Develop Bugs

gps draining battery?

I've been trying to troubleshoot my battery drain rate and I found the problem.
When I turn off the GPS, and leave the wifi and bluetooth on, I get tremendous battery life/
What could be causing the GPS to drain the battery?

Do you ahve any programs running in the background that use gps? such as latitude, or that google one that maps your location? If so, gps kills batteries, because it constantly resyncs with the satelites... I believe the sense weather app also does periodic polling to pinpoint your location for weather.
If you dont need GPS exact location tracking, dont leave gps turned on, and turn it on when you need it.

My GPS is always on. It doesn't really hurt the battery life unless you are using with an application that uses the location service. My weather widget is set to refresh every hour and it's not impacting the battery.
I would look at your running programs and figure out which one is using the GPS. If you have the sensorly 4g map viewer, I found that to be a battery hog.

My money is on Latitude, that's been implicated in a lot of these situations. GPS always on is hardly a battery drain unless something is actually using the receiver. If you don't see the GPS icon in the notification bar, it's not GPS-ing.

SilverZero said:
My money is on Latitude, that's been implicated in a lot of these situations. GPS always on is hardly a battery drain unless something is actually using the receiver. If you don't see the GPS icon in the notification bar, it's not GPS-ing.
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Interesting tip. I had not noticed it. Thanks.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

I have my GPS on all the time and I regularly go over 13 hours without recharging; this is before SetCPU and underclocking.

Maps is always running

Every time I check my running apps maps is there and it does not want to stop. Since maps is a battery hog I uninstalled it. Why is it always running? What is the best way to control this and other apps so they will start and stop as directed. The market is also runs from time to time. Maps might be started by the network location service. Do I have to edit the init file or?
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Android is not like Windows, killing apps is actually more counterproductive than it is helpful. There is plenty of documentation and explanations about this so I won't bore you, just look it up.
I haven't ran a task killer since about it week after I got my phone, and I noticed that my phone ran better without it, and my battery lasted longer.
Stop constantly worrying about what is running in the background and enjoy your phone.
If you don't want to believe it, you can try an app such as Autostarts. It should do what you're asking.
(from... Evo/MIUI/Tapatalk)

There is a paid app called startup manager that I've used for a LONG time to take a lot of apps out of the boot up process.
Maps would be one of them.

HipKat said:
There is a paid app called startup manager that I've used for a LONG time to take a lot of apps out of the boot up process.
Maps would be one of them.
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Click to collapse
Maps has a lot of receivers and start up conditions, get Gemini App Manager, and Autorun Manager. Using both of these and you will be able to stop it from starting on its own. With Gemini, you can change all it's start up conditions(package added/removed, boot, connectivity changed, etc), and you can disable/enable receivers with AutoRun manager.

conductive said:
Everytime I check my running apps maps is there and it does not want to stop. Since maps is a battery hog I uninstalled it. Why is it always running? What is the best way to control this and other apps so they will start and stop as directed. The market is also runs from time to time. Maps might be started by the network location service. Do I have to edit the init file or?
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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Does it show up on your list of battery usage? Mine is always running but never shows up on the list... Running apps don't take battery unless they are actually using the CPU...

i had that problem too. what i did was go into the ALL tab n kill it to stop it. if i killed it from the RUNNING tab it would just restart. don't know y but thats how it worked for me...

If i keep tying to rapid kill maps it will eventully die. However, I might inadvertantly kill something else in the process.
I just do not see any reason that I need to be consistantly mapped. I will have to look at the battery consumption and the app managers are interesting. I have not used a task killer in quite some time. I would think that anything that runs this much has to bun some battery and responsiveness along the line somewhere.

How to turn gps on automatically when opening navigation?

As for those who don't know. There is an app out there called tasker. It allows you to program all kinds of tasks and conditions.
I used it in froyo to turn on my gps automatically when I opened the navigation app. However in gingerbread tasker no longer works. I'm reading that in cyanogen gingerbread roms tasker can still enable and disable gps.
Does anyone know anything about modding EI22 so that tasker will work with gingerbread on our epics the way it does in the cyanogen gingerbread roms?
Is there a patch or a piece of code that can be taken from the cyanogen rom to allow this on different roms/kernels?
Possibly is there an alternative to using tasker to get the gps to turn on automatically when navigation/maps is opened?
-Wizzle

Just leave GPS enabled at all times. GPS won't activate until a program needs it, and won't consume battery life while it's sleeping.

Isira said:
Just leave GPS enabled at all times. GPS won't activate until a program needs it, and won't consume battery life while it's sleeping.
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Cool. I kinda thought that, but I wasn't sure. I guess ill need to turn off location settings for all the apps I don't won't to access gps. I appreciate the info. Thank you.
-Wizzle

Isira said:
Just leave GPS enabled at all times. GPS won't activate until a program needs it, and won't consume battery life while it's sleeping.
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To go with this, if the GPS icon is on the toolbar (generally a bullseye/crosshair looking icon), you're using GPS and therefore extra battery--on the flipside, if the GPS icon is gone from the toolbar, then GPS is in standby and not consuming battery.*
* I'm not entirely certain that it consumes no battery when in standby, but it's certainly much less than when it's active. As long as you keep an eye on which apps you allow to use it and when, the battery drain is negligible--At least until you use Navigation and forget to plug it in! Then you'll damn near be able to watch the battery icon visibly tick down, and might could cook an egg on the back of your phone, it gets pretty hot!

