Just noticed something, I formated my phone just today. (for some reason i had to activate again. is that normal never had to do that with my WM phone when i would put roms on it and stuff)

During setup it asked if i wanted to share anymous location info to google, which i know the fist time i said yes (actually maybe the guy at verizon said yes for me) in any case it says under it something "will anonymously collect your location data even if a location app isn't running"

which could explain why it stays on when the gps is on

if you can go into your system settings and it's on for you try turning it off and see if then leaving the gps switched on will still keep the phone on.

Originally Posted by mavermc

Just noticed something, I formated my phone just today. (for some reason i had to activate again. is that normal never had to do that with my WM phone when i would put roms on it and stuff)

During setup it asked if i wanted to share anymous location info to google, which i know the fist time i said yes (actually maybe the guy at verizon said yes for me) in any case it says under it something "will anonymously collect your location data even if a location app isn't running"
.

I think that's the option in settings->privacy, which I turned off the other day, so I don't think that's it.

Good find. Seeing the same thing. Repeated your test, and yep, system stays on till gps is bounced.

Certainly doesn't look right. Is it that once satellite fix is established, it's maintained (even if not used)? And on GPS on/off, the fix is lost and the system forgets about GPS till it's actually called?

Next step would be to see how it affects power consumption. Will try to run some more tests later in the day.

Is there an easy way to test power drain? it'll be very interesting to see what effect this is really having.

Originally Posted by lexluthor

Is there an easy way to test power drain? it'll be very interesting to see what effect this is really having.

Unfortunately with the Droid X only showing battery power in 10%, it's not easy to discern small differences without waiting for hours.

I wonder if looking at the voltage would offer more precision. But, not sure how reliable that is. After all, if it was, why wouldn't the 3rd party battery meters use that to show more precise % readings.

Originally Posted by exempli_gratia

Unfortunately with the Droid X only showing battery power in 10%, it's not easy to discern small differences without waiting for hours.

I wonder if looking at the voltage would offer more precision. But, not sure how reliable that is. After all, if it was, why wouldn't the 3rd party battery meters use that to show more precise % readings.

You'd actually have to write an event for every single percent in the Android system for anything to detect the battery much more accurately and Motorola is too lazy to do that. Its only gonna show every 10% because thats what Android was programmed to show.

just an update, i said no to google doing it's data mining off my gps. but then i found in location, when i check "use wifi" it asked me again. My guess is thats how they know where you are when you turn on wifi, because if you want that feature you also have to be used in mining data of where the wifipoints are physically located.

So maybe that has something to do with it.

Saw this on Android Central Yesterday.

I can confirm it, when used with fancy widget. When standard weather app is used, no major power drain. Fancy widget seems to pin the GPS and run it hard the entire time.

Originally Posted by hijackerjack

You'd actually have to write an event for every single percent in the Android system for anything to detect the battery much more accurately and Motorola is too lazy to do that. Its only gonna show every 10% because thats what Android was programmed to show.

I would think that if Android had 1% events some app would take advantage of it (there are certainly plenty of battery monitors in Market). But I don't know of any that show anything other than 10%. The HTC phones do 1%, and the battery widgets on HTC phones show likewise. Must be a Motorola implementation limitation.