Help The epic battle over battery drain against Maps/Latitude

[trale]

I've been keeping an eye on my battery usage over the last couple days, using GSAM.

I've already isolated many rouge apps and processes and disabled them whenever possible.

However, there's one culprit that I seemingly couldn't get a handle on - Maps. I've already done as much as I could in Maps settings: Turn off location reporting, location sharing, location history, etc.

But Maps still eats a good chunk of my idle battery life. And after doing some research, I've pinpointed the problem to Google Latitude - I don't have a Google+ account, and I've never signed in to Latitude. Yet processes keep popping in my battery usage that I'm pretty sure is related to Latitude. I check my battery usage details in GSAM, and it shows the following under Maps:
com.google.android.apps.FriendService
com.google.android.apps.LocationFriendService

I'm pretty sure I don't need these - I don't want to know where my friends are in Maps, or them to know where I am.

But, I cannot find any way to disable Latitude, or these 2 processes specifically. Even using a power root tool like Titanium Backup - I can't find entries that say "Latitude" or those two processes.


Does anyone know how I can proceed from here? I don't want to have to manually disable/renable my GPS connection every time i need it. My philosophy is to go after apps that are mis-using antennas, rather than turning off antennas themselves.

 

[Yatezy]

Google Now causes a lot of wake locks as well I think so shutting that off, if you don't use it, might help it.

 

[Mikestony]

I had a big issue with Maps chewing into my battery also.
fwiw, and this worked for me,
In menu/settings/locations services...if I had "Google Location Services" box checked, my maps would eat battery. Now, the only box I have checked, is "standalone GPS services" and it helped out ALOT!!

 

[trale]

I had a big issue with Maps chewing into my battery also.
fwiw, and this worked for me,
In menu/settings/locations services...if I had "Google Location Services" box checked, my maps would eat battery. Now, the only box I have checked, is "standalone GPS services" and it helped out ALOT!!

Thanks for the tip Mike! Seems to be working so far.

Although there definitely is a tradeoff in how quickly Google Maps pinpoint my location now (5-10 seconds when I'm outdoors) vs almost instantaneous when it was checked.

My understanding is that Google Location Services determines my general location using the wifi networks I'm in or near, giving a rough estimate, and that does help the actual GPS pinpoint my location quickly.

When it's off, the GPS antenna has to do all the work whenever I boot up something that requires location. I'm fine with this "on-demand" acquisition, if the tradeoff is no unnecessary location activity when the phone is idle.

I'll try this out for a few days and see how it works out.

 

[parishmc]

i always have Latitude enabled and never experience any battery
problems. i never turn anything off GPS, Wifi, BT, Etc.

 

[SUroot]

Me neither, until I started using the 4.2.1 leak.

I've done a reset of Maps today so we'll see how we go.

 

[doc1964]

I don't have the stand alone setting, am I missing something. Also my maps don't find my location unless I allow Google access to my location and Google search by ticking the box.

 

[trale]

Just wanna report back that turning off Google location services eliminated the battery drain issue!

My phone is sipping only 1% battery per hour when it's idle (screen off).

However, I am going to try out the "VZW location services" option. I've always had it off due to paranoia of being charged by Verizon, but there's no fee for it (only costs if I use VZ navigator). It simply provides location data to phone/apps via Cell Towers (Useful if indoors), and supposed to have negligible battery usage.