What the hell is my GPS doing?

[billyk]

For the last hour, GPS has been running, indicated by the icon in the status bar at top.

I've checked the running services, and there's few running and absolutely nothing that needs GPS.

Whassup with this?

 

[crspang]

Do you have shop savvy?

 

[Trooper]

I always disable my "use GPS satellites" until I need to use them...

That'll solve the problem.

 

[hookbill]

For the last hour, GPS has been running, indicated by the icon in the status bar at top.

I've checked the running services, and there's few running and absolutely nothing that needs GPS.

Whassup with this?

Do you have your browser on a web page that uses GPS like the Google home page? If so that could be what's going on. Check your battery usage at settings/about phone/battery usage and see if that gives you a clue.

 

[Riley]

Yup mines been doing that the last few days too, and I found Shop Savvy running for no reason, along with another program I can't recall. The only thing I know uses my GPS every 30 minutes is my weather widget. Why is Shop Savvy using it?

 

[billyk]

Thanks for the input.

I think I had the Google Search page up in the browser - that'll do it. Thanks Hook.

Also, the ShopSaavy question is a good one. I had it installed, twice, and I chucked it, twice, just for that reason. A shopping/barcode scanner that needs access to GPS every 30 minutes is just poor software design.

 

[KevinJ]

I noticed last night - and its still doing it today - that the GPS Status app is about 40 degrees off.

It's grabbing the satellite signals okay, but the compass directions are wrong. I pulled out my regular "analog" compass, and it is pointing correctly. But the app isn't.

Anyone got some ideas?

 

[gruve]

I've had that problem this week, it searches the location on the google start page, it was taking 72% of my battery.

 

[takeshi]

Why is Shop Savvy using it?

There's a thread that explains it somewhere. IIRC, it pre-caches location info.

 

[mplspug]

I've left the Google home page up over night too, only to find my phone dead in the morning. I make it a habit of killing everything when I am done.

I have a different GPS issue from time to time. Sometimes if I am in a building when it can't get a signal, but then I go outside and pull up maps or navigation, it just keeps saying searching for GPS Signal and never finds it. I can't figure out if there is a way to 'reset' the GPS by turning it off and back on. What I have to do in these instances is reboot the phone. Anyone else have that issue?

 

[billyk]

Thanks for the heads-up.

I had Google as my homepage :icon_eek:

 

[mplspug]

I have Google as my homepage too and couldn't imagine it being anything else. So for me my choices are to force kill the browser or turn off the GPS integration unless I need it. I do the former. Even if the last page I was on was not Google I kill it, because I think the browser in the back ground might still have something like scripts running that may kill my battery still.