Android irks me

[andrewducker]

Android's location service does a very neat trick whereby it looks around for Wifi signals, and then checks to see if any of the nearby access points have a known location. If so it can tell where you are very accurately. If you're in range of 5 or 6 access points then it can get a very good idea of exactly where you're standing.

This is, sadly, bugger all use if your Wifi is off, as mine tends to be whenever I'm out, so I can save battery power*. While it will happily activate the GPS** which takes at least 30 seconds to locate me with any accuracy, turning on my Wifi for 5 seconds to spot where I am is apparently beyond them.

So I have raised a defect. And if this would ever have been useful to you, then feel free to go along and let them know.

Not that I expect any changes, but I can always live in hope.



*I have an enlarged battery in my phone, which means I could theoretically leave the Wifi and still last more than a day, but I'd rather not drain it unless necessary.
**thus draining the battery far faster than Wifi does.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

As a temporary workaround you can include a wifi on/off button on the desktop.

[andrewducker]

This is basically what I do (I have a little control panel that does Wifi, GPS and a couple of other things).

It would be nice if it was automatic though.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Sure -- it makes sense.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

The thing that really bugged me was that if I switched on my wifi, it would keep losing its mobile internet connection and waste time with 'public' wireless hotspots that you actually need to sign in to use. So it would interrupt me to say 'hey, if you turned on your wifi I could tell where you are more accurately!' and then completely stop loading any map data if I did.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Default android set up (at least on every version I ever used) will not connect to a wifi hotspot unless you tell it to even if it thinks they are open. However, if you'd clicked on "Free public wifi" or similar it will try to connect to that if you see it. The solution is simply to delete those access point names. It should not then attempt to connect to them.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

Not sure if this works, but llama allows periodic wifi enabling and backitude can steal location info from other apps to update latitude.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Does switching off Wi-Fi actually save much battery life? I've never noticed any difference.

[andrewducker]

1/4-1/3 of my battery life, so far as I can tell.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

heh heh, nothing could help me in Porto - couldn't get map to work outside of the very centre of town - guess the signal was too bad to download the actual new maps...

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

If that's near the top of your list of complaints, you're in good shape.