How do I stop my GPS Icon from flashing (ATT HTC One M8)?

[AC Question]

GPS Icon Flashing - Increased Battery Drain on ATT HTC One M8

I've noticed that my GPS icon continues to flash every minute or so. I've tried completely disabling location services as well as uninstalling apps that appear to be using GPS services (like weather).

In the battery manager, I notice that the bulk of my battery life with the screen off is being eaten by Android System 51%, and that the GPS has been active for 1h 11m in the last ~5 hours.

I can provide screenshots from battery manager if that will help, but this is far and away the outlier.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[DLK1]

Re: GPS Icon Flashing - Increased Battery Drain on ATT HTC One M8

Is this after a upgrade to Android Lollipop? If so you may want to try clearing the Cache Partition.

 

[Hosephus]

Re: GPS Icon Flashing - Increased Battery Drain on ATT HTC One M8

No, I am still running 4.4.4

According to battery manager, no other app is keeping the GPS active. According to GSam, Android System and the Kernel make up almost 60% of my power drain.

 

[Jong Lourney]

Usually you just turn off the gps. Probably you have some malware or bugged out apps.
If it's kernel, try downloading apps like cpu control, and try other types of kernel modes, it usually doesn't need root to change that.

 

[piaablind]

Re: GPS Icon Flashing - Increased Battery Drain on ATT HTC One M8

I am having this issue too. My GPS icon in the notification area will appear and flash for a long period of time at frequent intervals. My GPS is turned OFF and it still is happening. Just started happening wither today or yesterday. I have not installed any new apps in that time frame, nor have i run any updates. I am on AT&T and 4.4.4. I have tried everything i can think of. Rebooted several times, nothing unusual is running. When the icon is flashing, i cant turn on or off my GPS via the widget page. Clicking on the GPS widget does nothing while the notification is flashing.

 

[serlex]

Re: GPS Icon Flashing - Increased Battery Drain on ATT HTC One M8

I am having the exact same issue- GPS icon displays when I make/receive a call and when I reboot the device. All location settings are turned off. I talked to HTC support and the only thing they advised is to contact AT&T because it's probably being caused by on of their apps. I wiped the partition cache and nothing.

 

[Hosephus]

That makes sense. I did partition cache wipe and a factory reset last night. Everything was fine, until sometime this morning. Some app must have updated causing the issue to reappear. There are a bunch more ATT App updates, many of which are location related so hopefully they've identified the issue and corrected.

Gotta love being an undocumented beta tester for these clowns...

 

[jpt19]

Re: GPS Icon Flashing - Increased Battery Drain on ATT HTC One M8

My M8 (ATT) just started doing this the last few days as well.
Every time I unlock the screen, I see the GPS icon. I have had the phone for almost a year and it has not done this before.

I tried a reboot and uninstalling a few apps, but no luck.

 

[MatthewGavin]

Re: GPS Icon Flashing - Increased Battery Drain on ATT HTC One M8

I have been having the same issue too. My battery drains big time...I am guessing it is from the issue everybody in this post have. I am running att 4.4.4

 

[Richard Lavala III]

me too. i have had my m8 for a year. never once saw gps flashing up top in icon tray. gps is off. now the last few days it is flashing on and off all day and everyday. of course, At&t has no clue. Anyone figure this out yet? Very frustrating.....affecting battery.

 

[anon8380037]

Re: GPS Icon Flashing - Increased Battery Drain on ATT HTC One M8

As a temporary attempt at a fix, while waiting for HTC, you guys could try GPS Status and Toolbox. It helped us more 'gentrified' folk in the Note 3 forum with an issue last year. It locks on quicker for most people.

 

[Hosephus]

So, I seem to have put a stop to the GPS. I went a bit nuclear, which was an option as I never use the apps I'm about to suggest you disable.

What I did was go through, acting under the assumption that this is an AT&T specific issue. I disabled and force stopped the following apps in Settings > Apps > All:

• AT&T FamilyMap
• AT&T Live
• AT&T Locker
• AT&T Mobile Locate
• AT&T Navigator
• AT&T Smart Wi-Fi
• Drive Mode
• as well as a few others that were more personal discretion rather than out of concern they're using the GPS

Since I have done this, the GPS uptime has greatly decreased. When I do see it active, which has only been twice since I took these steps, I do one more thing.

