Does Fenzly work without a network?

Yes, for most of what it does. Your data lives on your phone, so the app stays usable with no signal. Whatever involves other people waits for the connection to return.

What keeps working

• Detecting your arrivals at and departures from your places.
• Recording your trips, with speed, distance and elevation.
• Reading your timeline, your history, your places and your past conversations.

What waits for the network

• Sharing with your circles: your arrivals, departures and trips are sent as soon as the connection is back.
• Text messages: they stay marked as pending, then leave by themselves. A photo cannot be sent offline.
• An SOS alert: the app says plainly that it could not leave, puts calling first, and can keep the alert queued; your position follows it once the network is back. See How does the SOS button work?.

What does not work

• Seeing where your people are right now: the map shows their last known positions, and a banner says so.
• Address search and the name suggestions when you name a place. You can still position the pin by hand and type the name.
• Signing in to your account on a phone, backing up and restoring.

Maps without a network

The map background is not stored in the app: it is loaded as you move around the map, then kept on your phone.

• Areas you have already displayed stay available, at the zoom levels you used.
• Anywhere else, the background is grey. Positions, places and your route are still drawn on top of it.
• The space used is limited: when it is full, the maps you looked at longest ago are removed first.

Preparing an area in advance. You can load the maps of a place before you go there: while you still have a connection, open the map over that area, move around it and go through the zoom levels you will need. Do it just before a hike, for example, if you know coverage will be poor. Those maps then stay available offline.

On the other side, a member whose phone has had no connection for several hours is flagged on the map of their circles.