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What is the crosshair icon

Depend's if you want the ER/police to be able to locate your wife! ;>)

My wife just got an Eris today; I've had a Droid for a month.

Just to be clear, are you saying that if there's an emergency, that the police/ER can find her even if her GPS is not turned on, thanks to this "locator" thing?

Also, does it eat any battery power by leaving it on?
 
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Just to be clear, are you saying that if there's an emergency, that the police/ER can find her even if her GPS is not turned on, thanks to this "locator" thing?

Also, does it eat any battery power by leaving it on?

1) Yes, Location is determined using cell tower proximity data if GPS is not available or not enabled. You can disable location in Settings -> Location -> Location Setting (uncheck).

My guess would be that a 911 call would override this and send location data anyway, but I'm not certain and I know I wouldn't trust it being disabled just to try and save a little bit of battery.

2) I don't believe it uses battery power solely by being enabled per se, however apps that request location data may cause it to ping the cell tower more frequently. Stuff like Weather, etc.

GPS is a lot more fine-grained of location data when compared to cell tower proximity, but uses a much larger amount of battery when compared to it.

I just wish we could turn off the icon, it just seems a tad pointless when the GPS has its own separate icon when its in use. AFAIK, the Droid doesn't show the icon for Location...it may be a 2.x thing. No idea.
 
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There are 2 different modes for location notification.

1. Location On.
This will allow 3rd party access to your location based on GPS/cell triangulation (i.e. Google Maps, Weather, etc.)
2. E911 Only. This only allows access to your location ONLY during emergency calls. When you turn Location off, this is the mode the phone will operate in.

So, unless you're paranoid, you can just leave your location on and the phone/apps will have full access to the GPS/triangulation to provide Location Based Services.

Location Based Services (LBS)
Your wireless device can determine its (and your) physical, geographical location (
 
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I have noticed that the device is smart enough to only use GPS when an app needs it, which means only when you are using the app. The GPS indicator does not illuminate until I activate an app that wants to use it.

Also, you only have a GPS receiver, not a transmitter, so battery usage is minimal. The thing to keep an eye on is applications that want to maintain your location regularly (Google Latitude, Maps, etc.).

I have used my device with GPS on and off and have noticed no measurable impact to battery. It's the apps that use it that consumer more batter (using the radio for mapping updates, etc).

Oh, and you can not disable the ability for GPS to determine your location when making an emergency call. THis would defeat the E911 Phase II compliance devices have had for a few years now.
 
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I have noticed that the device is smart enough to only use GPS when an app needs it, which means only when you are using the app. The GPS indicator does not illuminate until I activate an app that wants to use it.

Also, you only have a GPS receiver, not a transmitter, so battery usage is minimal. The thing to keep an eye on is applications that want to maintain your location regularly (Google Latitude, Maps, etc.).

I have used my device with GPS on and off and have noticed no measurable impact to battery. It's the apps that use it that consumer more batter (using the radio for mapping updates, etc).


Good to know. I just turned GPS on and the icon did not appear. I opened Google Maps and it immediately locked onto my location. Once I backed out of Google Maps, the icon for GPS disappeared. Pretty slick. I guess I'll try leaving GPS on. I made sure that my Weather Channel widget settings doesn't use GPS, otherwise it probably would drain my battery.
 
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Good to know. I just turned GPS on and the icon did not appear. I opened Google Maps and it immediately locked onto my location. Once I backed out of Google Maps, the icon for GPS disappeared. Pretty slick. I guess I'll try leaving GPS on. I made sure that my Weather Channel widget settings doesn't use GPS, otherwise it probably would drain my battery.

Yes, very good to know! I'm going to check my widgets and make sure they're not set to use GPS. That way my wife won't have to turn on GPS every time she goes to use Google maps.
 
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