[MX4] Location is not updated when you open NearBy Scope

[Marco Graziotti]

I'm using a Meizu MX4 with OTA9, and "NearBy Aggregator Scope" V. 4.0.0.

When I open the NearBy Scope, the current position it's never updated. I have to tear down the scope to refresh all the data and the position.

Can you fix this bug?

Thank you

[Kyle Nitzsche (knitzsche)]

Hi Marco,

Thanks for reporting this! Let's first try to eliminate a couple possibilities:

* Please check your device Location Indicator (pull down from the top of the screen) and ensure Location is ON
* Please check Nearby Scope settings and confirm that you have enabled Location Data.
* In general, the location data that is first available to a scope is deduced from your IP address. So the Nearby scope may display that address first. When the GPS based location becomes available and you refresh the scope, it should use that.

So please respond with that info and then we can take further steps.

Also note that the Nearby scope (and pretty much all scopes) simply receives the location from the framework, so this bug is most likely not related to the Nearby scope.

[Andrea Bernabei (faenil)]

@Kyle: are we're doing IP location detection? I thought we were just doing AGPS (1 gsm tower + WiFi access points list if available) + normal gps

@Marco: please also have a look at https://bugs.launchpad.net/location-service/+bug/1514777

[Kyle Nitzsche (knitzsche)]

@Andrea. I stand corrected. Still, it is almost certainly not related to the Nearby Scope itself. Do you think this bug is correctly a dup or 1514777?

[Marco Graziotti (graziottimarco)]

Hi Kyle,

Thank you for your reply.
I will answer to you step by step:

* Yes, device Location Indicator is turned ON (see picture attached)
* Yes, Location Data is enabled in Nearby Scope settings (see picture attached)
* Usually my MX4 is always connected via wi-fi or via mobile data. The expected behavior it's an auto refresh of position. In my own case I have to tear down the scope to refresh all the data and the position, also when the connection type change (ex. I'm going from my home to work, and this two position are 40 km far, the connection type change and the IP address too, but the position isn't updated).

I think that it's a bug.
The expected behavior it's an auto refresh of position that should happen when the user open the NearBy Scope (and not inside a background process).

What do you think about?

Thank you for your work.

[Marco Graziotti (graziottimarco)]

@Andrea tonight when I'm going at home I will check if the bug 1514777 affect me too.

Do you think that 1bug 514777 is related to NearBy scope position failure?

Thank you

[Kyle Nitzsche (knitzsche)]

Hi Marco,

Thanks for the info.

Regarding your comment: " The expected behavior it's an auto refresh of position. In my own case I have to tear down the scope to refresh all the data and the position"

Perhaps this is the issue.

Scopes do not "auto refresh". Once the information is displayed, it remains statically displayed until the user refreshes the scope (there are some scopes in which where a scope can refresh periodically if you navigate away, enought time passes and your return.). So if I understand you correctly, I think the issue here may be that your expectation of how scopes work may not be quite in line with the intention.

So this sounds like a feature request.

[Marco Graziotti (graziottimarco)]

Hi Kyle,

ok, I understand.
Yes, I think is useful an auto refresh of position in NearBy scope, maybe when the user open the scope.

Thank you.

[Kyle Nitzsche (knitzsche)]

Hi Design people:

As you can see a user requests auto refreshing of some scopes when they re-achieve focus perhaps if and only if the location has changed. This makes some sense indeed since for Nearby, the displayed results are clearly no longer valid given the new location.

[Paweł Stołowski (stolowski)]

This needs to be considered very carefully, i.e:
- what shoud be the distance between locations to justify new search? What if the user is moving fast (driving etc.)? Isn't it going to be annoying then?
- what if network goes on and off in the meantime? We don't have good support for that yet in scopes (scopes API has the ability to cache & restore cached results if scope cannot retrieve them, but this needs cooperation from scopes and they don't use this API yet). It may be annoying for the user to have scope refresh automatically as he moves if network is not stable and he ends up with empty dash.

[Marco Graziotti (graziottimarco)]

@Pawel

Thank you for your reply.

- the idea is to permit the auto refresh when user open the NearBy scope. This action doesn't care about distance, scope refresh it self only when have focus.
For example, on my MX4 I'm using six scopes, one of this is NearBy scope, and it isn't displayed as a first scope (home), so when I'm slide to show NearBy scope, I prefer if this scope show me a updated information by itself without request more action from me.

- if network goes off a message will be displayed, for ex.: "No service available, check your connection status".

[Kyle Nitzsche (knitzsche)]

@Marco:

- Nearby scope *does* display a message if you have no network connection and f you have location data disabled. Are you not seeing this?

- Regarding auto refresh on focus: we *could* enable a feature that forces the Nearby scope to auto refresh when it achieves focus every few minutes. I'll see what design thinks about this. The downside is that if a user is not moving, then they have to sit through a refresh that is essentially pointless and it slows their experience down.

[Marco Graziotti (graziottimarco)]

@Kyle:

- No, I never try this before. I will check later.

- You say "The downside is that if a user is not moving, then they have to sit through a refresh that is essentially pointless and it slows their experience down.".
Yes this is true. To preserve hardware/network overload it's possible to check the new position before updating all the data inside the scope. I think this is possible using a JavaScript function, an IF - ELSE function: IF the actual position it isn't changed, don't update the scope, ELSE update alla the data inside the scope.

What do you think?

[Marco Graziotti (graziottimarco)]

PS:

I don't know what kind the data scope manage, but I think that it's easy to parse a string with JSON and make a comparison on the name, ex.: 'Rome, Via Cassia' it's different to 'Milano - Viale Marconi'.

[Kyle Nitzsche (knitzsche)]

@Marco: The issue here is that the scope only refreshes when the unity shell forces it to refresh. So refreshing only when the location has changed by a certain amount would need to be implemented in the unity shell. While this is theoretically possible, the larger question is whether it is really desirable and how to fit it into priorities if it is.

[Marco Graziotti (graziottimarco)]

@Kyle:

thank you for you answer.
I understand. I don't know how scope works, so I'm sure that you know if this feature can be realized or not.

Thank you.