Hey guys, I don;t really use GPS on my Galaxy Player 4'', but I have notices that it will all the sudden display the GPS icon in the notification area even when it is off. I have disabled GPS and the "Use wireless networks" option, but the icon will appear at least once a day and won't disappear until I reboot the device. It just keeps blinking over and over until I reboot the device.
I have noticed it drains my battery way to quick when that icon appears (uses about 10% when the deviced is locked), which is crazy because it uses about (2%) battery power when it is locked during the night and the player does not shows that GPS icon in the notification area. I have killed pretty much every single application I have been able to kill to find out what app is trying to use GPS, but the icon won't go away no matter what process I kill. I use juicedefender and it has really improve my battery life, but when that icon appears, my device still will waste about 10% battery power even when it is locked with no apps running. Cannot explained why this is happening.
Has any of you had this problem?
Thank you
Try reseting to factory default, my batttery life on galaxy 4.0 is incredible.
I've had the same problem on my 5.0. I figured out it was an app that was constantly trying to get a gps signal. Simply going into the app and the exiting out seems to solve it however. It still happens but going into the app and exiting out helps. I would try to figure out which app is constantly trying to connect and if you don't use it very frequently uninstall it.
Dampfire said:
I've had the same problem on my 5.0. I figured out it was an app that was constantly trying to get a gps signal. Simply going into the app and the exiting out seems to solve it however. It still happens but going into the app and exiting out helps. I would try to figure out which app is constantly trying to connect and if you don't use it very frequently uninstall it.
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Click to collapse
Difficult to pinpoint this app.
Do anybody know any way to log what app is using (or trying to use) GPS?
I noticed this happening today. I have my notification bar hidden, so not sure how often this happens. I could make it go away by turning on GPS and GPS Test, then back off. I checked for apps that might be trying to find a location in running services, killed a couple "maybes", but the icon kept blinking. Only app I installed today was Simple Calendar Widget, but didn't see anything in it's options that would be pinging location...
I have Power Tudor that shows how much juice apps are using while you monitor them, the only app there that looked like it could be was something like "system_1025" or something like that.... nothing I could find to stop it.
Dampfire said:
I've had the same problem on my 5.0. I figured out it was an app that was constantly trying to get a gps signal. Simply going into the app and the exiting out seems to solve it however. It still happens but going into the app and exiting out helps. I would try to figure out which app is constantly trying to connect and if you don't use it very frequently uninstall it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
tcat007 said:
I noticed this happening today. I have my notification bar hidden, so not sure how often this happens. I could make it go away by turning on GPS and GPS Test, then back off. I checked for apps that might be trying to find a location in running services, killed a couple "maybes", but the icon kept blinking. Only app I installed today was Simple Calendar Widget, but didn't see anything in it's options that would be pinging location...
I have Power Tudor that shows how much juice apps are using while you monitor them, the only app there that looked like it could be was something like "system_1025" or something like that.... nothing I could find to stop it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also use Simple Calendar Widget, but I don't think it's the reason.
Did you use Samsung Dive recently? I did, in order to test the ring, lock and location service provided from within Dive. The service running on device tries to establish a GPS connection even if GPS is disabled. I didn't make a location trace, only a simple location test.
After reboot GPS icon do not show up any more ...
Looks like Google Latitude might be the culprit. Try opening it and signing out of that service. Also go into "Settings" --> "Location and security" and uncheck "Use Sensor Aiding". Once I turned those off the GPS Notification went away.
What does sensor aiding do anyway? Sure doesn't help the Compass!
I had the same issue with my HTC ONE M8 I did the same process as you. Went into my settings found my battery usage and saw what was draining my battery. It was groupon. So I force stopped the app and the GPS notification went away.
Related
stock rom
If i leave gps on.... and all the apps i have that may use gps (travel, voucher etc) do not run in the back ground,
except google maps.... will this really drain random battery throughout the day.
The reason I ask this is when using google maps...i see the gps symbol on the top of my phone, but once i back out of it...the symbol disappears, and when i go back into it to resume what i was doing the symbol turns back on and the gps has to find my location all over again.
Hence I come to the conclusion that the gps is not 'always on' when you don't need or (given you don't have any dodgy apps)
Then I could turn off googles location sharing thing, because if I am correct you need that on if you want to use location services without gps?
SGS2 uses sirfstar IV
http://www.sys-con.com/node/1822443
http://www.csr.com/products/25/sirfstariv-gsd4t
This is a modern GPS chip, it don't think it uses much battery. I've always GPS on and I've no battery issues. And I agree that it seems that the chip is set to some kind of standby when not in use so turning off the GPS in the settings (or notfication pull down) seems more like a privacy thing than power related.
