After my update this morning the GPS logo in the bottom status bar will not go away even if I am not using an app that requires GPS. It never did this before except when it first was powered on and then within a few seconds it would disappear. Now it stays on and I had to uncheck the "use GPS satellites" box in Settings. I am just afraid it will drain the battery if left flashing in the status bar and before the update I left the "use GPS satellites" checked at all times. Anyone else have this going on?
Edit: Re-Checking the "use GPS satellites" box again a few hours later and the icon is not coming on unless I'm in maps, then it goes away after I exit. Maybe it's back to normal now.
Edit again: Now it's back searching for GPS again with the box checked. But, I guess that's how it's supposed to be. Maybe it was just wrong before, because on my phone I turn it off when not in use. Guess that's what I'll do on the Acer too.
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I keep getting the small flashing icon in the bottom right notifcation bar saying "Searching for GPS". I have turned off the GPS capabilities in settings and am still having an issue. Anyone else have this problem? Its sort of annoying when its constantly flashing and I dont want it draining battery or anything.
Lemme know!
Thanks,
Steve
same here. happened when an app need to access location.
Here too, but the GPS doesn't appear to be enabled -- the status just shows that an app wants to use GPS. If set to airplane mode or you've disabled GPS, you won't be wasting battery power.
Hmm thanks for the replys guys, the flashing icon is just annoying, thats all. I guess it doesnt seem to be effecting battery that I know of.
I wonder if theres a way to tell which app is trying to use the GPS?
Open Google Maps, then close it (go to home). It usually stop the searching of GPS sats on my phone with that method.
Hi, maps seems to be keeping my phone awake when I lock it. I've searched this forum and I've disabled almost all the settings regarding GPS, location etc, as it seems this is what people are recommending. The only ones that I have kept enabled are 'Access my location', 'GPS Satellites' and 'Wifi & mobile network location'.
Better battery starts shows that 'NetworkLocationPassiveCollector' is giving partial wakelock.
Is there any way to stop this without turning GPS off?
Thank you
Anyone help? I've completely disabled location access, gps etc for now to see if it helps.
Mine was doing this a lot recently. I force closed the app, killed cache/data, then relaunched it and went into settings and toggled all of the stupid "track my location in the background" settings (on again, then back off). Haven't had a problem with it since.
It was sneaky about it, too. I would wake up my screen and see the GPS icon in the status bar and it would disappear right away. 20 minutes later I would wake up my phone and it would do the same thing.
Happens to me a lot also. I noticed facebook app will ping my gps occasionally unless I actually close the app out. I just turn location off unless I need it.
I've read a lot about people having issues in KitKat 4.4.2 and I'm having the same. Which is the GPS not locking a location. I've tried many things like apps such as GPS Fix and even flushable zips. I don't know what caused the problem but I have gone back to stock and still nothing. As of right now I'm running PA Beta 3 along with the latest Franco Kernel #206. Please I'm hoping someone has a fix
Sent from my Nexus 4 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
If you haven't already, try the "GPS Status" app.
There you can hit the menu button, press "Manage A-GPS State" and reset the AGPS cache. Then go to "Manage A-GPS State" again and download new AGPS data in place of the cache you deleted. Make sure you have a working data/wifi connection when you do this.
Note the number of sats fixed (they show up as visual green bars, you can also find the number on the left side of the "/"). You generally need more than 5 in order to get a steady lock, though that admittedly is tough if you have any overhead obstacles. This app will also tell you the "time to fix" so you'll know if it takes too long.
If you want, you can set it up to have a constant notification whenever the GPS is in use, and that way you could pull down the notifications bar while you're on the Maps app, then hit the "GPS Status" notification to pull out the app and get you a faster lock. At that point you just press the back button to return to Maps, whence it has fixed a location for you, and voila! You can even calibrate the compass.
Also, another thing you could do is set it to automatically download new AGPS data for every given length of time. I personally set it to every 6 hrs; that way if the GPS starts acting up, you'll automatically get new AGPS data within the day to help it lock faster.
Hope this helps!
~LightYearGears
I have just moved to a Note 4, with Android 4.4.4 kitkat.
I am trying to understand the relationship between "Location Services" and the use of the GPS.
The new Android 4.4.4 on the Note 4 does not have anymore the "GPS toggle" button, to turn GPS on/off.
Under "Location Services", I see that we have the "Locating Method". I have chosen it as "High Accuracy" (GPS, Wifi and mobile networks).
My main question is if the GPS is really ON all the time under "Hign Accuracy" method, draining battery, or not.
According to my observations, I have seen that when an application using GPS (like a tracking app), a location icon appears in the status bar. It seems that at that moment (when the application is "requiring" the GPS), it is being turned off. And I think that if NO "GPS application" is executing, the new Android is keeping the GPS turned off and saving battery.
If I am right, this is a huge improvement over the previous versions of Android: I can have location services allways ON, but saving battery, and the GPS will be turned on ONLY when it is really needed by a "GPS only" app.
Is this correct ?
