying https://twitter.com/ai6yrham/status/1382381870134951938/phot....

He needs a better phone. It's a potato quality photo. A better phone might have had him found sooner.

I don't know how to get my gps coords on my phone.

I am the developer of FindMeSAR (https://findmesar.com) which is mentioned here in the comments. The first time you open this web page your device must be online. The code is saved in a special part of your browser's memory. This web page (aka web app) will then work offline. This is done with service worker coding plus appcache coding as a fall back.

If you are a bit skeptical that a web page can work offline, just go ahead and try it.

There is an icon you can save on your screen and a 'Tips' button with more information.

Finally, it turns out that if you ever need to call for help with your cell phone there are some things you should know in order to have the best chance of reaching 911 or anyone else. After reading through a whole pile of documents on the FCC website I put my findings into 4 PDF reports. The end of each report has links to the other reports.

Open PDF: https://findmesar.com/p/pdf/smart_way_call_911_with_cell_pho...

Most messaging apps (iMessage, Whatsapp, maybe others) have a "send my current location" option.

I have had this site bookmarked on my phone for years. Luckily I’ve never had to use it! When you allow the website to get your location, it shows your gps coordinates and accuracy.

https://findmesar.com/

It wouldn’t work in the case when you have cell service but no data.

> It wouldn’t work in the case when you have cell service but no data.

Better to have an app to do it locally, I think the odds are high that when you would need something like this you probably won't have an internet connection.

This one is pretty cool. It basically gathers your location (and battery level) and composes an SMS for you to send to 911 or your friend.

https://www.backcountrysos.com/

In my experience I have data when I have enough service to send a text or make a call. I’m sure there are edge cases however.

Here's another one that works similarly helping you find your location and send it to someone, but it also allows a rescuer or anyone else to create an automated request for your location which you can provide in an easy way.

https://yourlo.ca/tion

Me neither. Should be found in General settings on iPhone, rather than via Google Maps (seems to be the only way, from what I can tell?)

The compass app has your coordinates. You can also share your current location with other iMessage users (maybe SMS users, not sure) if you have location sharing enabled, it can be enabled to send your coordinates to other people (I think the options are permanent, 24 hours, and 1 hour).

The trouble with the Compass app is that it's infrequently used, so will usually be automatically offloaded and will need to be downloaded again when you're lost with limited internet access.

Huh? IPhone does that, just remove unused apps from the device?

It's optional.

if that isn't some microoptimization. how much space can a compass app waste compared to your average bloated app?

As far as I remember this feature needs to be activated by the user. It also applies to other rarely used apps (the compass app is not treated differently) and only happens once the phone is low on storage.

I just opened the compass app on my iPhone and I don't see any coordinates there. I'm on 13.7; maybe this is a recent change to the app?

The info I have in a non-sharable google doc is as follows:

iPhone GPS Location (4s and recent)

This document will give you a step by step procedure to retrieve the GPS location of a lost person using the “Compass” tool. In order to use this tool, the iPhone owner must enable some privacy settings which may be “on” by default. If you cannot get the GPS coordinates from Compass, go to the “Troubleshooting” section.

Asking for GPS Coordinates First ask the lost person to launch the compass application on their iPhone.

If the person does not know what it is, provide them the following instruction: Put a single finger in the middle of the phone’s screen and swipe down all in one move. This will bring out the “Spotlight Search” tool.

Ask them to type “Compass”. This will bring up the “Compass” tool into view as seen below: Ask them to select the “Compass” application in order to launch it

Once launched, if the word “Calibrate” appears on the screen (as seen below), the user has to initialize the application. Let him know he needs to move and rotate the phone until calibration is done.

Once calibrated, the user should see the coordinates at the bottom of the screen. If the coordinates are not there, go to the troubleshooting section and restart this process from step 1.

Troubleshooting Be aware that only iPhone 4s and more recent are equipped with a GPS chipset. All older iPhone will not be able to provide you with GPS coordinates.

In order for the “Compass” application to provide the GPS coordinate, it needs to be authorized to communicate with the GPS component of the phone. To ensure this authorization is set, follow these steps:

Ask the person to launch their iPhone settings

From the main “Setting” page, have them select “Privacy”

From the “Privacy” section select “Location Services”.

Under the “Location Services” section, the “Location Services” setting should be “on” (or green) and the “Compass” entry should report “While Using”.

A quick google search suggests that the feature has been around since at least iOS 11 (and I'm confident much earlier, but that was the version I got results for on the first page of my google search, I'm not digging deeper), but you need location services turned on. Check that, then disable again if you don't want location services on by default.

Open Maps, long click your location to drop a marker. The “marked location” panel shows your coordinates. Drag it towards the top of the screen to see it

Use the built-in Compass app.

On iOS, you can scroll up on your photo when looking at it in Photos, and it should show you a location if it's available.

