Android removes location from photo taken with Seek

Bug Reports
1

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Android

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About): G781VSQSBHWl1

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) :

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):Just after taking photo in Seek, notice there is a location present. 2:54 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST)

Screenshot_20231107_145453_Seek
Screenshot_20231107_145453_Seek1080×2400 176 KB

Screenshot just before touching “POST TO INATURALIST” 2:55 PM EST

Screenshot_20231107_145512_Seek
Screenshot_20231107_145512_Seek1080×2400 106 KB

Photo of leaves which has had location removed by Seek app, 2:54 PM EST

mrousavy1924708571700883584
mrousavy19247085717008835841920×3413 1.12 MB

Photo of leaves taken by the regular camera app on the same phone at 2:56 PM EST that retains the location

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: In Seek app touch the camera button

Step 2: Touch the expose button in the camera.

Step 3: After observing a location is present, touch “POST TO INATURALIST”

Step 4: Click “OK” to acknowledge it will post in the background

Step 5: Leave the Seek app

Step 6: Examine photo in Gallery or Google Photos and observe there is no location.

Stem 7: Observe that the observation never gets posted to iNaturalist

20231107_145645
20231107_1456451920×2560 623 KB

3

From personal experience, photos taken through Seek’s iOS app never retained location metadata, so I preferred taking them through my phone’s camera app and uploading them to Seek thereafter. Your problem is a little different in that location metadata is properly retained and displayed by Seek, but somehow deleted upon uploading your Seek observations to iNat. Even if the behaviour is built into the app’s code, it remains a little frustrating

4

After posting I took another photo with Seek, and this time it successfully uploaded to iNaturalist with a location. It is not in in the photos in the camera app. It is in the Gallery and Google Photos apps, with no location.