In Settings > Apps > Running, I select the Android System line item. Once there, I Stop the IQ Agent Service. I am basing this on issues I read from a few years back that pointed to IQ services as a potential battery drain. This is completely anecdotal at this point, but the one time I saw the GPS pinging more than a few times in a row, the instant I hit the stop button the GPS icon went away too.

Hope this helps, YMMV.

 

[Hosephus]

I should mention, after taking these steps I've been able to reactivate Location Services with the system setting for use by apps I actually would like to use (primarily weather) with no apparent issues.

 

[piaablind]

Thanks I already had all of those apps disabled except for mobile locate and Smart Wi-Fi. Disabled those two and am going to see if this helps. I Always have my GPS turned off unless i am using google maps so this has been driving me crazy thinking some rogue app is bypassing my setting and using my GPS anyway. Hope this fixes it! Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[jpt19]

Here are my findings:
1) When the GPS icon was flashing, I used "AppOps" app to monitor which services were actively using the GPS. It listed 4:
-Android system
-Google Play services
-HTC Service Pack
-Google Wallet

2) I uninstalled Google Wallet as I recently installed that, and thought maybe it was the culprit. No luck. GPS icon still on the screen.

3) Within AppOps you can "Deny" individual applications access to location data.
-first I denied "HTC service Pack". GPS still was flashing.
-denied Google Play Services. Still flashing.
-denied "Android System". GPS icon disappeared!

4) Re-granted Google Play and HTC Service Pack access to location data. Re-installed Google Wallet. Left "Android System" as "Deny" for location services.

It looks like the GPS icon is not showing up. So, the only thing that could be causing this is "Android System".

As for why this recently started, I don't know. And, as for what functionality I will lose by denying this service from location information, I don't know that either.

EDIT: I should note I already had all the AT&T apps disabled as the previous post listed.

 

[serlex]

Does the phone need to be rooted to use "App Ops?" Irrelevant

 

[serlex]

So, I seem to have put a stop to the GPS. I went a bit nuclear, which was an option as I never use the apps I'm about to suggest you disable.

What I did was go through, acting under the assumption that this is an AT&T specific issue. I disabled and force stopped the following apps in Settings > Apps > All:

• AT&T FamilyMap
• AT&T Live
• AT&T Locker
• AT&T Mobile Locate
• AT&T Navigator
• AT&T Smart Wi-Fi
• Drive Mode
• as well as a few others that were more personal discretion rather than out of concern they're using the GPS

Since I have done this, the GPS uptime has greatly decreased. When I do see it active, which has only been twice since I took these steps, I do one more thing.

In Settings > Apps > Running, I select the Android System line item. Once there, I Stop the IQ Agent Service. I am basing this on issues I read from a few years back that pointed to IQ services as a potential battery drain. This is completely anecdotal at this point, but the one time I saw the GPS pinging more than a few times in a row, the instant I hit the stop button the GPS icon went away too.

Hope this helps, YMMV.

This worked like a charm!!! I stopped the IQ Agent Services and no more infernal icon flashing!

 

[madelman99]

I had all of the AT&T apps disabled, the problem is if you stop IQ Agent Service it will come back again. I even tried to force stop the android system app, the moment I stop ether IQ Agent or Android System, the GPS icon goes away, but, it will come back after a while. Unfortunately I tried all of the things suggested here and none of them solved the problem, only produced temporary results. We should start calling AT&T and make them get of their behind and fix this. This is obviously their doing whether intentional or not.

 

[Bialosky]

Just stopping by to chime in with the same issue. GPS On time and "Awake" time in Settings --> Battery --> History constitutes about half of the time my screen is off and this issue has just appeared in the past couple weeks. The culprits in my recent location requests were always the Google App and Google Play Services and I thought it was really weird that even with the Google App disabled, Location disabled, and Google's Location settings turned off I would still see the same issue.

I'm disabling the Android System process to see if this works; my fingers are crossed!

 

[madelman99]

Just stopping by to chime in with the same issue. GPS On time and "Awake" time in Settings --> Battery --> History constitutes about half of the time my screen is off and this issue has just appeared in the past couple weeks. The culprits in my recent location requests were always the Google App and Google Play Services and I thought it was really weird that even with the Google App disabled, Location disabled, and Google's Location settings turned off I would still see the same issue.

I'm disabling the Android System process to see if this works; my fingers are crossed!

Are you rooted? I don't have the option to disable Android System process, it is greyed out, but it will most likely fix the issue since stopping it instantly turns off GPS.