In article , Libor 'Poutnik' St?í?
wrote:

Android applications and I suppose iOS ones as well
do not determine location on their own,
but ask the OS what the location is.

correct.

So OS does matter, as how it is done is the OS business.

I have few strange questions:

Does it track you only within ranges of supposed Wifis ?

location can be determined via one or more of wifi, cellular, gps
and/or bluetooth, depending many factors.

or

Does it even track you without any wifi in the range ?

it can, but obviously not via wifi.

In case of the former,

Does it track you only at known locations,
where the device has been before ?

for wifi, no.

Does it track you even at new locations
with wifis unknown to the device ?

for wifi, yes.

It seems to me not probable
to have pre-downloaded all wifi location database.
Perhaps, it may predownload the data for nearby area only.

correct.

only a very small subset is kept on the device, which is for the local
area.

the entire database covers the entire world. there is no reason to
cache all of it.

I would rather believe the tablet does not behave
in the way you suppose it to behave.

Sometimes a particular HW is present,
but not available for the user rather for business reasons,
being either deactivated or just not used.

very rarely.

in this case, there are two versions of the ipad, a wifi-only model and
one with cellular/gps.

It is cheaper to produce 1 version
and selectively disable optional features.
Or, selectively disable it just for user applications,
but not for the OS.

except when the additional features incur a significant cost, as with
the cellular/gps ipad, largely due to qualcomm's licensing fees.

E.g. Xiaomi MI A1 does have the FM radio chip,
( one can listen the radio via the service menu )
but it is not mentioned in manual
and there is no builtin nor downloadable FM application
that would work.

that's only because the chipset they use already has fm.