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Serious question for the HN community - why do you leave your GPS on/activated by default? I have mine disabled unless I specifically need it for something, wh

Serious question for the HN community - why do you leave your GPS on/activated by default? I have mine disabled unless I specifically need it for something, which is rare. Usually the only time I ever need GPS is for driving instructions. Otherwise, it's off. GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device. Why would you leave this on? Do you all use it far more frequently or was it something you never thought to shut off? I can't think of one app I use that requires my location other than weather, in which case I just set the location(s) I want and can refresh at any time. But I generally get weather from a saved DuckDuckGo search - "[zipcode] weather" - stored as a bookmark and problem solved. On a related note, Google has created a tool that allows you to see all the data they have on you (and delete it if you want). Because of the way I set up everything and my habits, they had virtually nothing on me. The only stuff I think were some chats from years and years ago and a few searches I did while not in incognito mode on my phone. I also don't use any of their apps from their main product suite - no search, email, chat, drive, etc. And I never leave myself logged in to my account on anything. I don't think this reduces my productivity or quality of life at all. In fact, quality of life is almost certainly improved.

cm2187 9y ago
Geotagging of photos, reducing the time it takes to acquire your gps location when you need a map. These are reasonable reasons to have GPS running all the time. There are not reasons to upload these locations to a remote server outside of your control nor to log these locations on the device.
nkurz 9y ago
Good comment. Might be worth mentioning that turning GPS off reduces the accuracy of your location, but does not prevent it from being known: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location-tracking-cell-tower-data-android-os-firebase-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location... GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device. I'd be surprised that this is true. I used several battery monitor apps on several phones, and never found this to the case. It's a simple receiver, and doesn't require much power to do so. If you find a correspondence, it may be more likely that the power is actually being used by the apps that are using GPS, rather than the GPS itself: http://alienmantech.com/blog/android-disable-gps-save-battery-power/ http://alienmantech.com/blog/android-disable-gps-save-batter...
- newen 9y ago
  Maps is a huge battery hog in Android. I've always attributed that to the GPS since I basically only use GPS for maps.
- godelski 9y ago
  I have noticed it on all my phones. On my Pixel 2 I usually get 2-3 days of battery life. But if I use maps and don't force close the app after I'm done my battery will barely last a day. So I'd call GPS (or more accurately the Maps app) my biggest battery hog, and by far.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  >> GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device. Something is, but I find it very hard to believe it's the GPS itself. It's, after all, a completely passive system. What eats battery is transmissions and computation; with GPS, the first doesn't happen, and there isn't much of the second either. I guess what happens is (on some phones; I've kept GPS always active on my Galaxy S4 and S7, and never noticed a difference) having GPS active makes various services run in your system, which may or may not be poorly written / poorly integrated with phone's power management.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    On modern phones, you are unlikely to observe any power savings by turning off GPS or "location services". The GPS is only going to use significant battery power when it is acquiring or actively calculating fixes. No device or OS vendor would ship software that burns the GPS at all times--your device's battery wouldn't last more than a few hours. The grandparent is totally incorrect about the GPS being the biggest battery hog on the device. Not even close, unless you are, 24 hours a day, navigating or running some other application that requires continuous (1 second duty cycle) GPS fixes. Even then, your backlight is likely consuming an order of magnitude more power.
  - rcxdude 9y ago
    While GPS is not a huge power hog in comparison to other things on phones, the cost of listening on radio is not negligible, which is why most low-power radio protocols put a lot of emphasis on only listening in certain time windows.
pixl97 9y ago
I go out to client locations quite often and it provides a reasonably good means of time/location tracking when I do my billing reviews.
fixermark 9y ago
I leave it on because I don't care if the various systems I'm plugged into know where I am. On balance, I'd rather the infrastructure have less difficulty finding me if I crash my car in a ditch than be anonymous when I'm off doing my nobody-cares-what-I-am-doing. ;)
jdietrich 9y ago
Hot location fixes are much faster than warm fixes, even with aGPS. Turning GPS off usually causes a substantial delay before you can start using a location-dependent app or feature, plus the manual effort of turning GPS back on. The delay is far greater if you're in an urban canyon with high levels of multipath interference. For a suburban user that occasionally uses driving directions, this delay probably isn't an issue. For an urban user who is frequently using maps, location-based searches, ridesharing apps etc, it's a total dealbreaker. If I'm the kind of person who often says "OK Google, where's the nearest coffee shop?", I don't want to have to turn on GPS and wait for a location fix before I get a useful answer.
confounded 9y ago
If I was designing this feature, I'd use GPS in combination with the MAC address of the wireless AP in the restaurant; I wouldn't be surprised if this works with just WiFi enabled.
- turc1656 9y ago
  I also have WiFI disabled nearly 100% of the time. I use GPS far more often than I do WiFi.
AndrewDucker 9y ago
On Android (recent versions anyway) GPS only turns on when an application requests it. I get a notification when GPS is activated, and it's quite rare. Basically only when I open my bus app, or open Google Maps. So there's no real battery usage there. Most of the time it picks up my location from WiFi, which is a lot lower power.
michaelcampbell 9y ago
> GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device How do you measure this? At least on the android devices I've used I've never seen a line item in any metrics that shows GPS as a thing, at all, nor have I noticed any location based app being generally in the top 5. For me the battery consumer is screen time. As to why I leave it on, I like it - I like the hot notices about things in my area, and I use navigation quite a lot as Waze's traffic re-routing ability is useful to me. It's amazing - people like different things!