If you running ei22 stock, I can leave gps on all the time and don't need to worry about battery. But if you put in the gps fix, careful.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

I hadn't noticed extra battery drain after flashing the GPS fix. I'll have to monitor that more carefully going forward...

jaytay said:
I hadn't noticed extra battery drain after flashing the GPS fix. I'll have to monitor that more carefully going forward...
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The gps fix makes the phone constantly lock to all possible sats. Draining batts.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

[Q] Get Rid Of Google Maps

My phone has had very bad battery life when wifi is on. And after reading online, and my own experience, I think the cause is Google Maps. Is there a way to automatically kill it after it stops, like some sort of task killer app?
Whenever I use my task killer, it shows google maps running, even after I killed it.
I don't even understand why google maps automatically runs, or why it needs to use any of my wifi...
Also, my phone is not rooted, nor will I be rooting it until the warranty expires.

snipes1836 said:
My phone has had very bad battery life when wifi is on. And after reading online, and my own experience, I think the cause is Google Maps. Is there a way to automatically kill it after it stops, like some sort of task killer app?
Whenever I use my task killer, it shows google maps running, even after I killed it.
I don't even understand why google maps automatically runs, or why it needs to use any of my wifi...
Also, my phone is not rooted, nor will I be rooting it until the warranty expires.
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First of all, I've said it a lot and I'll say it again:
just because an app appears in the running list, doesn't mean that it is actually using processing power, thus draining the battery.
So, I really doubt that if you haven't signed in to Latitude (which means location updates every so often), Google Maps is doing any harm to your battery.
You probably don't believe me anyway, so I'll just move on to my next answer:
NO, if you are not rooted, you can't remove Google Maps, it's a system app, part of the Google Services Framework, the backbone of Android OS.

Is there a way I can have an app automatically kill it as soon as it starts? And it seems that Google Maps is the only thing that could be possibly taking up my battery. Losing 4% an hour on standby is not normal.

snipes1836 said:
Is there a way I can have an app automatically kill it as soon as it starts? And it seems that Google Maps is the only thing that could be possibly taking up my battery. Losing 4% an hour on standby is not normal.
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If you were to use an app to kill it as soon as it starts, it would try again and again to restart and that's where you would definetely see the drain.
When you go to Settings->About Phone->Battery Use, do you actually see Google Maps in the stats? And if yes, how much percent of the battery does it say there that it takes?
And 4% in an hour could be due to many, many things.
Check out this thread to help you find out more about your issue.

Freeze it with titanium, unfreeze when you want to use it. That's what i do,.

as i know,maps service is only location by using gps,so go to location n security setting,turn off "use gps satellites",if its still running,use iridaki advice-ignore it,it cant eat your battery!!
sent from my LT18i FXP103 SuperCharged

iridaki said:
If you were to use an app to kill it as soon as it starts, it would try again and again to restart and that's where you would definetely see the drain.
When you go to Settings->About Phone->Battery Use, do you actually see Google Maps in the stats? And if yes, how much percent of the battery does it say there that it takes?
And 4% in an hour could be due to many, many things.
Check out this thread to help you find out more about your issue.
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Click to collapse
Google maps is not in the battery usage, unless I open maps and use it.
The things that are using that battery are : display, cell standby, phone idle, wifi, android os, android system.
But if I turn wifi off, the battery drain problem goes away :S
I will download betterbatterystats and use it, will post on how it goes.

GPS is constantly "ON"

I have my GPS enabled. Half of the time I'm using my phone, everything is good, everything works fine. But during the other half of the times, the GPS is constantly on the notification bar. I try restarting my phone, still up there in the notification bar with a 'solid' gps icon which says "Location set by GPS"... I can even turn the GPS off, and then on again, and it still doesn't fix the issue. As i turn on my "Maps" app for the first time, my location is already "accurate to 3 meters" before it even loads the map graphics... How do i figure out which app is causing this, and how do i stop this? it's irritating. I have to constantly check my phone to make sure the GPS isn't active and draining my battery. And please, don't say "Just turn off the GPS". Android is designed to work with the GPS enabled. Even if the GPS is toggled "on", it shouldn't be using it unless it needs it, therefore using zero battery. (Just like wifi is supposed to). thanks.

I have the same issue and it seems like it's Maps that's constantly trying to turn on GPS. Once I have GPS off, my battery life is a lot better. Tried uninstall Maps, clear data, re-install...but the issue is still there but not all the time...very annoyed.

Another reason might be an app that is using gps in the background. Facebook, twitter, and other apps might be the problem?
Sent from my SGH-T999

If you have your google search settings on to make local search better, then the GPS will be on.
Facebook, Maps are all GPS hogs.
Just turn it off and on when you need it, the GPS on the S3 locks in seconds anyway, so its not a problem.