Thanks for confirming. Will now try leaving gps on and location services off and see what happens. sometimes gps on its own takes a few extra seconds to locate you...might be annoying with certain apps
If you refuse location sharing you will not be able to use WIFI positioning service, but can still use cell tower positioning if your GPS is off. Personally I never use WPS since WIFI use a whole lot of power so I always keep it off. There are situations where it's useful (i.e. inside downtown can't get a GPS signal), so you can decide if you want it or not.
I usually keep my GPS off too, since when I open maps I just want to look at map, I don't need to know my exact location (and use the extra power).
My Galaxy S2 GPS sucks the battery life when I keep it on. My partner keeps his Galaxy S2 GPS on and the icon only comes on when something like Maps loads but immediatly goes away when you you exit Maps. Mine seems to stay on all the time and I can't see any obvious process running all of the time (except Maps). I monitor the battery usage with a tool and GPS is certainly running my battery down far quicker than if I turn it off.
Anyone else experiencing the same?
marklyn said:
My partner keeps his Galaxy S2 GPS on and the icon only comes on when something like Maps loads but immediatly goes away when you you exit Maps. Mine seems to stay on all the time and I can't see any obvious process running all of the time
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Click to collapse
I have the GPS setting turned on all the time, but my GPS only really turns on when I open an app that uses GPS, like Maps or Facebook. Just like your partner.
I actually want to keep it on all the time... like yours
Can you send me your /etc/gps.conf and /etc/sirfgps.conf ?
I'm not sure if that's what control this behaviour.
Noed said:
I have the GPS setting turned on all the time, but my GPS only really turns on when I open an app that uses GPS, like Maps or Facebook. Just like your partner.
I actually want to keep it on all the time... like yours
Can you send me your /etc/gps.conf and /etc/sirfgps.conf ?
I'm not sure if that's what control this behaviour.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I only had the gps.conf, not the sirfgps.conf file. Attached here.
I have to turn on GPS only when I need it for something and turn it off, otherwise it clearly drains my battery, in pretty quick fashion.
I had to rename it gps.txt to upload it.
Keeping GPS on is not draining your battery, because its realy turning on, only on application requests. Battery drain may come from some buggy app, which not close it GPS connection. You can easily see this by your GPS indicator. No indicator - no app using GPS atm - no battery drain, flashing indicator - GPS trying to lock ur position, indicator on - GPS is used and got lock on sattelites.
incident404 said:
its realy turning on, only on application requests
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Click to collapse
Is there a way to keep GPS always on, independent of an application request?
I want to control it on/off manually
I leave GPS on all the time. Only works when apps request / need it. No battery life issues for me.
Sent from my GT-I9100
I've always been under the assumption that it's best to turn GPS entirely off when I don't need it to help save on battery life. I was just reading a thread on another site and it gave me the impression that if it's turned on and the icon is not showing on the status bar, like it does when I'm using Maps, then it's not really tying up any CPU time and draining the battery.
Would that be accurate?
Im pretty sure its true, if maps isn't running, GPS doesnt need to fetch data therefore power isn't used by the GPS radio to fetch coodinates
Sent from my LG-P500 using XDA App
Rores said:
Im pretty sure its true, if maps isn't running, GPS doesnt need to fetch data therefore power isn't used by the GPS radio to fetch coodinates
Sent from my LG-P500 using XDA App
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Yup, although sometimes if GPS is enabled, an app may turn it on when it really doesn't need to, which can sometimes cause battery drain.
Explicitly turning it off prevents this.
Yeah when I think about it, unlike wifi which can always be looking for a connection and BT will also be listening for a device to pair with, GPS doesn't really seem to 'look' for anything, it simply pulls data down upon request.
Do you guys specifically turn it off when it's not in use and by doing it, have you honestly noticed much of a difference?
I'm getting to the point where I'm micromanaging my phone too much and need to step back and just let the phone... be a phone.
i have a tasker profile set up that only turns on the GPS for the apps that i have it configured for, then turns GPS off after the app closes....
So I just noticed in BBS under partial wakelocks that I have 52mins worth of 'NetworkLocationLocator' with a count of 740. I've been having some odd battery drain today and no clue why. I've also noticed that Maps is in 'Running Services' and sometimes there are 2 of them and they can't be stopped.
I've opened Maps only after noticing this and GPS has been off. I run a weather widget but location is turned off. Nothing else I have installed uses any type of location feature (that I know of).
Any ideas what's causing this 52mins of wakelocks?
Kadin said:
So I just noticed in BBS under partial wakelocks that I have 52mins worth of 'NetworkLocationLocator' with a count of 740. I've been having some odd battery drain today and no clue why. I've also noticed that Maps is in 'Running Services' and sometimes there are 2 of them and they can't be stopped.
I've opened Maps only after noticing this and GPS has been off. I run a weather widget but location is turned off. Nothing else I have installed uses any type of location feature (that I know of).
Any ideas what's causing this 52mins of wakelocks?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you accidentally turned on Latitude?
