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Google Employee Claims Google Now App Does Not Cause Significant Battery Impact

On my iPhone 5 it uses exactly 4% more in a 9 hour unplugged period with ~1 hour total usage. I have a very consistent work schedule (breaks at the same time every day, etc) and when I get off from work my battery life is almost always 78%. With Google Now's location services on I leave with it at 74%. 3 days in a row it's been the same. Totally fine with me for the services it provides.

I do work in a good cell reception area with decent work wifi though.
 
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Synchronizing with gmail and calendar

Leaving battery impact aside for a moment, has anyone else experienced issues with Google Now not syncing with gmail (e.g., packing tracking) and calendar?

The only cards I get are weather, sports, and a few news stories.
 
Im seeing heavy battery drain on my i5 as well. Hence uninstalled the app. Or switch off location access to google now in settings privacy location services google now or whatever. youll see battery drain stop right there. funny thing is post the install i saw the battery drain but post uninstall its still there.. its like its not uninstalled itself completely.
 
I haven't noticed any extra battery drain at all. I think people just freak out when they see that icon on.. Wish there was a way they could turn it off when its not being used really and then just back on briefly when they do... But that really is mostly an aesthetic thing. But yeah in the end, the app doesn't drain the battery anymore then normal!
 
Small White Car said:
I've had many other apps that use geofencing (like Apple's own Reminders) without seeing a huge impact on battery.
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Reminders definitely does have a huge impact on battery life on my iPhone 4, I had to disable it despite it being a really useful feature as my battery wouldn't last the day when it was enabled
 
My battery dropped significantly when I updated Google earlier and turned on Google Now. I have a 4S. I turned off GN and I'm back to normal battery life. I now we can be obsessed with battery life, but there is no doubt that GN was draining my battery.
 
hokiemob said:
Leaving battery impact aside for a moment, has anyone else experienced issues with Google Now not syncing with gmail (e.g., packing tracking) and calendar?

The only cards I get are weather, sports, and a few news stories.
Click to expand...

Same here. 🙁
It also doesn't seem to sync with my phone contact book or calendar.

Anyone getting GMail and appointment cards?
 
What I don't like is that the location services icon is on ALL of the time, making the icon useless!

This is how i know if other apps may be using my location that I want to kill or may be a problem. By the logo being on all of the time, I'll never know if something else is accessing it when i don't want it to.

Having it on all of the time is about as useful as not having the icon exist to begin with!

Unfortunately, this is an Apple limitation, working as intended. Not something Google has any control over. It would be nice if we could hide the icon for select apps though.
 
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Sounds similar to an Apple employee saying Apple maps works well (when it was first released) 😀. If you are interested in the app, try it out to see if it affects your battery. If it does, just delete it. However, I would not put much faith in what an Google employee says about his product.
 
When I'm in an area of low reception, the battery drains much more quickly now that I have Google Now turned on.
 
It causes the Location sign to be on permanently, even when I "close" the app in the multitasking bar.

The only way to make it stop is uninstall, or deny Location privileges in Privacy.

Google hey.
 
blulegend said:
When I'm in an area of low reception, the battery drains much more quickly now that I have Google Now turned on.
Click to expand...

My own experience with it (all made by observation. So take it with a grain of salt):

• Less battery at the end of the day, but not that much.

• Almost no difference if my day is mostly dull and stationary (Home to Work and than Work to Home).

• At work I have terrible cell phone reception and pretty good Wifi coverage. The battery seems to go down much faster than usual if I forget to connect to the wifi network. Seems to go down at normal rate when I'm connected.

And now, let me try again on my question: Are you guys getting GMail cards? How about non Google Calendar appointments and non Google Contacs notifications (like birthdays)?
 
My battery life has been terrible for the past week or to and I couldn't figure out what it was. I'm at 33% after 3 hours, 31 minutes from last full charge and dropping pretty fast. Wasn't like that before. Google Now's only been out for a couple days, so it can't be that - Google Search app wasn't draining battery before this, was it?
 
Amazing Iceman said:
I wasn't aware this was a problem until I saw this article.
I did noticed last night the Location Services icon showing on the top bar in my iPad. When I checked to see what was accessing it, it was the Google app, which was not even open or running. It's probably a background process it has.

Continued access to Location Services could definitely cause battery drainage. So as a quick fix I disabled Location Services for Google.

Take note I haven't seen this behavior until I upgraded to the latest Google app.

Does anyone else noticed something like this?

UPDATE:
- I just enabled Location Services for the Google app, and immediately the Location Services showed on the top bar (Google app is not open)
- I restarted my iPad and Location Services didn't show anymore.
- I ran the Google app, and the Location Services icon appeared again, and remained showing even after I closed the Google app. It's been about 5 minutes and it's still showing. The only two options is to restart the iPad or turn off Location Services for the Google app.

All I can say is that it's definitely a bug in the Google app. It must leave a process running in the background, causing this problem.
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This post is comical.

The entire purpose of Google Now is for it to be continuously location-aware so it can alert you with location-relevant information. If you lock the screen, put the phone in your pocket, and the app ceases to be location-aware after a period of time, the app ceases to function the way it was intended to function.

If people don't like the app being constantly location-aware, they can easily turn the Google Now portion off and just use the Google search app the way they always have.
 
Truth is, battery life on iPhone 5 sucks. Having an arrow in the upper right corner just draws our attention to this.
 
kas23 said:
Truth is, battery life on iPhone 5 sucks. Having an arrow in the upper right corner just draws our attention to this.
Click to expand...
Because most other phones from iPhone 5 era (9 months ago), or even these days, actually have noticeably better battery life? Right.

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kako said:
It causes the Location sign to be on permanently, even when I "close" the app in the multitasking bar.

The only way to make it stop is uninstall, or deny Location privileges in Privacy.

Google hey.
Click to expand...
Again, those are not the only ways. A much simpler way is to disable location reporting in the settings within the app.
 
C DM said:
Because most other phones from iPhone 5 era (9 months ago), or even these days, actually have noticeably better battery life? Right.
Click to expand...

You do realize both there are plenty of phones that have better battery life than the iPhone 5, right?

Lumia 920 does, Galaxy Note 2 does, Razr Maxx HD does.
 
If I have the Google app completely closed, why would it be still tracking me (a purple arrow in Location Services). Suppose it found me at a particular location, how or why would it notify me of anything if the app is closed? Is there any utility to it tracking you when it can't possibly give you location based feedback (or can it)?

C DM said:
Because most other phones from iPhone 5 era (9 months ago), or even these days, actually have noticeably better battery life? Right.
Click to expand...

Well, at least your admitting it. I'll give you points for that. But either way, poor battery life in other phones in no possible way makes my iPhone 5 battery life any better than it actually is.
 
Michael Goff said:
You do realize both there are plenty of phones that have better battery life than the iPhone 5, right?

Lumia 920 does, Galaxy Note 2 does, Razr Maxx HD does.
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OK, that's 3 possible examples out of tons of phones that are out there. That's not even really mentioning that out of those 3 examples, 1--Maxx--was specifically designed with a huge battery as a special feature (so it's not a typical phone with respect to battery life), and 1--the Note 2--is a huge phone that allows for a bigger and thus longer lasting battery simply due to the huge size of the phone. Not exactly an apples to apples (no pun intended) comparison for the most part there.

So, again, do most phones, especially those available at the time of iPhone 5 launch, really have a noticeably better battery life?
 
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