On Wednesday, May 9, 2012 9:40:20 PM UTC-7, Kristopher Micinski wrote:
>
>
> What you're doing isn't draining the battery only because of the 
> service, but also because of the location updates you'll be getting.. 
>
 
GPS fixing is definitely the main battery killer here, but there are smart 
ways to handle it.


> 30-40 seconds, do you really need that kind of accuracy?  I would say 
> that I'd only want something like 5 minutes, which an AlarmManger 
> certainly could do (I believe, at least..) 
>

Actually, I like to get accuracy of about 5-10 seconds when driving, less 
when walking. But 5 minutes would be basically useless. At 70 miles an 
hour, that's 6 miles between points. Even when hiking, I can make quite a 
few switchbacks and directional changes in 5 minutes. It all really depends 
on what you want out of a GPS tracker. I want a detailed log with great 
accuracy. I know battery life suffers, but when you're in a car, you can be 
plugged in, so that helps. And even when hiking, 10 seconds between fixes 
allows my phone to go for 8 hour hikes, so it's completely reasonable.

I changed my app to run as a foreground service and so far that has made 
all the difference. It hasn't once been restarted in 3 hours. For some 
reason, I thought a background process would be less likely to be killed, 
but now I see that services that let the user know exactly what is going on 
by being in the foreground and being required to show a notification icon 
are more transparent and thereby more "trusted" by the OS. The one thing 
that I don't understand is WakeLock. I am running my service without a 
wakelock, the phone has been off for a few hours, and it is still logging 
GPS points. Should I assume that some other app (I am running Tasker and 
some other automation apps as well as CatLog) are keeping the CPU awake?

Thanks for everyone's help. Little by little, I am getting a better grasp 
of what I am doing.

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