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.
Since this only effects your older devices could a firmware update fix this??
Fortunately my Mooney partner warned me about 8.3 before I was even aware there was an iOS upgrade. But I don’t understand the posts who say “that’s why I carry paper charts”. If you no longer have a connected GPS, doesn’t your EFB still display charts and IAPs? After all, your paper charts don’’t connect to your BadElf, and they still function.
Please… Everyone should call Apple support to get their fix on the priority list or it may take months or longer for them to do anything…
Mine stopped working when I upgraded to 8.2.1…hoped that 8.3 would fix the problem…no luck. Then I read this warning. Hoping this is fixed/resolved ASAP.
I have a Bad Elf Pro,Foreflight,Apple Air2,iPhone 6+. I bought all within the past 4 months. I updated my iPhone to the 8.3 but I did not update my iPad, they all still work normal together. No problems. Maybe after a certain mfg date they were not affected.