Frequent Locations, Battery Life, and Usefulness

crankerchick

crankerchick

macrumors newbie
I'm thinking about turning frequent locations back on for my iPhone. I had a bad battery that ended up getting replaced and now that I am confident all is well, I'm thinking about turning it back on, or Google Now's Locations sharing. My hang up is, I never saw anything relating to frequent locations in the today portion of notification center when I was using frequent locations before my battery swap. I think I used it for 3 weeks and never one thing. I still used it to view my previous locations (which is annoying to do since it's buried so deep in settings), but beyond that it wasn't of much value.

Location Sharing with Google Now is much more useful, especially if you also use Android devices like I do (and location sharing is your thing), but my hang up on iOS besides the obvious lack of pushed notifications is that since it's not a system service, it keeps the location services indicator illuminated all the time, masking when other apps are using it.

So, do you use Frequent Locations in iOS 7? Do you actually get anything in your "Today" screen? How is your battery life compared to with it disabled?
 
I use it on my 5, I haven't used the phone without it but my battery last's all day. I get driving times to the two different campuses i attend as well as my job in notification center. I used frequent locations in all the beta's and every time I setup as new it would take at least 2 to 3 weeks for it to learn my routine again. Sometimes more depending on how sporadic my schedule was.
 
Thanks, maybe I just didn't give it enough time. I guess I will turn it back on and try it out. If battery really sucks I can just disable it.
 
crankerchick said:
Thanks, maybe I just didn't give it enough time. I guess I will turn it back on and try it out. If battery really sucks I can just disable it.
Click to expand...

I've did some test with the frequent location on and off for several times, and my usage time will usually be 5 hours if I have it on and 6 hours if it is off.
 
I've used it since the beta days this summer. After purchasing my 5s I was even more excited because my battery life is amazing even with Frequent Loc on. I like having the Next Destination pop up in my Notification Center and I like looking at the location info to see how much time I spent in different locations.
 

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crankerchick said:
Location Sharing with Google Now is much more useful, especially if you also use Android devices like I do (and location sharing is your thing), but my hang up on iOS besides the obvious lack of pushed notifications is that since it's not a system service, it keeps the location services indicator illuminated all the time, masking when other apps are using it.
Click to expand...

Just so you know, it is a system service. If you go into Privacy > Location services > System services, on the very bottom if you turn off the last option it will not show you the icon on the bar anymore, but you can still see the icon when regular apps use location info.
 
I keep Frequent Locations off for two reasons: to save battery life and because I don't want my iPhone to keep track of where I'm going.
I'm not really worried about my privacy (when you use a phone, there is basically no privacy at all ), but I think most of the location services are just here to help ads and not to help me.
 
ptlage said:
Just so you know, it is a system service. If you go into Privacy > Location services > System services, on the very bottom if you turn off the last option it will not show you the icon on the bar anymore, but you can still see the icon when regular apps use location info.
Click to expand...

Hmm I'll try again. That wasn't my experience in the past with Google Now, as it's a third party app so it triggers the icon to be on highlighted all the time. I'm going to try again though.

ETA: Just tried again. Unless I kill the search app, it continues to keep the location services indicator highlighted. Google Search is *not* a system app so it should behave the way I'm seeing. I don't have it set in the settings to illuminate the indicator when the system uses location services.
----------

So I've been rolling with Frequent Locations on. Haven't noticed much difference in battery life.

It took over 4 weeks to finally get any kind of information from it on the Today screen of notification center. All it shows me is time to work and time to home.

One day it was pretty funny. I had an appointment coming up soon. GoogleNow sent me a push notification telling me to leave in 15 minutes to get there on time (based on my Nexus 7's location since I didn't have location reporting turned on on my iPhone). The iPhone with Frequent Locations just told me it would take me 18 minutes to get home. It's so silly that with my calendar on the device, it doesn't tell me time to appointments. It's just frequent locations. I guess with time it will be made smarter. The problem is it's part of the OS and it won't get updated to add features until Apple updates it. I guess more features to frequent locations in the next major release, so iOS 8. GoogleNow will be so far ahead on being a smart service.

