Privacy advocates got access to Locate X, a phone tracking tool which multiple U.S. agencies have bought access to, and showed me and other journalists exactly what it was capable of. Tracking a phone from one state to another to an abortion clinic. Multiple places of worship. A school. Following a likely juror to a residence. And all of this tracking is possible without a warrant, and instead just a few clicks of a mouse.
This changes location reported to applications by the OS. It doesn’t change that your signal is coming from a direction and distance as known by the tower tracking the phone. MIMO and other beamforming techniques use this data to boost signal, but it is also collected for monitoring.