GPS Off, when opening the application

elmuSSo · May 19, 2011, 12:25:50

Hi.
When I'm staring the app, GPS icon is showing in my Notification bar. But inside the application, GPS is off. I need to navigate to GPS/Satellites icon/window to manually turn the GPS On using the button.

Why? What is the point of that, why GPS is already using my battery, and GPS inside app is turned off. Can You make some option in Setting to make it permanently On?

turbinea · June 11, 2011, 20:50:44

i have same problem. when i install the program, it works just fine, but after while i see that gps is off. going to satelite screen sometimes helps, sometimes not. very strange. i have latest possible version from a.market

air7 · June 12, 2011, 22:01:42

same problem here...

rijackson741 · June 12, 2011, 22:54:17

Quote from: "turbinea"going to satelite screen sometimes helps, sometimes not.

When you are in the satellite screen what do you see on the button at the bottom left? If it says "GPS Off" you need to tap it to turn the GPS on. If you then exit Locus without turning the GPS off it should start automatically next time you start Locus.

Menion · June 13, 2011, 12:38:04

you're only partially right rijackson. I had few times similar issue - I enabled GPS on satellite screen, and after a while button was still enabled but GPS in system was disabled. Is this what you all mean? I trying a lot to find why is this done, but without success still. damn ... anyway I rewrote part of GPS handling to be more stable I hope so this should solve this problem. We'll see in next release.

If you have other type of issue, this will probably solve solution from rijackson ...

rijackson741 · June 13, 2011, 16:01:05

Hmmm. Now I see the problem. I don't know why I didn't notice this before. Maybe I also misunderstand what the "GPS on/off" button is supposed to do. I thought it was really supposed to be a "Use GPS if available yes/no" button, in that it does not turn the GPS on or off in the settings, it only determines whether Locus uses it (if it can).

If I turn on the GPS in settings, and enter Locus, turn on the "GPS on", it will get a lock. Then I exit Locus. If I leave the GPS on in settings and enter Locus again the GPS will get a lock, and in the satellite screen I see "GPS on". This is what I would expect. Next I exit Locus, and turn the GPS off in settings, and then reenter Locus. If I now look at the satellite screen it says "GPS off". That's actually not what I would expect, but I guess it's logical in a way, because it can't use the GPS if it's not turned on! If I then exit Locus, turn on the GPS in settings, and then enter Locus again, the GPS remains off. Of course, this is inevitable, because when it was toggled off the previous time Locus lost track of the fact that I wanted to use the GPS if it was available.

So I think at this point what would be useful is a description of exactly what the "GPS on/off" button is supposed to do. :mrgreen: I am confused :?

fencepost · June 14, 2011, 20:46:49

Menion, the problem you're seeing is what's happening for me as well.

Menion · June 14, 2011, 21:03:51

I rewrote part of gps handling in new market version. during testing no problem .. so let me know. I'll be since thursday, four day on small trip so I'll test it as well ...

Moosach · June 28, 2011, 19:53:02

Sorry, this is still somewhat confusing to me. I enable GPS in system settings or in the power control widget. Google Maps works fine. When I start locus, it works ok. When I lock the phone (LG Optimus Black) with the power button, wait a couple of seconds and open it again, GPS seems to be disabled and it takes some time until it gets my actual location again. I can only guess that this is because of battery reasons. But then it is a very uncommon "feature". I would like to decide for myself if GPS should be kept on always (default!) or just in times when Locus is being used.

Next thing is that the status of the GPS icon in Locus' own button bar doesn't seem to show the real GPS state all the time. When I lock the phone and unlock it again like described above then the icon is "off". It keeps so even if Locus gets a fix again. One touch on the icon changes its state to "on".

And last but not least I tried Locus on a friends Samsung Galaxy S (not dualcore) and we permanently had to fight with locus not being able to activate the GPS, no matter what system settings were and if GPS was enabled in Locus or not. A reboot of the phone helped in these cases though. Unfortunately I was not able to reproduce this behaviour and find out what exactly causes it.

After all I find it very confusing that Locus' manages a second "on/off"-state of GPS in addition to system settings. Maybe you should keep this as an expert feature and disable it by default.

Menion · June 29, 2011, 06:13:29

Quote from: "Moosach"Sorry, this is still somewhat confusing to me. I enable GPS in system settings or in the power control widget. Google Maps works fine. When I start locus, it works ok. When I lock the phone (LG Optimus Black) with the power button, wait a couple of seconds and open it again, GPS seems to be disabled and it takes some time until it gets my actual location again. I can only guess that this is because of battery reasons. But then it is a very uncommon "feature". I would like to decide for myself if GPS should be kept on always (default!) or just in times when Locus is being used.

... same as Google maps ... try it

Quote from: "Moosach"Next thing is that the status of the GPS icon in Locus' own button bar doesn't seem to show the real GPS state all the time. When I lock the phone and unlock it again like described above then the icon is "off". It keeps so even if Locus gets a fix again. One touch on the icon changes its state to "on".

bug - fixed, thanks

Quote from: "Moosach"And last but not least I tried Locus on a friends Samsung Galaxy S (not dualcore) and we permanently had to fight with locus not being able to activate the GPS, no matter what system settings were and if GPS was enabled in Locus or not. A reboot of the phone helped in these cases though. Unfortunately I was not able to reproduce this behaviour and find out what exactly causes it.

... did this troubles was only in Locus? Did you tried any other app without problems?

Quote from: "Moosach"After all I find it very confusing that Locus' manages a second "on/off"-state of GPS in addition to system settings. Maybe you should keep this as an expert feature and disable it by default.

usage of this features depend on YOU! When you start Locus for first time, GPS will turn on as you expect from GMaps. When you never go to Satellite screen (to manage GPS in Locus by yourself), it will always start with Locus and alway end with Locus (as in GMaps), do I really do not see problem with this. Also from my personal point of view, I have enabled GPS in Locus in cca 25% of time. I have that GMaps enable GPS automatically just because I want to look on map. But it's matter of opinion

berkley · June 29, 2011, 07:53:21

Hi there,

The GPS features in Locus are sometimes confusing. But once you'll get used to them, they're great. Play a little bit around with different settings on your device and in Locus itself to understand how everything works. Disable the devices GPS, enable WiFi, enable "GPS" in Locus. See what happens...

Locus tries to use every information it can get, to show you where you are. Works even with cell-ID location.

About battery consumption while GPS is enabled on your device:
If there is no active application on your device that uses GPS, your device won't try to get a GPS connection. You can see it in your notification bar. So there will be no additional battery consumption. An application has to send the order to the device that the device should get a GPS connection. This is why you have to accept different permissions (in this case: "acces to location information") before installing an application. This is the way Android works!
Transporting this knowledge to Locus means, that there are powerfull possibilities to have a map application running where you can choose, if you want use GPS or not!

Some little tricks I use in Locus:
Did anybody notice, that you can long-click the GPS-menu button to toggle GPS on/off?
If I want to have GPS on even if I minimize Locus or if I close the device, I start a feature that uses GPS all the time. Like POI alert, Parking service or track recording (even if it's paused). So everytime I come back to Locus there is still a GPS fix!

Hope this helps and I didn't explain too much wrong,

Cheers, berkley

Moosach · July 01, 2011, 11:20:29

Thanks to you both. On my device P970 it seems to work better now since last update.

I don't know if anything has changed on the Galaxy S, I have informed the guy via email that he should update. And yes: When I tried it on the GS, maps worked fine but Locus wasn't able to get a fix. I'll let you know if the problems still exist.

Ah, yes, Locus is a great piece of software and of course I bought the Pro version just to reward the good work. ;-)