Had a weird experience recently w/GPS Status. My battery was running down fast yesterday, even though I wasn't using my Droid very much. I checked in battery usage and found that the largest usage was not from my screen, but from GPS Status. This was particularly odd, as I hadn't actually run the app for days, maybe a couple weeks even. I opened GPS Status and it was behaving normally. Since I always turn off GPS when I'm not using it, it asked me to turn on GPS and it found my location, etc. I then exited GPS status and turned off GPS again. Figured something odd had happened that had hung something up, and now I'd be OK. This morning the same thing was happening...down to 80% by around 10 AM with almost no use of the phone. GPS status still listed as the top battery usage app. So I uninstalled GPS Status and am monitoring how the battery usage goes now. I think this was an isolated case, and I'm going to reinstall GPS Status tomorrow if everything is back to normal today, and I assume things will be OK with it again. Maybe it was related to the 2.01 update? Just wanted to note this in case anyone else bumped into anything like it.
I had similar issues with "Trip Meter"...while it was an ugly app, I constantly get into arguments with my roommates over what route is the fastest to get to X point as we live on the edge of town...so I liked having it. I even used Task Panel to kill it, manually turn GPS off, and the stupid program still managed to suck 4-5% of my battery usage every time I checked (since last unplugged), even when it had not been re-opened since the phone had been unplugged!
You know, I can't remember, and won't be reinstalling it until tomorrow at the earliest so I guess I'll find out then. Yeah - if it does, that might have been the culprit. The program itself does pretty much nothing if GPS isn't available...
It sure does. Try this - under the programs "settings," turn on the setting "GPS required." Now, when you finish using the program, just turn off your GPS receiver and that should shut down the program.
Thanks...that's exactly how I've had it configured - GPS Required, and only turned on GPS (via Power widget) when I was using it. That's why it's so odd - the program shouldn't have been able to do anything once I've exited it and turned off GPS.
Well, I uninstalled GPS Status and recharged my Droid to 100% around 1PM...since then I've played some MP3s for about 30 minutes, done some Marketplace browsing and a bit of playing around w/my Droid, and I was still showing 100% the last time I checked at about 3:30. Before that I was losing 10% an hour doing nothing. So I appear to have resolved my battery bug-a-boo.