Thank you very much.
paggps said:
I have just moved to a Note 4, with Android 4.4.4 kitkat.
I am trying to understand the relationship between "Location Services" and the use of the GPS.
The new Android 4.4.4 on the Note 4 does not have anymore the "GPS toggle" button, to turn GPS on/off.
Under "Location Services", I see that we have the "Locating Method". I have chosen it as "High Accuracy" (GPS, Wifi and mobile networks).
My main question is if the GPS is really ON all the time under "Hign Accuracy" method, draining battery, or not.
According to my observations, I have seen that when an application using GPS (like a tracking app), a location icon appears in the status bar. It seems that at that moment (when the application is "requiring" the GPS), it is being turned off. And I think that if NO "GPS application" is executing, the new Android is keeping the GPS turned off and saving battery.
If I am right, this is a huge improvement over the previous versions of Android: I can have location services allways ON, but saving battery, and the GPS will be turned on ONLY when it is really needed by a "GPS only" app.
Is this correct ?
Thank you very much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, you do have the GPS toggle. Just look for it in the drawer (use 2 fingers to bring all the toggles in view). EDIT - I see what you mean now - you're right!
If GPS is on, of course it's not really functioning all the time - just when needed. You have to be careful, though, a misbehaved app could use it quite often, increasing dramatically the battery consumption.
Oh, and make sure to turn Report Location off from Google location services. It's a battery killer and you don't really needed (it's used for some - far from all - stuff in Google Now).
I don't think anything has changed. "Off" means off and all location services including GPS are disabled. "On" means whatever location method you've chosen is all on. So if it's high accuracy GPS is still primary and Wi-Fi and carrier signals supplement it. When the little icon appears in the notification bar it means GPS (the actual GPS radio) is active. There used to be some devices that didn't have GPS radios that only used Wi-Fi as a location source but they were tablets and it was a long time ago. When apps call for "location" the GPS radio is always activated, as long as location services are on.
pedmond said:
Well, you do have the GPS toggle. Just look for it in the drawer (use 2 fingers to bring all the toggles in view). EDIT - I see what you mean now - you're right!
If GPS is on, of course it's not really functioning all the time - just when needed. You have to be careful, though, a misbehaved app could use it quite often, increasing dramatically the battery consumption.
Oh, and make sure to turn Report Location off from Google location services. It's a battery killer and you don't really needed (it's used for some - far from all - stuff in Google Now).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the answers.
I have been using my new Note 4 for a week, all the time with "Location Services" ON, and in the "High precision" mode. And I can confirm that the GPS is being turned on only when a "GPS only" application is launched. The small GPS icon on the status bar is always off. With this configuration, I am having extremely good battery performance (over a day), and the GPS is "always ready" to be activated when a "GPS only" app needs it. For me, this is the optimal configuration, and is a nice advantage over Android 4.3.
paggps said:
Thanks for the answers.
I have been using my new Note 4 for a week, all the time with "Location Services" ON, and in the "High precision" mode. And I can confirm that the GPS is being turned on only when a "GPS only" application is launched. The small GPS icon on the status bar is always off. With this configuration, I am having extremely good battery performance (over a day), and the GPS is "always ready" to be activated when a "GPS only" app needs it. For me, this is the optimal configuration, and is a nice advantage over Android 4.3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I sort of agree, but why take out the toggle. There will be times when you just don't want GPS to be used by a particular app, potentially a rogue one as mentioned. As far as I can see, there is no per-app setting for the location method, it's a global setting so you have to turn it off for everything, or have it on for everything, at the level you choose. There is a way to disable GPS altogether in the power saving settings somewhere (which I can't find now...) but that doesn't really help either. It would be pretty cool and totally the best implementation if you could select which app used which location methods. Pity I don't have root... I suspect XPrivacy would sort me right out...
If anyone knows a hidden shortcut to a menu where you can manually turn GPS on and off on a non-rooted phone, please let me know!
A few times in the past couple days, I've noticed that a few seconds after opening maps or an app like gps status, the gps symbol in the status bar simply disappears and the app I'm using stops updating.
I thought it might be a problem with maps until I caught it doing the same thing on the gps status app (and the gps test app as well). So it doesn't seem like an app problem. I have location accuracy mode set to high under location settings, and no power savings type modes or apps running. I have the at&t version of the s5.
Any ideas what's going on here or how to fix?
This is driving me nuts - it hasn't happened to anyone else? It seems like it generally happens when the GPS is 'cold' - like first thing in the morning. I'll open maps, or try to navigate, or one of the gps apps, and the gps indicator in the status bar simply turns off after a couple seconds and whatever app I'm in stops updating my location. If I close and reopen one of the apps, it'll do the same thing again. Eventually, after say 3-10 times of this - suddenly the gps status indicator will either stay on or might come back on a couple seconds after having turned off. After that, it seems to have 'warmed up' and works normal even after closing/opening apps to test it. I've also tried clearing maps data, as well as resetting agps data. Anything else I can try short of a factory reset?