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Help What's accessing my GPS?

nola mike

Newbie
Jun 6, 2011
14
0
I haven't installed anything new, although who knows what's been updated. I have location set to GPS only. With the phone sleeping, I'm now getting multiple (as seen through the stock battery screen) GPS wakes, maybe 5/hour. This increases the battery usage from about 0.4%/hr to 1.5-2%/hr. Again, this is new behavior. Also, frequently now when I turn on the screen I see the "GPS searching" message. If I go to location settings, there are no recent location requests. In app ops, "android system" and "google play services" show as "running" under location. But that doesn't really help me narrow down anything, and I don't know if those are the same services that are causing the wake ups. No unusual wakelocks in BBS/GSam/WLD.

Basically, I need something that tells me what is turning on the GPS radio--any ideas?
 
It's unusual that the location requests would not show up on the location screen if it's searching using the GPS, since that tends to cause a heavy battery hit every time it's opened (as you said above.)

Have you looked in your battery settings? If it's causing such a dramatic change in battery usage, as you say, then maybe you can look in battery settings to try and see what is going on.
 
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Well, you can see where I've looked. I'm guessing that something is phoning home, which google may not report as an app actually "using" gps. I was wondering if one of my battery tweak apps (primarily using ds battery and amplify/unbounce now) did it, or maybe one of my app updates. I factory reset the phone and reinstalled minimal apps, and still having the same result (except now I'm getting a ton of google play wakelocks again). Disabled google search and stock weather app as well. Can't find where in spare parts any gps specific info would be.
 
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Yeah, problem is that even when I close everything down it still occurs. A related (?) issue is that with Gsam, phone radio usage seems higher than normal. Anyway, I found that google search popped up as using GPS, even though I had it location shut off in its permissions. I disabled it, and that seems to have fixed it. However, I don't think this was the problem before, as it was disabled before I factory reset the phone. This seems to happen after I do a reset/flash a new ROM. Wondering if google knows that I've been messing with the phone (more downloads/updates from the play store?) and wants more statistics.
 
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Last update...I think that Google Search was indeed the culprit. Re-enabled it, and GPS use started back up. It still doesn't show up as "recently accessed" GPS in settings. In addition, it still didn't have permission to access location. So basically it appears that at least search is ignoring its permissions and hiding its tracks. Really Google?
 
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