Use coarse location only, but allow other apps to use GPS
Some of my situations use locations, but none of them need a precise location. I therefore leave GPS off to save battery. But then when I want to use GPS in another app (e.g. AndNav), I have to go and turn GPS on. I would like to be able to leave my GPS enabled, without Locale polling it all the time. A tickbox "ignore GPS" (or perhaps "coarse location only") would be one way to do this. Alternatively, Locale could automatically not consult the GPS if every location that is relevant has a large radius. A third option would be to have a tickbox "approximate" on each location, and check whether all relevant locations are "approximate".
Chris Boyle (old ID)
shared this idea
As of Locale 1.0.2, use of GPS is now implicitly configurable. As long as ALL location conditions are greater than 2,000 meters in size, Locale will not attempt to use GPS to determine location.
15 comments
-
jeremyafrank
commented
Now there's a measurement, and your 2000m suggestion appears to be working. Thanks!
-
AdminCarter
(Admin, two forty four a.m.)
commented
1. You'll have to keep guessing; there's currently no UI feedback.
2. Locale enables wifi automatically to perform brief scans. This is disabled when all locations are 2000 meters or greater. -
jeremyafrank
commented
1. How do I know it's 2,000 meters?
2. That would also mean I'd have to leave wifi enabled. I try to save as much battery as I can. Does leaving it on drain it noticeably? -
msgbigred
commented
This is the only logical place i could find to leave this:
the problem with the 2000 meters 'rule' now in the app is that its hard to know just how large 2000 meters is. Whether you mean a radius, diameter, or just plain square meters is not mentioned anywhere. But even if it is, there's no easy way to know how large a circle to make as not even the scale of the map is shown when setting a location.
-
AdminCarter
(Admin, two forty four a.m.)
commented
Locale will work in that case; you just have to make your locations very very large
-
jo88ki88
commented
Maybe your analysis does not match my actual situation. From my usecase Y5 works like a charm. The distance between office and home is appropriately 1km and wifi is toggled on/off as it should be. From this usecase locale is just not reliable ! Maybe I am just lucky :-) Or in china locale has some disadvantages...
So I will stick to Y5 and use locale as cron-replacement to trigger my backup script at night in case the charger is connected....
-
AdminCarter
(Admin, two forty four a.m.)
commented
I've studied this extensively, and I can conclusively say that Locale does not drain the battery when Wi-Fi locations are available. This is based on several hundred thousand measurements from Locale-enabled phones over the past several months.
Leaving Wi-Fi enabled does NOT wipe the battery. In fact, it usually improves battery life because Locale may never need to use GPS. In fact, my G1 has been running since Monday without being re-charged (3 days), with Wi-Fi, GPS, and even 3G enabled.
The only thing that strongly correlated to battery drain in all of my research was the screen being turned on. (So if you can't leave your phone alone, the battery will probably drain quite quickly!)
-
farble1670
commented
many (most?) people that use locale do so to conserve battery life. i don't want to leave wifi OR gps enabled because it wipes my battery. you should consider the battery saver use case.
maybe you can't turn GPS off, but you can elect not to use it based on a setting in your app.
-
AdminCarter
(Admin, two forty four a.m.)
commented
In your case, just leave Wi-Fi enabled! You'll get much better battery life.
If you're in a city, then GPS will never turn on because Wi-Fi locations are extremely accurate (within 100 meters usually) and are available indoors.
Cell towers provide terrible location accuracy, and signal strength doesn't matter. They're usually accurate to within 3,000 meters.
Toggling GPS is not possible due to restrictions Google imposed in Cupcake.
-
farble1670
commented
i think you need to reconsider this.
among other things, i use locale to turn on wifi at home and work, and off otherwise. i think this is a pretty common use case. so, when i arrive at either location, wifi is off. the cell signal must be weak enough that it can't get a good fix because it tries to use GPS. unless i do something manual, locale toggles GPS on and off every ten minutes ... until ... forever. you are right the GPS is only a battery sink when it's being used, but toggling it on and off every ten minutes is significant.
the other issue with GPS is that it's only useful if i'm outside, which i am not 95% of the week days anyway ... so anytime locale tries to use it it's just a waste. and like i said, and contrary to what was posted here, i see locale trying to use GPS all the time. i live in a major city with excellent cell reception.
how about a GPS toggle plugin? so i can toggle GPS on and off based on where i am. when i am home and at work, it should be off because i know it will never get a fix anyway.
-
raynerape commented
I think it would be best if we could define locations that do not require GPS and are okay with network location. Iff GPS recognizes us to be within such area, it switches to much less frequent polling for GPS and frequent polling for network location. If we lose Network location, it switches back to GPS.
-
AdminCarter
(Admin, two forty four a.m.)
commented
Currently, gps is used based on based on the accuracy of the cell/wifi position fix, not the size of the location the user has picked. This is an optimization to be made in a future release.
As long as the wifi checkbox is enabled in the android settings, Locale will be able to use Wifi to determine your location when wifi access points are nearby.
-
Jon
commented
I have also noticed that locale is using GPS when the area I have selected is very large and both wifi and network location would have been sufficient.
I have the wifi sleep policy set to make the phone put the wifi to sleep when it sleeps. Perhaps this prevents locale from using wifi location when the phone is in sleep mode. If so locale should be able to wake up the wifi in order to do wifi location
-
AdminCarter
(Admin, two forty four a.m.)
commented
This is a duplicate of http://feedback.twofortyfouram.com/pages/5655-locale-feedback/suggestions/126591-use-coarse-location-only-but-allow-other-apps-to-use-gps
When Wi-Fi is enabled, Locale hardly ever uses GPS. And when it does use GPS, it uses advanced algorithms to maximize battery life. Don't let the blinking icon in the status bar trick you: it only *seems* like Locale is constantly using the GPS.
-
Chris Boyle (old ID)
commented
Related to this idea, I'm just curious here, I see this in logcat:
I/[Locale]( 5965): LocaleLocationUpdater.locationChanged(): Provider skyhook got a location in 10365 milliseconds with accuracy 150.000000
I/[Locale]( 5965): Starting GPS location search...
V/[Locale]( 5965): GPS found 0 satellites
(etc)
If the 150 is metres, and my only defined location at the time of this test has a radius much larger than that, and I'm sitting in the middle of it (it's a location I submitted to skyhook some time ago), then why does Locale go looking for GPS?