cm2187 9y ago

Geotagging of photos, reducing the time it takes to acquire your gps location when you need a map. These are reasonable reasons to have GPS running all the time. There are not reasons to upload these locations to a remote server outside of your control nor to log these locations on the device.

nkurz 9y ago

Good comment. Might be worth mentioning that turning GPS off reduces the accuracy of your location, but does not prevent it from being known: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location-tracking-cell-tower-data-android-os-firebase-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location... GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device. I'd be surprised that this is true. I used several battery monitor apps on several phones, and never found this to the case. It's a simple receiver, and doesn't require much power to do so. If you find a correspondence, it may be more likely that the power is actually being used by the apps that are using GPS, rather than the GPS itself: http://alienmantech.com/blog/android-disable-gps-save-battery-power/ http://alienmantech.com/blog/android-disable-gps-save-batter...

newen 9y ago
Maps is a huge battery hog in Android. I've always attributed that to the GPS since I basically only use GPS for maps.
godelski 9y ago
I have noticed it on all my phones. On my Pixel 2 I usually get 2-3 days of battery life. But if I use maps and don't force close the app after I'm done my battery will barely last a day. So I'd call GPS (or more accurately the Maps app) my biggest battery hog, and by far.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
>> GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device. Something is, but I find it very hard to believe it's the GPS itself. It's, after all, a completely passive system. What eats battery is transmissions and computation; with GPS, the first doesn't happen, and there isn't much of the second either. I guess what happens is (on some phones; I've kept GPS always active on my Galaxy S4 and S7, and never noticed a difference) having GPS active makes various services run in your system, which may or may not be poorly written / poorly integrated with phone's power management.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  On modern phones, you are unlikely to observe any power savings by turning off GPS or "location services". The GPS is only going to use significant battery power when it is acquiring or actively calculating fixes. No device or OS vendor would ship software that burns the GPS at all times--your device's battery wouldn't last more than a few hours. The grandparent is totally incorrect about the GPS being the biggest battery hog on the device. Not even close, unless you are, 24 hours a day, navigating or running some other application that requires continuous (1 second duty cycle) GPS fixes. Even then, your backlight is likely consuming an order of magnitude more power.
- rcxdude 9y ago
  While GPS is not a huge power hog in comparison to other things on phones, the cost of listening on radio is not negligible, which is why most low-power radio protocols put a lot of emphasis on only listening in certain time windows.

pixl97 9y ago

I go out to client locations quite often and it provides a reasonably good means of time/location tracking when I do my billing reviews.

fixermark 9y ago

I leave it on because I don't care if the various systems I'm plugged into know where I am. On balance, I'd rather the infrastructure have less difficulty finding me if I crash my car in a ditch than be anonymous when I'm off doing my nobody-cares-what-I-am-doing. ;)

jdietrich 9y ago

Hot location fixes are much faster than warm fixes, even with aGPS. Turning GPS off usually causes a substantial delay before you can start using a location-dependent app or feature, plus the manual effort of turning GPS back on. The delay is far greater if you're in an urban canyon with high levels of multipath interference. For a suburban user that occasionally uses driving directions, this delay probably isn't an issue. For an urban user who is frequently using maps, location-based searches, ridesharing apps etc, it's a total dealbreaker. If I'm the kind of person who often says "OK Google, where's the nearest coffee shop?", I don't want to have to turn on GPS and wait for a location fix before I get a useful answer.

confounded 9y ago

If I was designing this feature, I'd use GPS in combination with the MAC address of the wireless AP in the restaurant; I wouldn't be surprised if this works with just WiFi enabled.

turc1656 9y ago
I also have WiFI disabled nearly 100% of the time. I use GPS far more often than I do WiFi.

AndrewDucker 9y ago

On Android (recent versions anyway) GPS only turns on when an application requests it. I get a notification when GPS is activated, and it's quite rare. Basically only when I open my bus app, or open Google Maps. So there's no real battery usage there. Most of the time it picks up my location from WiFi, which is a lot lower power.

michaelcampbell 9y ago

> GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device How do you measure this? At least on the android devices I've used I've never seen a line item in any metrics that shows GPS as a thing, at all, nor have I noticed any location based app being generally in the top 5. For me the battery consumer is screen time. As to why I leave it on, I like it - I like the hot notices about things in my area, and I use navigation quite a lot as Waze's traffic re-routing ability is useful to me. It's amazing - people like different things!