Google calls reports of Google Now for iOS battery drain 'incorrect'

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  • Reply 61 of 66
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by KDarling View Post




    Quote:



    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    Google needs city, county, or state permits to go through the neighborhoods taking pictures and for doing low altitude flyover photography. 



     


    I'm not aware of any driving permits needed in the USA, although anything is possible.  Got an example?


     



    It is not the driving part, it is the street photography that requires a permit.


     


    http://www.csirentals.com/userfiles/stillpermit(3).pdf

  • Reply 62 of 66
    kdarlingkdarling Posts: 1,640member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    It is not the driving part, it is the street photography that requires a permit.


     


    http://www.csirentals.com/userfiles/stillpermit(3).pdf



     


    Oh, in NYC.  Makes sense.  Big cities require a permit for everything :)


     


    I did some more research.  In parts of Europe, especially in Germany (probably because of past history with agenices like the Gestapo and Stasi) many people were upset about their houses being photographed.


     


    In the US, there was almost zero protest.  Heck, some people actually went out of their way to be ON Street View.


     


    There was a Pittsburgh family on a private road that sued Google for having their house photographed, which the judge threw out as being oversensitive.  However, he found Google guilty of trespassing and fined them one dollar.

  • Reply 63 of 66
    So they call it incorrect, well, of course they would have admitted it was drainer if it was, NOT!
    I noticed that on my Android too, it drained so fast, just cause of the Google app ALONE i had to stop using all of the Google related apps...
  • Reply 64 of 66
    dominoxmldominoxml Posts: 110member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Appfactory Intl View Post



    So they call it incorrect, well, of course they would have admitted it was drainer if it was, NOT!

    I noticed that on my Android too, it drained so fast, just cause of the Google app ALONE i had to stop using all of the Google related apps...


     


     


    I use Android only from time to time. While I tend to agree with you from what I saw I don't have enough data to undergird your argument.


     


    The iOS app feels more optimized for taking a precise location profile than for battery life, so it might be a design decision.


     


    What do I mean with design decision?


     


    I take the example of a hiking app with background tracking functionality. First of all you have to look at the necessary precision. The question is whether you serve the user better with an adjusted tracking frequency like some dozens of data points per mile or just use a standard which forces hundreds or even thousands of calculations or updates in the same time frame.


     


    The second thing you should put some thought into is to create a strategy for spotty reception.


    While hiking through woods and climbing hills spotty reception is pretty common.


    You can ask again and again leading to battery drain without receiving suitable data or you can skip after some attempts and wait for a while because you know that the movement pace is comparable small anyway.


    Especially in bad reception scenarios the difference might be huge. Instead of burning through the battery in one or two hours, not suitable for this purpose, you can achieve multifold usage time without worse data quality because thousands of data points at nearby the same spot don't help much at covering the gabs. 


     


    In terms of Google Now I don't see the benefit of high frequent localization in general and in the background in particular.


    A possible value I see is to provide the data to other services by a unified profile.


    The latter is at least questionable related to privacy because it's not what the user expects when he / she uses the app IMHO.


     


    Doing battery life right makes the difference between two to three star and four to five star ratings in the App Store which should be in your interest as app developer even on free apps.


    You simply don't benefit from users stopping to use it.

  • Reply 65 of 66
    tribalogicaltribalogical Posts: 1,182member


    When I read the headline, I was reminded of the Dead Parrot sketch (Monty Python)...


     


  • Reply 66 of 66
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    kdarling wrote: »
    I did some more research.  In parts of Europe, especially in Germany (probably because of past history with agenices like the Gestapo and Stasi) many people were upset about their houses being photographed.

    "...but was scrutinized for its privacy after pictures showed up of random people picking their nose, taking a dump behind a tree, or any other types of incriminating shots."

    Alas, There Will Be No More Google Street View in Germany
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