I've also noticed that it frequently fails to log where I am. I was one place for over 6 hours, in fine GPS and cell service area, and that location doesn't show in my frequent locations. I've seen this a few times now.
 
Last edited:
crankerchick said:
I'm thinking about turning frequent locations back on for my iPhone. I had a bad battery that ended up getting replaced and now that I am confident all is well, I'm thinking about turning it back on, or Google Now's Locations sharing. My hang up is, I never saw anything relating to frequent locations in the today portion of notification center when I was using frequent locations before my battery swap. I think I used it for 3 weeks and never one thing. I still used it to view my previous locations (which is annoying to do since it's buried so deep in settings), but beyond that it wasn't of much value.

Location Sharing with Google Now is much more useful, especially if you also use Android devices like I do (and location sharing is your thing), but my hang up on iOS besides the obvious lack of pushed notifications is that since it's not a system service, it keeps the location services indicator illuminated all the time, masking when other apps are using it.

So, do you use Frequent Locations in iOS 7? Do you actually get anything in your "Today" screen? How is your battery life compared to with it disabled?
Click to expand...

It took exactly 2 weeks for my notification center to tell me how long it was going to take me to go to work or drive home. It works fine but it takes some time for it to learn your patterns. Go on, turn it on. It doesn't use battery.
 
Armen said:
It took exactly 2 weeks for my notification center to tell me how long it was going to take me to go to work or drive home. It works fine but it takes some time for it to learn your patterns. Go on, turn it on. It doesn't use battery.
Click to expand...
It very likely uses some battery as it needs to get some location and traffic information thought the day, but whether that is a noticeable amount of battery can depend on various factors for different people.
 
C DM said:
It very likely uses some battery as it needs to get some location and traffic information thought the day, but whether that is a noticeable amount of battery can depend on various factors for different people.
Click to expand...

I think it only polls for traffic when you bring the notification window down because:

- I pull down the notification
- The location services arrow shows up in my status bar
- A few seconds later it tells me how long it will take for me to get home etc.
- If you revisit this workflow 30 minutes later it changes the ETA once again depending on traffic at the time you pulled it down.
- There is no setting for background refresh of traffic.
 
Max(IT) said:
I keep Frequent Locations off for two reasons: to save battery life and because I don't want my iPhone to keep track of where I'm going.
I'm not really worried about my privacy (when you use a phone, there is basically no privacy at all ), but I think most of the location services are just here to help ads and not to help me.
Click to expand...
Ads on iOS? I have 0 ads on my device (minus safari with websites). Does Apple even make a lot of money from their ad business? Now if we were talking Google, yes they use your info to make $$. I think Apple uses that info to improve maps (which you can toggle off) and not to make money.
 
Armen said:
It took exactly 2 weeks for my notification center to tell me how long it was going to take me to go to work or drive home. It works fine but it takes some time for it to learn your patterns. Go on, turn it on. It doesn't use battery.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this info. Can anyone else confirm how long it takes to learn your routine? Also, how do I know it's monitoring/tracking other than going to the menu and checking if it's 'on'? (just bugging me a bit :p).
 
rtomyj said:
Ads on iOS? I have 0 ads on my device (minus safari with websites). Does Apple even make a lot of money from their ad business? Now if we were talking Google, yes they use your info to make $$. I think Apple uses that info to improve maps (which you can toggle off) and not to make money.
Click to expand...

Almost every free software on App Store use ads ....
 
Hustler1337 said:
Thanks for this info. Can anyone else confirm how long it takes to learn your routine? Also, how do I know it's monitoring/tracking other than going to the menu and checking if it's 'on'? (just bugging me a bit :p).
Click to expand...

Just go to location services > system services > frequent locations.

You should see more recent entries in there where it tagged you being at home/work/wherever you visit frequently.
 
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