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I am using Find my iPhone on a Jailbroken iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1. My service does not have a data plan. It is T-mobile with only voice and SMS.

When trying to view the location in Find My iPhone, it shows my phone as "Offline" even though I am connected to an active Wi-Fi signal and have location services on. When viewing the Find My iPhone app in iOS, it displays my phone as "No location available".

I've tried all steps in Troubleshooting Find My iPhone under "'No location available' alert", but the issue persists.

Find my iPhone in iCloud iPhone no location found iPhone devices screen iCloud settings Location Services Network Settings

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    I wish I had a nice solution, but it's clear that one of three things has broken down: The registration where Apple's push servers can send notifications to your device, the ability of your iOS to locate itself, the linking of the message from FMP to the location call. Have you determined that location works in general and notifications also work in general? That would help you isolate the issue to one of these three aspects of the function.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Aug 25, 2012 at 22:50
  • @bmike Yes, location services works in general (works fine with other apps such as Maps and Yelp). Notifications also work in general (I am able to get notifications from Calendar and Skype, etc.). What would be the next steps to troubleshoot?
    – Mike Eng
    Commented Aug 26, 2012 at 20:12
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    Hope someone with the jailbreak community is familiar with the problem. This is something that works with great reliability on non-jailbroken hardware / software. I suppose you could restore the device to Apple spec and see if the issue is corrected. If not, swap the hardware - if so, it's likely the jailbreak causing the glitch directly or indirectly. You could also enable a data plan (borrow a friend's SIM or purchase one from a carrier) to see if this service only works over data. I'd be surprised if that was so, since I've had it work on Wi-Fi with an iPad that is Wi-Fi only.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Aug 26, 2012 at 20:17
  • Don't quote me on this, but I think an iPhone will always try to locate itself through the cellular network when available (cellular location is more accurate than WiFi). Are you sure that you have data turned off in the Settings app? I agree with @bmike where he said to borrow a friend's SIM card for a minute to see if the problem persists. I expect this to be a cellular data problem. I've never heard of anyone with data on T-Mobile that has this same issue.
    – Andrew Larsson
    Commented Aug 29, 2012 at 20:28
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    I'm on the iPhone 4s 5.1.1 jailbroken. I get the same "no location available" message, but I am able to send messages and lock my phone through FMi. I have already checked push notifications with ipusher and everything is fine. GPS is accurate for all other apps as well.. Perhaps this can help isolate the issue.
    – user28288
    Commented Aug 30, 2012 at 10:49

1 Answer 1

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Location on an iPhone requires a data plan. This is because your iPhone’s GPS downloads an “almanac” file to help locate itself. This can’t happen over Wi-Fi, as these files are not on the internet, but on the internal network of your carrier.

As for your iPhone not using the Wi-Fi to locate itself, that’s probably because the network is not yet in Apple’s database.

There’s must be something broken if the iPhone is not showing up as online. There can be two possibilities. Either Apple has configured Find My iPhone only to use GPS or some tweak or a bad jailbreak is not allowing the findmyiphoned (process responsible for responding to Find My iPhone requests) to work or launch properly. As there can many things that can cause this problem, I would suggest first booting up in safe mode (SBSettings can do that) and seeing if the problem is resolved. If it is, that means a tweak caused a problem. If it isn’t, that means you did a bad jailbreak. In the latter case, a restore is the only option.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS

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  • Thanks. Do you have a link documenting this usage of an "almanac" file? As I mentioned, location services works on my phone for all other applications that use it (e.g. Maps), so that seems to contradict your claim. Also, I have had no other issues with the jailbreak. If you have a workaround or resolution, that would be helpful. Thanks.
    – Mike Eng
    Commented Sep 3, 2012 at 20:55
  • The wikipedia article references a link Networking iPhone A-GPS . Which, under the A-GPS section states that iPhone location services can work without a SIM card and/or Wi-Fi. "To ensure you are using satellite GPS, you can take out your SIM card..., turn off Wi-Fi, and turn on Location Services... go into Google Maps app... hit the bottom left location button, and it should start spinning. After about 2 minutes you should get your first satellite signal, and you should see a blue dot"
    – Mike Eng
    Commented Sep 4, 2012 at 16:04
  • That is the fallback if no almanac is available. The almanac is downloaded from the satellite. Also, it doesn’t take 2 minutes, as stated. it can take up to 10 minutes in urban environments.
    – duci9y
    Commented Sep 4, 2012 at 16:15

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