High Accuracy woes

[Recon777]

Okay, so I bought my new Note 4 yesterday and upgraded to Lollipop. I tried it out last night driving for Uber (which it is fantastic for, I must say). However, there is one thing which annoyed the hell out of me and it is that EVERY time I plugged in a new location to Google Maps, I got this nonsense:

Or, specifically, the image on the right. This nag screen pops up every time. Which for me is every few minutes. When I click Ignore, it just comes back the next time. If I go into Settings, there is nothing in there of any use. I am using "GPS only" mode, and I'd like to keep it that way. I don't want my phone trying to connect to wifi spots while I drive around.

As for the image on the left, that's a peculiar one as well. If I turn on GPS (now called Location, apparently) I get that popup. Every. Single. Time. Why do I have to keep disagreeing to this? And get this: If I check the box which says "Don't show again" the "DISAGREE" option becomes disabled! Seriously. That's a troll maneuver if I ever saw one. Why is Google adamant that I use their preferred settings? Can I not choose my own settings? Why do I even have settings if Google won't let me use them in peace? I don't get it.

How do I get rid of these two popups permanently w/o enabling "high accuracy" mode? My GPS is accurate enough, thanks.

 

[EarlyMon]

I don't know how to solve that - but high accuracy does not mean that your phone will be trying to connect to wifi hotspots.

Go to settings, wifi, Menu, advanced, and uncheck both notifications and location scanning.

Unless you do that, your phone is going to use wifi when you don't want it.

 

[Recon777]

I don't know how to solve that - but high accuracy does not mean that your phone will be trying to connect to wifi hotspots.

Go to settings, wifi, Menu, advanced, and uncheck both notifications and location scanning.

Unless you do that, your phone is going to use wifi when you don't want it.

So, if it doesn't mean that the phone is trying to connect, then can anyone explain exactly what "high accuracy" mode does? Being that it's the only mode which doesn't nag you, I might as well switch to it if (a) it doesn't use any more power, (b) doesn't add to my data usage, and (c) doesn't decrease my position accuracy at all. In some of my reading, it was actually suggested that location performance is worse with this on.

I'm not happy that Google is datamining my phone for profit without my permission, but that's kind of life these days, isn't it? There's a whole lot of people upset about this, but nobody seems to have found a way to get rid of it.

 

[EarlyMon]

I didn't say that.

I said that high accuracy mode does not cause your phone to connect to wifi hotspots - something that you specifically said that you wanted to avoid.

I also said how to prevent your phone from attaching to wifi hotspots even when you think you're not because of how you set up locations.

I'm willing to discuss location accuracy, I'm not willing to mix subjects. If you want to discuss how location works, I'll be glad to, as I qualify as an "anyone" that can explain it. If you want to not listen and rant about data mining, plenty of others will be happy to join you and you'll remain in the dark.

First - high accuracy does NOT decrease accuracy. Wherever you read that was wrong.

Second - the point of high accuracy is really simple. GPS is a form of triangulation that determines your location by using satellite time codes along with their known positions. If you lose the GPS lock, then high accuracy switches to fallback software that triangulates using cell phone towers. If both GPS and cell towers are unavailable but wifi is - and if you haven't bothered to block it as I suggest - then it will fall back to wifi location.

Although GPS is the highest accuracy going, the multimodal approach is called high accuracy because it has fallback processing to keep you located.

How much data will be used if you fall back to cell tower triangulation and how much power will depend on your particular handset. It's usually less power because your phone will have less to do if the GPS lock is being constantly challenged or lost.

Third - high accuracy location is not a data mining technique. Refer to your Google account privacy settings on the web.

If you've read this far, I hope it helps.

Whether you choose to use it is your concern.

All I said in the first place was that I didn't know how to get rid of your nag screens (I use high accuracy) but that if you were concerned about hotspot connections you needed to look where I said in my first reply.

Good luck to you.

 

[Recon777]

First - high accuracy does NOT decrease accuracy. Wherever you read that was wrong.

Second - the point of high accuracy is really simple. GPS is a form of triangulation that determines your location by using satellite time codes along with their known positions. If you lose the GPS lock, then high accuracy switches to fallback software that triangulates using cell phone towers. If both GPS and cell towers are unavailable but wifi is - and if you haven't bothered to block it as I suggest - then it will fall back to wifi location.

Although GPS is the highest accuracy going, the multimodal approach is called high accuracy because it has fallback processing to keep you located.

How much data will be used if you fall back to cell tower triangulation and how much power will depend on your particular handset. It's usually less power because your phone will have less to do if the GPS lock is being constantly challenged or lost.

Well that's why I'm here - to get information. I'm about a day into learning about this stuff from scratch, so I haven't done comprehensive research on it yet - just a few Google searches hoping to get rid of the nag screens and then reading threads like the one I linked above where everyone is all ticked about it and nobody has a way to turn it off. I found it rather odd that you can't turn it off without being nagged. By itself that seems underhanded. Nag screens should never coerce a person into a particular settings option. But the main thing I am trying to learn here is how to get the nag screens to go away permanently because I'm looking up a lot of destinations to drive to. Probably 20-30 per day. If being in high accuracy mode is the only way to avoid the popups then I probably need to switch it on. At that point, I'd at least like to have a good understanding of what is happening, and you've provided that - thanks.

 

[EarlyMon]

You're welcome!

Yeah - not sure about the nag screens.

I absolutely hated them, so I just went with high accuracy.

OK, so new to this, driving for Uber, don't want to be profiled...

You're probably googling for businesses and cross checking links often in addition to using navigation.

Firefox browser, Menu, Tools Add-ons, and add Adblock Plus and Ghostery. The first will cut ads, the second will cut ad agency trackers. Not the fastest Android browser but you get the same add-ons as your desktop and you save on mobile data.

If you use Google Now and have regular routes and times that you drive, under settings, Location, you can turn on the location history and get route-predictions and traffic in Google Now cards. If you don't like that, you can turn it and Google Now off without getting nagged. You can turn off Google Now and just use search via the Google Settings app - in fact you probably want to go through all of Google Settings if you haven't already.