High GPS usage under Android System

[theelite1x87]

I've had this problem come and go (even before updating to marshmallow) and I cannot figure it out. It seems that my phone is using GPS a lot. Even if I have location services disabled. Some days it uses most of my battery. Even above screen. Anyone have ideas? I'm not using any smart lock features.

 

[theelite1x87]

Forgot the images...

 

[Chris Dontworryaboutit]

I'm having a similar issue. It's been going on since the T-Mobile update. I swear I put locations to the low battery setting but a couple times it seems to switch to the top one. Maps also keeps running while the phone is idle and eating battery as well. It says maps kept my phone awake for over 50 minutes over night. Anyway sorry to thread jack but the issues seem similar and wasn't sure it needed a separate thread.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[anon(782252)]

For whatever reason, every time location is toggled off and then back on, it goes to the high accuracy setting by default.

My personal experience with location services is that GPS only is the best setting. Battery saver or low power cause more trouble than they are worth in my experience.

I use Access Lock to remove location permission (along with keep awake) from just about every app that I can (it's limited to downloaded apps).

My theory, whether it's accurate or not I'm not sure, is that with location turned off, something is trying to access location but it can't. And for whatever reason, it keeps trying over and over again which is why GPS use can be high even with location off.

I've used this setup (access lock with location permission revoked plus GPS only) for my last 3 phones (G3, G4, V10) and it's worked flawlessly.

 

[Chris Dontworryaboutit]

Thank you. I'll try the Access Lock app and see how it goes.

 

[theelite1x87]

I'll try setting it to GPS only first and see how it goes. I charged my phone before bed and unplugged it. It was at 100 percent and just sat idle for 7hrs. I look at my phone when I wake up and it dropped 10 percent in 7hrs. While sitting doing nothing. Checked Android system gps usage. Almost 2hrs of GPS usage. WTF? It was sitting untouched! I know this isn't a marshmallow issue as I encountered this before the update. Figured a reset would solve it. It did, but the problem seems to be coming back.

EDIT: Well, I've been using my phone for about 30mins at lunch and the GPS usage under Android system has climbed about 30 more minutes. So something has been pinging location this entire time. What I don't understand is I have not see the location/GPS icon on my notification bar at all. Not even once. Does this mean anything? I'm so glad google lumped so many things under Android system. Makes it easy to troubleshoot *end sarcasm*. Seriously, why isn't it just set to show what app requests GPS versus everything lumped into system?

 

[Chris Dontworryaboutit]

Well as suggested above I tried the access lock app to turn off locations permission on just about all the apps it would allow this on and it seems to have fixed things. I went to bed with the battery at 99% and woke up with 97%. Much better than before and no GPS/Maps waking the phone even once.

 

[anon(782252)]

Well as suggested above I tried the access lock app to turn off locations permission on just about all the apps it would allow this on and it seems to have fixed things. I went to bed with the battery at 99% and woke up with 97%. Much better than before and no GPS/Maps waking the phone even once.

Glad that helped. Had my phones set up that way for a couple years now and no issues.

 

[anon(782252)]

I'll try setting it to GPS only first and see how it goes. I charged my phone before bed and unplugged it. It was at 100 percent and just sat idle for 7hrs. I look at my phone when I wake up and it dropped 10 percent in 7hrs. While sitting doing nothing. Checked Android system gps usage. Almost 2hrs of GPS usage. WTF? It was sitting untouched! I know this isn't a marshmallow issue as I encountered this before the update. Figured a reset would solve it. It did, but the problem seems to be coming back.

EDIT: Well, I've been using my phone for about 30mins at lunch and the GPS usage under Android system has climbed about 30 more minutes. So something has been pinging location this entire time. What I don't understand is I have not see the location/GPS icon on my notification bar at all. Not even once. Does this mean anything? I'm so glad google lumped so many things under Android system. Makes it easy to troubleshoot *end sarcasm*. Seriously, why isn't it just set to show what app requests GPS versus everything lumped into system?

Have you tried using Access Lock to remove the location permission from apps?

 

[Adam Frix]

must be a specific app. While I usually put the phone on charger at night, sometimes I don't--and reliably it goes down only that couple percent when that happens.

What version of Android are you on? MM?

 

[theelite1x87]

I'm on 6.0. I manually removed location permissions for the google app. That app and play services are always listed under recent location requests. Never any other apps. So far, GPS usage has not started up again. Though I'm sure I've lost some functionality with google services by doing this.

 

[theelite1x87]

Ok. Its been a few days. I went back and gave google app permissions for location again after seeing how removing permissions solved all problems. I wanted to see how fast it would come back. So far, it hasn't. Android system and play services still show GPS usage but it's only a few minutes total for a full day, which is normal as I assume it's google now pinging location for its cards. Weird bug. But at least I know how to make it stop if it happens again.