Inconsistent locations of Seek observations in posting to iNat flow

[albullington]

Describe the bug Locations in Seek are occasionally reported as being inconsistent. We can tell there's an issue when a user observes species in two different countries on the same day, such as this user's observations from July 21, 2019.

There are some situations where it would be particularly helpful to know that the observation location is correct, like this potential invasive species spreading into Ohio (in this case, the photo does not come with metadata to help confirm that the user uploaded their own photo rather than a photo from a friend).

To Reproduce TBD - not sure what's causing this. I'm also not sure if there are examples more recent than 2019 & whether this is still happening in Seek.

Expected behavior A user's observations which are observed on the same date should (generally) be in the same location.

Smartphone (please complete the following information): iOS photos show up on iNat with slightly more metadata than Android photos. In addition to width, height, and bits, iOS AR Camera and Camera Roll photos also have orientation, color space, pixel x and pixel y dimensions. Neither have location metadata. The two examples above appear to be Android users.

Additional context Each of these users appear to be uploading from the camera roll rather than taking photos on the AR Camera, since there are observations which pre-date Seek from as far back as 2016.

To do

• [x] Include metadata with Android AR Camera and gallery images posted to iNat
• [ ] Include metadata with iOS camera roll library images (not taken in AR camera)
• [ ] Update react-native-inat-camera to add metadata (at least GPS data) to iOS AR Camera images

[nornagon]

I'm seeing this issue today. See for example https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/77645012, which was taken in Bernal Hill park, but has a location somewhat to the north of that.

I checked my privacy settings for location services, and I have the permissions for Seek set to "While Using the App", with precise location enabled.

[albullington]

Hi @nornagon, thanks for providing an example. You can always double check the accuracy of a location in Seek before posting to iNat by tapping the location picker as shown in page 16 of the Seek User Guide.

It would be helpful to have more information about your device and how you're using Seek for debugging purposes. Based on what you described so far, can you confirm you're using an iPhone (and if so, what OS), taking photos in the Seek Camera (as opposed to uploading from the photo library), and using a cellular connection (as opposed to wi-fi)?

Also, did you happen to walk by the location in your example observation before arriving at Bernal Hill? I'm wondering if Seek is sometimes returning a stale location instead of the most current location.

[nornagon]

@albullington I'm using an iPhone 11 with iOS 14.4.2. I'm taking photos in the Seek Camera and uploading via cellular, as you surmised.

I don't think I walked past the location in the example on that day, but I was there the day before, and possibly opened the Seek app (though it doesn't seem I took any photos with the app that day).

[nornagon]

There are several successive observations with identical lat/long though, e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/77644584 and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/77644214 have identical locations