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GPS turning on after sleep mode

D

Droid4G

Lurker
I own the Atrix 2 and my GPS keeps turning on. I previously used the Original Atrix. I'm using the same apps on both phones. I keep my GPS on all the time because I use Google Nav a lot. It's never been a problem in the past with the Original Atrix or any other Android phone.

Whenever my Atrix 2 has been in sleep mode (hit power button once so screen is off) for about 15+ minutes or if I power off/on and I then use the phone, the GPS icon shows up in the notification area for a few seconds then disappears. I thought maybe it was an app causing the GPS to turn on so I tried a factory reset. After installing my apps back on in small groups and rebooting after every install, everything seemed fine for the first hour. Then the GPS icon started showing up again. I don't want to turn the GPS off in the settings. It defeats the purpose of one of the most useful features to me. I use Webroot security on my phone mainly for its lost device protection service as it came free with my PC security. Webroot shows I have 10 apps that have access to my GPS. I tried deleting those 10 apps and Webroot but it didn't help. Any ideas? Any way I can find out if an app is turning my GPS on? Is this happening to other Atrix 2 users?
 
Why are you concerned about this? It doesn't incur data charges or anything. It's just whatever apps you've given gps permission is doing it's thing.
 
Do you have some sort of weather widget on either your home screen or your lockscreen? Either could be periodically polling for your location in order to provide accurate info.
 
My weather widget polls for location every hour. If facebook is running in the background it will also periodically poll for location.
 
I too keep my GPS 'on' so that it's available when google maps needs it. I have the same compliment of apps on my atrix2 that I had on my atrix, and damn near the same configuration, but I never saw this on my OG atrix.

I know that on the original atrix, either 'news' 'news and weather' or 'weather' had a default config of 'current location' and was set to update periodically. This was a battery drainer on the OG atrix, and I first deconfigured and then later froze all three (ti backup).

I've spent some time looking around for the cause of the GPS icon showing up in the status bar, and have yet to find anything. I've noticed quite a bit of difference from phone to phone, and ROM to ROM with android and wouldn't be surprised if the atrix2 does a quick wireless-only location check everytime you wake the phone. This would result in faster location lookups in any app that does that and makes the phone appear faster with only a negligable effect on battery life.
 
It looks like it's the 'Device Health App' that's turning on the GPS randomly throughout the day. I recently found it was sucking a bit too much battery for my taste, and froze it with TiBackup. There's an xda thread here: Device health application - xda-developers

No word yet on what it's purpose is, tho I've suffered no ill effect after freezing it yet.
 
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