Does location drain the battery?

[Deleted member 2627544]

if 'Location' is turned off as most of you seem to recommend, there will be no way of finding a lost phone.
in the past i've always turned 'Location' on/off as needed, and recently lost/stolen a new S6 Edge.
couldn't locate it as 'Location' was off. therefore, it's a big trade-off if you want to be able to find your
phone in the unlikely event it dissapears.

 

[Erm10]

Just shows to go ya...battery drain is a ridiculously complex and variable issue. I have tried every one of these tips at one point or another and in my experience the battery on the S6 is not very good. I typically unplug at 6am and with light use I am down to 50% by early afternoon.

And by the way...where is the setting for location reporting? I can easily find location history and the GPS vs Wifi, etc settings but have never seen one for location reporting.

 

[Ryan Wallace]

Set it to GPS only. I have no drain at all from GPS unless I'm using it. My Google Play service drain is nearly non-existant as well. The Wifi and Mobile network location (whether in power save or high accuracy mode) will always use power because Google is always tracking your location to get 'more accurate readings'. If you don't need Google tracking you 24/7 then just use GPS. I have not noticed any I'll effects from using it exclusively.

Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk

 

[erasat]

Just shows to go ya...battery drain is a ridiculously complex and variable issue. I have tried every one of these tips at one point or another and in my experience the battery on the S6 is not very good. I typically unplug at 6am and with light use I am down to 50% by early afternoon.

And by the way...where is the setting for location reporting? I can easily find location history and the GPS vs Wifi, etc settings but have never seen one for location reporting.

Location reporting option was removed by Google a couple of months ago, now it's incorporated into the only option you see, Location History, hence the huge battery drain now when you turn Location on and leave the Location History as it came by default.

You can try GPS only add it has been suggested here, personally I'm using for more than a month now Location in Power Saving Mode, using cell signal and WiFi only, with Location History off and haven't seen any difference in my battery life, or nothing that I can even notice.

In my experience, I do notice a difference when using any of the other 2 options that include the GPS sensor, GPS only drains a lot less but I do notice the difference even with the Location History off, you'd notice that a service called GPSD begins to appear in your battery stats and in my case most of the time right below display.

Anyway, for better battery life, select the Location option you prefer, but be aware that it will drain accordingly, just turn off Location History, unless you really want Google to know every single move you make. By experience, even with this off, Google Now still shows you places around your location and other location related stuff, so History is not necessary a must for this things.

 

[Mikael Lundqvist]

I restarted my Moto G, changed Location to battery preserving mode and uninstalled the Instagram app which is a big fat battery hog. This fixed the battery drain for me.

Greetings from Sweden.