Alert: Compatibility Issue with Apple iOS 8.3 and External GPS Receivers
DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR APPLE DEVICE TO iOS 8.3 IF YOU RELY ON AN EXTERNAL GPS RECEIVER.
We are investigating reports that iOS 8.3 (released by Apple earlier this week) is not feeding GPS data from most external GPS receivers into 3rd party apps, such as ForeFlight, WingX, JeppFD, Navionics, and others. We have reproduced this issue in our lab and confirmed that this issue is not unique to Bad Elf GPS receivers, but affects other GPS receivers from Garmin and Dual Electronics as well.
Our newer GPS accessories, including the Bad Elf GPS for Lightning (BE-GPS-1008), Bad Elf GPS Pro+ (BE-GPS-2300), and Bad Elf GNSS Surveyor (BE-GPS-3300) do not seem to be negatively impacted.
We are working with Apple to resolve this issue and will provide status updates as we get more information. In the meantime, we recommend you wait to upgrade your Apple devices to iOS 8.3.
Update (Monday 13-April): We've passed all of the necessary information to Apple Support and got confirmation over the weekend that it has been passed to the correct team. We're optimistic it will be fixed in the next iOS 8.3.x release, and will post updates as we receive them.
Update (Thursday 16-April): We're still awaiting any news from Apple. In the meantime, we’re exploring several possible workarounds. We have confirmed that the beta iOS 8.4 released earlier this week has the same GPS issue. Some customers have reported successfully downgrading their iOS back to iOS 8.2, but we can’t recommend that process to our customers — it’s not supported by Apple and requires a complete wipe of your settings/apps/data. If you are a pilot grounded by this issue, please contact us via email to support@bad-elf.com and we’ll see what we can do to help. Rest assured we are doing everything in our power to get this resolved and will send another email when we have any new information.
For future updates on the iOS 8.3 situation, please view the latest information on our supplemental blog post, available here.
Well Brett,
I’m very impressed by the way you handled the whole Bluetooth/iOS 8.3 mess here and on the Apple forum.
I just ordered the Bad Elf 2200 GPS Pro. It seem to be a marvellous product.
Hope Apple will correct the bug before it get it.
Keith, after testing today, we have established that iOS 8.4 does not address the issues we are experiencing.
Does anyone know if ios 8.4Beta fixes this issue?
I was able to downgrade iPad 2 wi-fi back to 8.2 , Edwards link was good, and also a you-tube search confirmed same file for my iPad, I had never synced to iTunes, so it made me sync (8.3) before the restore button would allow a selection of the file I had saved to desktop. After re-boot it shows as a new device, so I may just go that route, I’m going to Apple store and ask if they have a trick to use the backup I had to create, but no biggie if it does not work.
I expect to be back in business with my DUAL 150 , after I move forward on settting up as new iPad or using backup.
Disregard, saw you post above. How come this was not tested on the beta release of 8.3, Apple had the 8.3 beta out for months before releasing it?