I could swear at some point while setting up my phone I was asked to set the desired GPS accuracy. There were three options that varied by accuracy and battery consumption.
I can't remember where those settings were...
It's possible it was on my old phone (gnex w/ cm10.1), but I don't remember.
I have never seen this. I think it was your old phone. The old maps use to ask this for location improvement.
Related
In the past, when I have had devices with GPS when I start up the app that uses it, GPS starts automaticaly and stops when you close the app.
now whenever I use Google maps or such I always forget to star GPS first is there a setting?.
I just leave the GPS on all the time. My observation is that it doesn't do anything unless an app uses it. My settings are:
Use wireless networks - not checked
Use GPS satellites - checked
Use assisted GPS - unchecked
I have all three options checked for quicker gps locks...
I never have GPS enabled unless I need it. I have the toggle on the home screen in my power control Widgets config.
I am wondering though, why would you have location by wireless networks not enabled?
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk
I don't use location by wireless networks because I will not agree to Google's terms of service to do so. By agreeing you allow Google to collect location info from your phone even when there are no apps using any location services. I honestly think that this is why some people have battery issues when they leave GPS on. I do not see any way to opt out of this collection of information even if you turn use wireless networks off.
I don't use the assisted GPS because it states on the settings page that the GPS is more accurate without it.
I see the same battery life with GPS on or off.
The whole point is battery life, I dont use the gps all the time and I have a mugen 1800 battery but that still need charging after about 6 hours even with gps off.
But to go back to my original question is there a setting or app to allow the turning on of gps when its needed
Settings/Location and security. Maybe search the market for a widget
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk
henly said:
The whole point is battery life, I dont use the gps all the time and I have a mugen 1800 battery but that still need charging after about 6 hours even with gps off.
But to go back to my original question is there a setting or app to allow the turning on of gps when its needed
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Click to collapse
You can use tasker to automate turning on the GPS when you run specific apps.
As I wrote before I leave GPS on all the time with no adverse effect on battery life. I honestly believe that you only have issues with the GPS and battery life (when not using nav) if you accept the Google terms of service for location by wireless networks. Even if you then turn off that settings there is no way to revoke the permissions you give Google so they can use your GPS in the background for their data collection.
Interesting mine says uncheck to reduce network usage. What froyo are you running? But network usage is the main battery life consumer on my phone, I may go a couple days with that unchecked to see what the effects are even though I have no problems with my battery life.
Here's my phone info:
Hello,
Like some of the other users, I had GPS problems after installing these two ROMs: connecting to the satellites took a very long time, if at all. Below I describe my fix, gathered from searching on the web, including here on XDA, and by using trial-and-error testing. Hope it helps others.
Install GPS Test by Chartcross. This helps monitor the GPS activities. There are other similar apps out there, but I like this one for the purpose of monitoring the GPS.
Install FasterGPS, by Dominik Schürmann. This is to edit the file /system/etc/gps.conf. You could edit it manually, but I like the GUI of this app.
Check if your /system/etc/suplcert/cacert.txt is "MIIDazCC......neEj8Nq/", then under the advanced settings, make sure SUPL_HOST is "supl.sonyericsson.com", SUPL_PORT=7275. Each cacert corresponds to a particular SUPL server. The above cacert is for the Sony server. If the host doesn't correspond to the cert, then you will not benefit from a quick retrieval of GPS info via the internet. Instead your GPS will download the info from the satellites themselves at a very slow rate (50 b/s according to Wikipedia). Your GPS would still work, but it won't acquire a fix quickly. Sorry I don't know what the cert for Google is.
Set NTP server to something close to you. Some people suggest to enter several servers (more can't hurt), some people suggest not to do that (more does hurt, if the previous ones fail.) I imagine that, at the higher level, the ntp pool servers don't usually fail. Thus I choose a single server that is close to me. In addition, I stay at the "country" level instead of going down to the numerical prefix level. (I.e. I don't bother with 0.uk.pool.ntp.org.) I figure going down to the numerical prefix level would more likely expose me to server failures.
Set INTERMEDIATE_POS=1 (enabled), then set ACCURACY_THRES=0 (passing all positions). With this value GPS Test usually reports satellites "in view" very quickly [<= 1 sec]. [Note: "in view" not "fix".] When I set the threshold to something non-zero (even a large value like 5000), it takes several seconds to see them.
Set ENABLE_WIPER=1, which supposedly turns on wifi positioning. Not sure what that does, but sounds like it can help . I assume the GPS system reads info from the wifi to get a rough estimate position. GPS Test probably isn't affected by this, although something like Maps might.
Set REPORT_POSITION_USE_SUPL_...=1. Again this sounds like a useful thing. My trial-and-error testing didn't discover anything conclusive about this. If anyone know more, please let me know.
Set DEFAULT_AGPS_ENABLE=TRUE, DEFAULT_USER_PLANE=TRUE. These are probably already true by default, but I figure it doesn't hurt to be explicit.
Reboot your phone if you had to change the SUPL setting. I had to do this to see the change. Would love to hear your experience on this.
