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.
Just a new iPad mini 2 and got SkyDemon and ext GPS receiver up and running – into the aircraft and up in the air to find that no data is coming through… You can imagine which section of vocabulary got used before reverting to “good” old analogue backup. Now several hours later I find this – Hooray and thanks to Apple, a month after you guys made them aware, still has done nothing…
Just spent several frustrating hours trying various sequences of turning devices and features on and off, boot and re-booting, rubbing my stomach and patting my head, trying to make Foreflight recognize my location on the iPad. So glad to find out that this is a known problem. Please keep the pressure on Apple to get this fixed quickly. — Thanks.
I had a long on line chat with a “senior” Apple tech and she said the issue had to be resolved by Garmin, Bad Elf and other third party Bluetooth GPS receivers, not by Apple. I had a similar chat with Garmin who said it is Apple’s problem. Can you give any more encouraging information.
Can you confirm that the bad elf 2300 is not affected by the ios8.3 issues?
The tethering to the iPhone work around doesn’t work. I tried on yesterday’s flight to Roche Harbor. Had to use the iPhone and onboard gps. The iPhone actually gets spotty at higher altitudes also (6,000 and up). Luckily I know the area very well and I just used pilotage and Forflight without gps connection. I NEED MY FOREFLIGHT BACK, hopefully this will be fixed soon…