You can also turn off location services, rather than the GPS. I leave my GPS on, so it's there when I need it, but have most location services turned off.
A question, though: what kind of battery life are you getting? What do you consider "good" and "bad."
Well, when I'm at work, I connect to wifi because AT&T's signal strength is crap in my building. I check for email or messages a few times a day, maybe cruise twitter during lunch. The battery drains about 2.5% an hour for me. It's routinely at 80% when I walk out to my car. (If wifi is down or I forget to connect it in the morning, my battery is about 30% to 40% after 9 hours...horrible LTE coverage kills it) I usually plug the phone in when I get in the car and listen to podcasts on my commute home, so it's always back to a full charge when I get home.
I don't pay much attention to battery drain at home because there's no way I could go from 100% to dead in the few hours before I climb into bed. I always plug it into the charger when I go to bed, plus I have spare chargers all over the house and a spare battery by the bed, too.
If I'm out and about, my battery life can vary drastically. I live in a rural area, so coverage isn't always good. My battery can burn 15% an hour with two bars, 20% an hour with one bar of service.