locationManager(_:didUpdateLocations:) last entry is sometimes extremely outdated

Question

According to Apple's own documentation around CLLocationManager

func locationManager(_ manager: CLLocationManager, didUpdateLocations locations: [CLLocation])
{
    locations.last // this is supposed to be the most recent 
}

However, during development, I sometimes notice that locations.last is sometimes minutes to hours out of date.

abs(locations.last.timestamp.timeIntervalSinceNow) // sometimes very large (e.g. 500, 5000, etc)

Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing this issue?

Answer 1

When Location Service can't get the current location by requesting GPS server.

It will return the cached/recent location. That is why you see its timestamp is 1 min or 1 hour ago.

It will return the cached/recent location.

This will help users to quickly access their current locations if they didn't travel significantly, that is when Accelerometer works to measure the movement of the device.