<html><head><title>My Phone on Expo</title></head><body>
<h1>My Phone on Expo</h1>
<h2>Before Expo</h2>
<p>Since 2019 it has become apparent that many people have not been properly prepared for Expo.
<p>This is what you need to do:
<ul>
<li>Fix the default for your phone's location setting
<li>Fix the default for uploading photos to the Expo Google photo album and the expo blog
<li>Decide on two or three people you will share your location with for the duration of expo - people who are on expo at the same time.
<li>Fix the default for recording your GPS track when you are walking in the plateau.
</ul>
<h3>The reason why</h3>
<p>Phones assume that you are walking along streets, or running along tracks or cycling. They are very bad at making the right guesses for the Totes Gebirge plateau.
<p>Do <em>not</em> select the "high accuracy" location setting on your phone. Mostly this will snap your position to the nearest cafe or bierstube: by default it will use the nearest WiFi it can find and assume that you are there, and will ignore the perfectly good GPS position it has recorded directly.
<p>This is all explained by Google <ahref="https://support.google.com/maps/answer/2839911?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform=Android">here</a>.
<p>On the plateau, this "high accuracy" mode will simply give you the <em>wrong</em> position if it can't get a decent GPS fix. There is poor cell tower reception too, so trying to use that for location is just as bad.
<p>What you want is GPS and <em>only</em> GPS (more precisely <ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNSS_applications">GNSS</a>: which includes GPS, Glosnas, Beidou, Galileo etc.).
<p>If you do not have a good GPS fix, <em>you want to know that</em>, not be given some confabulated guesstimate by whatever some programmer for Apple or Android thought your might want.
<p>When you share photos on your phone to the Expo photo sharing site, by default, the location of those photos will be stripped out. So all those lovely pics of intriguing cave entrances you snapped on your walks are now utterly useless.
<p>So, before expo, perhaps while sitting in a traffic jam around Munish or on the train from Bad Ischl, take a moment to photograph your travel companions in an embarassing pose and fix the this:
<ol>
<li>Go to Google photos on your phone
<li>Click the Sharing icon (top right, next to your own mugshot icon)
<li>Click on the "Expo Social Media" album that is being used for this year's expo
<li>Click on the 3 vertical dots, top right., then "Options"
<li>SLide the toggle on "Share photo locations" to the right to enable location sharing.
<li>You need to do this on each individual Google photo album.
</ol>
<h3>Share location with useful people on expo</h3>
tbd
<h3>Disabling GPS "energy saving" modes</h3>
tbd
<hr>
Go on to <ahref="/handbook/computing/gpxupload.html">Saving your GPS tracks</a></body></html>
