Are Google Play Services required to find the current gps location on an Android phone?

Question

I've found two sources on retrieving the GPS location of an andriod phone, one from the Google Website:

http://developer.android.com/training/location/retrieve-current.html#top

and one from here:

What is the simplest and most robust way to get the user's current location on Android?

They both describe different steps. I'm not sure which one to follow, unfortunately the Android Emulator doesn't seem to come with Google Play installed, so I want to go with the second.

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

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You can use LocationManager to getLastKnownLocation, without Play services.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

Community

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answered Dec 29 '13 at 03:42

banderkat

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 29 '13 at 03:42

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No they aren't. Google services provide support for A-GPS assisted with Wifi which can get a location fix faster than just GPS or GPS+Mobile network.

answered Dec 29 '13 at 03:42

sgupta

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 29 '13 at 05:05

Well Emulator device can get location co-ordinates but manually by ddms device manager, And yes there are two way get location co-ordinates. One by android native and other by google play servives library. second one has its own issues. its works with proper version of google play services installed on the device. I prefer better use first one android by using simple location manager class.

Are Google Play Services required to find the current gps location on an Android phone?

3 Answers3