With the above settings, GPS Test usually reports about 10 satellites in view in about 1 sec; satellites signals popping up above 10 db in about 5 sec, and the GPS acquiring a fix with about 4 satellites in less than 30 sec. All this _inside_ my house, which is a timber frame house with tile roof. I get this even with airplane mode on, i.e. no network connection!
If I use GPS Test to download AGPS data first, then the fix could be even faster, at less than 15 sec. And once the GPS has acquired a fix then, within a short time span, it will do so again very quickly (< 5 sec). Thus I have no problem as I switch from app to app and the GPS sensor turns on and off.
If my AGPS data is several days old, I still can get a fix in about 1 min.
Still, sometimes no matter what I do, the GPS would take more than 1 min to acquire a fix. Not sure why this happens, but it usually occurs after I haven't used the GPS in a while. In those cases I might have to wait up to 5 min for a fix.
Notes:
I assume you have root (since you managed to install ROMs )
According to the official ntp pool website,
As pool.ntp.org will assign you timeservers from all over the world, time quality will not be ideal. You get a bit better result if you use the continental zones (For example europe, north-america, oceania or asia.pool.ntp.org), and even better time if you use the country zone (like ch.pool.ntp.org in Switzerland)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More about my choice of accuracy threshold: if a threshold is active, it seems like the GPS would wait for the signal of a satellite to be of a certain strength before reporting it as in view. I figure it is better to just grab all the satellites possible, even if there is no signal yet.
The app GPS Status & Toolbox, by MobiWIA - EclipSim is also a very useful monitoring tool. I like the feature that reports how "stale" the AGPS data is. Wish GPS Test had this as well.
Toggling on the GPS from the settings menu simply allows apps to turn on the GPS. This doesn't use any battery. Only when an app starts using the sensor does it take energy. I recommend having this on. Having said that, do make sure you don't have any rogue app keeping your GPS engaged.
Install NTPSync, by Dominik Schürmann again. This helps set your clock. Not sure if this is necessary, but it gives me a good feeling that my clock is accurate
gps
its still not working
zivalarasa said:
its still not working
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After running GPS Test out in the open for, say, 1 min, does it report any "in view" satellite at all? Any satellite have signal > 10db?
GPS Test
HHest said:
After running GPS Test out in the open for, say, 1 min, does it report any "in view" satellite at all? Any satellite have signal > 10db?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GPS test runs and doesnt find any sattellite. It ran for around 10 minz
zivalarasa said:
GPS test runs and doesnt find any sattellite. It ran for around 10 minz
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assume you had GPS working at some point prior to installing the ROM? If you've done all the steps (particularly steps 3, 5, and very importantly 9), then I'm afraid I'm out of suggestions.
spelling?
On the off chance... perhaps you have a spelling error?
I find it quite easy to spell "sonyericsson" wrong, especially the ericsson part. Now I have a way to memorize it: "Eric" (that's easy), "Eric's" (as in something belonging to Eric), ericsson = "Eric's son"
Hello everybody,
I had severe problems with my GPS signal strength. I read a lot about the time zone influence to GPS fixing time. Therefore, I activated the automatic date & time setting to see, if this setting would improve my GPS fixing time. I had the correct time zone setting all the time.
The funny thing is, I think, it improved the signal strength a lot.
I do not use AGPS (only simple GPS).
Before setting this option, the phone took between 10 and 25 minutes to fix my position. After setting this option, the phone takes between 2 and 12 minutes to fix my position.
This is really a big improve.
Now, I don't really know, if the automatic time & date option is really an influencing factor to the GPS fixing time.
Therefore I'm asking: is it possible, that the automatic time & date option influences the GPS fixing time? Did someone have the same experience?
Thank you very much.
For those that have had issues with battery drain like I did, I may have finally found the solution.
After much research and reading many threads I found that the culprit was google play services. Specifically it was Google (I believe on Now) always trying to figure out location.
It always does a quick wifi check to try and figure out what's what. However due to a bug that has been in the coding since launch of KitKat (hurry up and fix it google) it fails and will just continue to try and try and try.
Solutions I found were to turn off location access on phone or edit Google Play Services Permission, specifically disable stay awake permission.
Turning off location, google now access to location, or both resulted in temporary fixes and I believe google still tried to figure it's location via wifi despite being told not to.
Long story short...if having just wifi location doesn't work.. and having location off doesn't work...
Then why not switch mode to high accuracy in which GPS is left on!
Google uses GPS for location, it works in one try, everyone is happy!
Long story short, if you have KitKat and are experiencing high battery drain with you phone constantly awake when off.
Switch your location settings to High Accuracy. Phone is smart enough to not use GPS when not needed.
It worked for me and it might work for you too!:good:
(Hopefully this fixes it for good)
Kolma said:
For those that have had issues with battery drain like I did, I may have finally found the solution.
After much research and reading many threads I found that the culprit was google play services. Specifically it was Google (I believe on Now) always trying to figure out location.