Nope, never used it. Not even sure what its for. Lol
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using xda premium
It is in gmaps. Once you sigbed in, it will use network location all the time. And there is no obvious way to sign out until you dig deep into the menus.
What it does is broadcasting your location to your friend 24/7.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App
dig deep into which menus? i dont seem to have any options in google maps itself, besides a couple map cache options, and labs..
Some where in those menu trees, probably related to latitude, there its a button to sign out the latitude. Google made it so difficult to stop latitude to force you keep using it.
Edit: on latitude screen, menu-> settings. On top of the settings screen, trap on the text 'sign out latitude'.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App
oh, i never use latitude..
i did start it up just to verify i was signed out like you said..
i still have a maps service started that when killed, comes right back..
gps is off, all location based stuff is off, i kill maps service, it comes right back..
i thought maybe this was keeping maps service open, must be something else.
All of a sudden today, when unlocking my phone, I've seen this message pop up on the home screen for like 2 seconds. I figured it was just a random fluke and powered down but then when I went to click on refreshing my weather widget which is always set to the same zip code, it happened again. This widget is set to manual refresh, I have to click it to get an updated forecast. Then it happened again a few minutes later after simply unlocking the screen like it was doing earlier.
I've had Network Location services for wifi and gps turned off for a good 3 weeks or so. I only activate those on an as-needed basis. I don't use any apps that acquire my location (weather, facebook, etc.) I have the bear minimum apps running in 'Running Services' and I'm running the configuration in my sig (UnNamed, Entropy's DD, ICScrewd Theme). Any ideas what's going on?
does it happen every time you refresh the weather widget?
if it does I would try a different widget, just to see whether it goes away.
I just had GMail do this to me this morning (when I tried to refresh - I have that set to manual). I turned on location services (wifi and GPS) and let it get my location, then turned them back off. That seemed to take care of it. Might be a cookie based kind of thing - I loaded a new ROM yesterday and hadn't let it get a lock yet.
I just remembered that I updated Google Maps yesterday via the Market. I think that's the culprit. I can't see any setting though which I can change to disable automatic updating. I've gotten this message now like 3 times this morning.
Ive temporarily turned on Location Services for wifi/GPS but I prefer them off as I get much better battery life with them disabled.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using xda premium
This seems to be happening to me more and more. Cannot pinpoint the culprit.
is this still an issue for anyone? It certainly is for me
Hello all!
Since yesterday, when I updated the firmware of my phone, the GPS icon has been shown constantly in the notification bar. It did not use to happen before. I am afraid it might be draining more battery than needed but I don't want to turn off GPS completely as I wanted it to be "ready to use" whenever I need to use, for example, Google Maps.
Is there something I can do? How can I control which app's might be using GPS connection in every moment?
Thank you!
+1
Every once in a while I see the GPS icon light up for a couple of seconds without apparent reason. I have no auto geo locating widget or so running, which might be an obvious guess.
Edit: just noticed I had weather information enabled on the lock screen so that may be the cause.
Hi all,
I am getting a strange issue with my Google Play services and GCM_Reconnect wakelock.
My wifi icon keeps changing from white to orange within seconds and this creates lots of GCM_Reconnect wakelocks and eats my battery too much.
I tried to go deeper to see what exactly it's happening but other than watching few connecting and disconnected errors I couldn't find any relative helpful information to sort it out and searching didn't provide me any info about this specific issue too. I tried google as well as xda too.
If I disable my wifi, my phone is fine and these wakelocks doesn't occur anymore but as soon as I activate my wifi, these wakelocks come back and wifi icons start going from white to orange and white and then orange thus showing how aggressively my phone connects and disconnects with google servers.
I couldn't find a reason to this or how to sort it out, any help is greatly appreciated.
PS. I have removed every kind of restriction through Privacy guard but no positive result.
Thank you.
how did you get to the screen that shows the "Ping, Connect, Disconnect, Events"?
I'll explain something but you have to apply it to your situation.
These apps you can get that protect privacy, control wakelocks, control network aspects of apps, startups, processes etc etc that people claim to save battery are all, to put it in a reasonable term, crap.
They do exactly what they say they do but one thing that is never explained is that android is its own entity and will do what it does regardless of what anyone tells it to do, or not do.
An example of this would be, you run an app that changes the running status of another app. The problem is that android will always run the closed app and the app that was used to close the app will always use wakelocks to determine if the app is running or not. If it IS running the app closes it, android picks this up and runs it again so the app wakelocks and finds the app is running so closes it again. Rinse and repeat, you have a war going on in your phone!.
Android will automatically close unnecessary apps and apps you dont use or need over time. But it will ALWAYS FILL THE RAM WITH APPS. Android is natured for that.
So the be all and end all is to get rid of the apps that attempt to control your device as they are the ones responsible for the battery issues by causing app wars on your phone.
Beamed in by telepathy.