Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like the data rate is incredibly low. That allows for a lot of signal margin. GPS receivers are sensitive to something like -165dBm. It's probably harder for the satellite to hear from the phone. Especially at a lower frequency like 700Mhz, a phone's tiny antenna is going to be a rather inefficient transmitter. Maybe 5g technology helps by allowing the phone to do some rudimentary beam forming using multipl…
(How) Does beamforming work in a moving device?
I believe modern wifi has periodic "sounding packets" specifically designed for devices to robustly measure that sort of information for beam forming and multiple spatial streams.