It always does a quick wifi check to try and figure out what's what. However due to a bug that has been in the coding since launch of KitKat (hurry up and fix it google) it fails and will just continue to try and try and try.
Solutions I found were to turn off location access on phone or edit Google Play Services Permission, specifically disable stay awake permission.
Turning off location, google now access to location, or both resulted in temporary fixes and I believe google still tried to figure it's location via wifi despite being told not to.
Long story short...if having just wifi location doesn't work.. and having location off doesn't work...
Then why not switch mode to high accuracy in which GPS is left on!
Google uses GPS for location, it works in one try, everyone is happy!
Long story short, if you have KitKat and are experiencing high battery drain with you phone constantly awake when off.
Switch your location settings to High Accuracy. Phone is smart enough to not use GPS when not needed.
It worked for me and it might work for you too!:good:
(Hopefully this fixes it for good)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its working bro......cheers......:good: great ........
So usually I just keep GPS off to save battery. What your saying is to keep GPS on with high accuracy may actually improve battery life over keeping GPS off altogether?
Sent from my Virgin Mobile CDMA HTC Desire 601 zara_cl
what about device sensor's setting?
hi all
is there anyone here already try AppOpsXposed? http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/xposed-appopsxposed-appops-4-3-t2564865
it's work at My desire 601 kitkat 4.4.2 without root
this apps can disable hidden system location and other thing but not sure work or not but so far my battery getting better now...
I have the same problem but the solution doesn't work.
I think you fixed the problem by charged the phone and not with switch gps (see your graph).
My solution now is only reboot.
hansvongrobel said:
I have the same problem but the solution doesn't work.
I think you fixed the problem by charged the phone and not with switch gps (see your graph).
My solution now is only reboot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have GPS switched on. it just doesn't keep it running google play services will turn it on as needed instead of trying to get location from wifi and locking up even when told not to.
Different people have had luck with different solutions and this was mine.
Here are my results from today, the first small block of awake is from me Listening to music for about an hour on 4G.
Not sure what the second block is, might have been apps that updated or the bug returning for a couple minutes. (battery was at 45% at time of pic)
Thanks for this! I'm going to have my wife give it a try!
Hi!
I am creating a Tasker profile that automatically logs my location when I turn off my car so that I can find where it's parked in case I forget. In general, the task works correctly if a strong GPS lock can be obtained, but in situations where a precise location is not possible, it seems that %LOC is not set, and a %LOC value is used.
My task has two main actions.
1. Get Location (Source: Any, Timeout: 15sec)
2. Variable Set (%LOC to %LocCar)
When a strong location can be obtained (in less than 15 seconds), everything is great. But in situations where a strong lock cannot be obtained (covered/underground parking), the Get Location action will timeout and I get a %LOC value that is no where near my car. Seemingly the last %LOC set. I could potentially make the GPS timeout much longer in order to give it more time to get a good lock, but by the time it does, I will have walked quite far from my car, making the task pretty useless.
The interesting thing is that if I open Google Maps, it has a pretty good idea of where I am, even in bad situations. There is a faint blue circle around my position (implying the possible inaccuracy), but it still has the blue circle centered very close to my actual location. So it seems that Android will not update %LOC unless it is very certain of its accuracy, but even an "inaccurate" location is good enough (and better than nothing). Is there a way to get Android to set %LOC even if it's unsure of its accuracy? Or can I get this information some other way? (Google Maps seems to know where to put it.)
Thanks!
You're Welcome, Me!
So you know how you ask a question out loud, and then you come up with the answer yourself? Well, I managed to do just that, which is great! I'll post my findings so others with the same issue can have a solution option that should work for them as well.
So I've been aware for a while that finding your phone's location is just as much a WiFi +cellular task as it is GPS. Google even had a snafu a few years ago where they were tracking people's WiFi network names and accidentally got some extra info out of them... Anyway, your phone looks at the nearby WiFi hotspots and cell towers to help figure out where it is. That's what the "inaccurate" location boils down to (as far as I know). And that's why you can specify during Get Loction to look at GPS, Net (WiFi+cellular), or Any. So if you choose Any, it will try both options. But %LOC is just for the GPS result. %LOCN shows the Net (WiFi+cellular) result. So if you don't get a GPS lock in time, you will likely still have a decent Net location.
So how do you know which is more accurate? There are accuracy variables, but we are actually interested in which is more recent. (If GPS was very accurate on its last lock 5 minutes ago, it still isn't as relevant as an "inaccurate" but very recent Net lock.) The time of each lock is stored in Unix Time, which is a variation of the Julian Date (a way to track time without confusion of time zones or leap years). Unix Time is basically how many seconds have passed since 00:00 Jan 1, 1970. So to figure out which is more recent, simply compare the two values. The larger is more recent, and therefore a better value. The time values are stored in %LOCTMS (GPS time) and %LOCNTMS (Net time).
My next step will be to incorporate a check to see how old each is compared to right now (%TIMES). If they are too old, then there is no point to storing them.
Hope this helps someone out!