I recently went on a short vacation and brought my iPad 3 along. I rented a car and wanted to use my iPad 3 with the Tomtom navigation app to help with going around the place. To my horror, the Tomtom just kept telling me "Poor GPS reception"! I first wondered whether it was because of the recent jailbreak Absinthe 2.0 that have broke my GPS somehow. So I started researching whether anyone else had the same problem...
For those who has been wondering about this too, well, all iPads (which is iPad 1, iPad 2 and iPad 3) Wifi only models do not have the true GPS chip built in. One of the reason why Apple do not include a GPS chip in the Wi-Fi-only models is because many apps that use GPS for navigation and other duties need to draw on data from the Internet, even when they are out of range of a Wi-Fi signal. This means these GPS apps would effectively be "broken" when out of Wi-Fi range.
However, Wi-Fi-only iPads can quite accurately pinpoint your location under many conditions. As long as the iPad can pick up a few Wi-Fi signals, it uses what is called Wi-Fi positioning - which draws on a database of known Wi-Fi hotspots - to determine where you are. But you just cannot use it as a GPS navigation device, even if you tether it to your other iDevice that does have GPS (if you have done this successfully, I would love to know how).
Head over to Apple's iPad tech spec site and you will see it stated as Wifi location : [LINK]
So do you need true GPS on your iPad? If you do, make sure you get the 3G models.
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