Google is preparing to deploy a new feature on Android. Called Fused Orientation Provider (FOP), it will allow Maps to better indicate in which direction to look. You will finally stop going in circles!
You have certainly already experienced, at least once in your life, that moment of loneliness and frustration when, while you are late for an important meeting and you are looking for your way, you find yourself desperately going in circles. , phone in hand, in order to understand in which direction Google Maps is trying to take you. Yes, this is one of the weak points of the GPS application: the blue dot with its directional radius which indicates that you are facing a street is generally completely strawberry. Result: you spin around, like a demagnetized compass… before heading in the wrong direction. Besides the fact that you may feel somewhat ridiculous, this wandering wastes valuable time.
Fortunately, Google is preparing to resolve the problem through an update that it is deploying on the Android operating system, as it announces in a blog post. Please note that this is not an update visible to the user, but a new API, called Fused Orientation Provider (FOP), that the company makes available to developers so that these last ones can propose “quality and consistent orientation of the device” to users of third-party applications. It was time !
FOP: a compass that does not lose north
This new API provides more consistent orientation data on different models and brands of smartphones, while improving performance. For this, she “merges signals from the accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer” . Google also has “made changes to better handle magnetic disturbances and improve the reliability of the Maps icon”, but also third-party applications. The Mountain View firm specifies that, on smartphones with low-quality sensors, the new API will try to compensate.
This improvement will concern all Android devices – including the oldest, from those running Android 5 or higher – since it was designed to compensate “lower quality sensors and OEM implementations”. In addition to developers of navigation applications like Google Maps, FOP should be of interest to those working on augmented reality (AR) apps or those relying on geolocation or the movements of the user’s smartphone, because it offers “more consistent behavior and high performance” than the current Android Rotation Vector. Google has not indicated when exactly it will deploy the new API, but it should not be long!