Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

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It's a balancing act between giving devs power over their code and managing battery. You could say that Apple 'solved' the problem by preventing developers from doing really cool things, whereas Google/Android still have battery concerns but devs have built awesome apps that depend on that flexibility.

This isn't something than can be 'solved'. All the time, Google will make improvements to the OS (like JobScheduler in Lollipop) and devs will get better at managing their resources. Slowly we'll all get better battery performance.

I make PressureNet, which runs in the background on Android in 10-minute intervals to get GPS, barometer measurement, and network lock. Maintaining a good battery life isn't easy, but it is possible. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbu...

Devs can still have all the power, as long as excessive battery usage is more transparent to users. I'm not sure about iPhone, but OS X has an indicator with "Apps Using Significant Energy." [1] as well as a more detailed breakdown [2]. Very useful. Often turns out to be a stray tab in Chrome. Would like to see something like that.

[1] http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5873

[2] http://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare/...

Android does have something similar: http://imgur.com/a/d2nCb

An iPhone-using friend of mine constantly points out how lacklustre the battery performance in Android is - the Nexus 5 has a bigger (?) battery than the iPhone 5 but the iPhone 5 will last for a full day with similar use.

Could you explain how it is possible to maintain good battery life while firing up the GPS every 10 minutes? Thanks.

Its not critical that we get GPS at that interval, just preferable. So we turn on GPS but we don't necessarily wait for a good location to be returned. After a few seconds we either fall back to a network location or the most recent GPS location if that's better than network.

It's not perfect, which is unfortunate and may be a blocker for other use cases. But for us it's a good balance of quality location and battery usage.

iOS apps can use GPS in the background, as long as the user permits it. I use it to map my travels all the time!

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