This. Most phones make simple tasks like reading your lat/lon a PITA. You have to download a spammy 25MB ad-filled app that wants you to subscribe to some casino newsletter before you can read out your coordinates.

Personally I would do it with Termux and Python, but non-coders would have trouble using that.

Hell on the latest version of Android I can't even read my battery percentage without typing in some code (the latest update removed the battery % from the status bar). Everything has gone downhill.

> 25MB ad-filled app

I really started noticing this since starting to use F-Droid, for a lot of simple apps in the Google Play Store, you can get the same functionality, with zero ads and a much smaller bundle size in F-Droid.

For example this app from F-Droid, which shows your GPS location & coordinates, weighs in at _48KiB_! https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.borneq.heregpslocation/ (disclaimer: I have not tried the app, it was just the first result that came up from a search).

It's pretty cool to see that yes, it's perfectly possible to build lightweight Android apps; and it's really a question of what you put in the bundle.

You can find a few open-source Android "GPS test" apps on GitHub, and ditto for other "sensor test" apps.

(I've always thought the terminology was a little confusing/imprecise, since I wouldn't consider these apps to be "tests", but rather simply the UI of a GPS receiver. Then again, when I hear "GPS" I think of a receiver-only, i.e. a device that just tells you your current lat/lon/etc. position, whereas I guess what most people consider a "GPS app" would more precisely be termed a "GPS navigation/map".)

On almost every phone you can turn showing battery percentage back on if you want it. What OEM are you using?

How do you get that info in Python?

pip install termux-api and then

    import termux
    termux.API.location()

Install one one of these:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eclipsim.g...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.gp...

Note that the second one is open-source (https://github.com/barbeau/gpstest) while the first one is adware.

Sending a screenshot of your location marker in a Maps app would work well too. But I guess taking screenshots is probably also a power-user feature that many people may not be familiar with...

Telegram and other chat apps support sending your location to someone.

What 3 words is also well known and used by emergency services in the UK for example.

Only according to their PR department. I've never seen any independent report of their actual prevalence in emergency service use.

As others have said, it's proprietary, and I don't want to see a private company becoming a gatekeeper to such an important function. Open standards are available. Google Maps provides Plus Codes, for example, and pretty much all Android users have that without having to install an additional app.

A few months ago I phoned Essex Police (via 999) to report a dangerous obstruction on a major road. Because it was part of the network of roundabouts and slip roads near Stansted Airport, I didn't know the exact name of that road- I could only say that it was the slip-road onto the A120. The 999 operator advised me to use W3W to give the exact location.

Now, this is only one anecdote, and maybe I just happened to get the one operator who had swallowed the what3words PR line- but at least some British emergency services are telling callers to use it.

2nd anecdotal - I've reported several issues such as debris in the carriageway to the South Wales Police via Facebook Messenger.

(Not urgent enough to tie up a 999 operator, and it's faster to pull in somewhere and message, than ring and report via 101.)

They've been happy with location given by w3w.

> They've been happy with location given by w3w.

I'm sure they would be. I'm not doubting that they'll be able to figure it out. Rather, I'm interested to know what they prefer.

Every US public safety agency or SAR group I know of in the US prefers regular latitude and longitude or UTM instead of a commercial apps like that. It's easy enough to get your Lat/Lon or UTM on your phone and you don't even need a special app.

If someone's coordinates don't come through automatically with the 911 call, the dispatcher or person running the search can walk them through finding their location if the person doesn't know how to do it.

W3W is not popular in the US or Canada generally, in large part because it's a proprietary system and so it's not easy to integrate it into the systems that agencies already use for incident management.

Even worse the gps coordinates should have been in the picture meta data

Most messaging apps and other social media platforms strip the metadata for privacy reasons.

true but not quite. They strip it. Store the original and the meta data in their own database (because data on people is what gives them value) then they serve the stripped down quality one.

Are you sure it's not stripped out on the client before anything is sent to the server?

It would actually be really interesting to see a list of which apps strip metadata early on the client side vs. which retain it on their server and merely strip data from what is shared to other users...

It'd be hard or impossible to distinguish which ones strip it on the backend and discard the original image and EXIF data vs. ones who retain some of the EXIF data in some way. Just because they don't strip it on the client doesn't necessarily imply they're storing the metadata on the backend. (It just leaves the possibility open.)

Unless they're willfully doing something illegal, when you ask for your data under GDPR you should be able to see if they kept the original images or EXIF metadata, or if they discarded it.

Of course I'm totally ready to accept that most of those companies just lie and hide some of the data they gather on their users.

Use a phone that supports removable media.

Possibly. Sometimes that gets stripped out when you try to send it. But yes, in theory it may have been in the photo's metadata too.

Are you seriously asking this question?? You think he was lost, but had a working phone with network connection??

It's fun to think that identifying the location from the picture did it, but actually law enforcement can easily get location history from the cell phone provider for any subscriber.