Updates on iOS6, iPhone 5, and more...
Just a few quick updates from the Bad Elf team. The last few weeks have been pretty exciting in terms of Apple news...
iOS 6
We've tested the Bad Elf GPS (30-pin plug-in) and GPS Pro (Bluetooth) accessories with iOS 6, and there are no known compatibility issues. The current app runs fine on iOS 6. We will be updating the app soon to take advantage of the larger screen and the new Bluetooth discovery/pairing APIs.
iPhone 5
Our new iPhone 5 arrived today, and we are very happy to report the GPS Pro is working great with Apple's best-selling iPhone to date. It will take a few weeks for us to work thru the MFi process to officially claim full compatibility with the iPhone 5, but signs are good!
New Lightning Connector
We haven't been able to get our hands on a Lightning-to-30pin adapter cable yet, but as soon as we do, we'll post an update on compatibility with the plug-in Bad Elf GPS. We're expecting it to work fine and to be a good solution for people who are upgrading to the new iPhone 5 or iPod touch (5th generation) when it becomes available later this fall.
Coming soon...
I just got back from 5 weeks of business and vacation travel in Asia and Spain, and used the GPS Pro to record some of my adventures. I'm very happy to report that the real-world GPS performance and battery life have been extremely good in a variety of conditions and vehicles (train, car, plane, boat). During the next week I'll post some logs and images from these trips to give you a taste of the GPS Pro in action.
Hi Steve,
The BE-GPS-1000 works fine with my iPad mini (running iOS 6.0), but I was just able to reproduce what you describe with my iPod touch (5th gen, also 6.0). The LED flashes when our iOS app is running, and for some period of time after it goes into the background, but with apps like Maps and CMS LapTimer Pro, the LED stays off. Same behavior with both of the Apple Lightning-to-30pin converters.
I hooked up the sniffer and the symptoms are identical to what some of our users saw when they upgraded to iOS 6.0… basically, some bogus cached setting in Core Location was preventing the iOS device from powering up external GPS receivers. Some combination of toggling Location Services off/on globally and for each app usually fixed it, but some people had to do a backup/reset/restore of their iOS device.
Back to my iPod touch… after toggling Location Services and not seeing any change, I went ahead and did the pending upgrade to iOS 6.0.1. After it rebooted the device, I’m seeing the correct behavior and the BE-GPS-1000 is working well with both of the Apple Lightning-to-30pin converters.
So, hopefully a simple reboot or iOS upgrade will fix this for you. If it doesn’t, please drop us a note to support@bad-elf.com and we’ll get this resolved via email. Once that happens we can post a summary back here to the blog for anyone who runs across the same issue.
Thanks for your patience and detailed problem report!
Best regards,
-Brett
Drop a note to support@bad-elf.com and we’d be happy to help diagnose any issues you’re seeing!
Hi, any news on comparability of the bad elf receiver and ipad mini? I have tried it with a mini using apples’s lightning connector and get get it to work.
Thanks, Steve
Hi Andy,
We’re also eager to get our hands on the new iPad mini tomorrow! We’re expecting it to work out of the box with the GPS Pro (via Bluetooth) and even our GPS dongle (via Apple’s Lighting-to-30pin adapters).
As for the Lightning connector — we have several new products in development but I can’t say more at this time. As you’ve probably heard there are unlikely to be many Lightning accessories available until early 2013 due to changes in the MFi program and parts availability.
Thanks,
Brett
I seem to be having similar problems right now with my ForeFlight App, but I have NOT yet updated to iOS6 yet – still using iOS5.