this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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GPS via Satellites is offline! All satellites do(*) is transmit down to the Earth's surface. Those signals will exist whether there's a receiver there (ie. Your phone) or not. A GPS works by detecting those signals (ideally it will get at least 4 different ones for best accuracy) and calculating your location by triangulating it based on the signals (**). No upload on your end is required, it's very similar to how radio works.
(*) As in, all they need to do is this. Specific satellites have different features for different jobs and specs. But all they have to do to make GPS work is transmit.
(**) I mean "triangulate" as in the principle of triangulation, as in being able to determine the geography of a point via the topology of it to other known points. It's not actual triangulation with satellites because a fourth one acts as a correction factor -- we're dealing with signals going the speed of light after all. But that isn't important for whether or not GPS needs to upload anything to work -- it doesn't.