Question

I am trying to figure out if I really need to request ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION or not. I do not need really accurate coordinates. However, if cell towers or WiFi is not available, I want to be able to get a location from GPS (low accuracy is fine). But, I cannot find a clear answer in the Android documentation about this. Below is what the Android Docs say (ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION). It tells me that requesting the coarse location gives me info from the “Cell-ID, WiFi” source and that requesting the fine permission will use GPS, but it says nothing about GPS being any type of fallback for when only the coarse location permission is requested.

public static final String ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION

Since: API Level 1

Allows an application to access coarse (e.g., Cell-ID, WiFi) location

Constant Value: “android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION”

public static final String ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION

Since: API Level 1

Allows an application to access fine (e.g., GPS) location

Constant Value: “android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION”

Answer 1

I think this other post and the Android documentation it references answers this question. The Android doc says the following.

Note: If you are using both NETWORK_PROVIDER and GPS_PROVIDER, then you need to request only the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission, because it includes permission for both providers. (Permission for ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION includes permission only for NETWORK_PROVIDER.)

So, if I’m reading that right, requesting ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION can’t pull from GPS because it does not request access for the GPS_PROVIDER.