New Feature: Location Accuracy

[mendhak]

jlmkerr[CodePlex]
Battery life is key to this app. A user doesn't want to run out of phone because their geotag is updating. If you could have an option to use cell tower location only (without disabling GPS for other apps) that would be great. This could be done through a 'location accuracy' setting that also could reduce the accuracy required from the GPS, further improving battery. For example, if I was happy to have a location accuracy of 20m then GPS would be used until it could get a good enough lock to provide this. However, if my location accuracy was set to 100m then the GPS would not need to be powered on for as long as it can get this level of accuracy from fewer satelites. A location accuracy of 500m or more could be provided from cell tower information alone, dramatically reducing battery consumption.
This feature would also affect the distance interval setting, so that the distance interval would be at least as great as the location acuracy setting.

[mendhak]

mendhak[CodePlex]
Hi, I had a look at this - unfortunately, setting the accuracy isn't related to power consumption in Android, the OS will simply keep reading the location regardless of accuracy, so the only limits that can be placed will be via code - this basically means that it'll use the same amount of power. What I will do, though, is let the user prefer cell tower based locations over GPS based so that it saves more power.

[mendhak]

            Resolved with changeset 43297.