I wonder why Apple didn't use color to distinguish from "GPS ON" and "Some App knows where you are"
To me, I'd like to know when my phone is sucking down juice on knowing exactly where I am, and I'd also like to know when the phone just knows about where I am in a low battery usage way.
I suppose that Apple thinks that most people just care if the phone knows where they are or not, battery life is a non-issue.
Battery life on my Iphone 4 (4.0(8A293)) is so bad that I frequently have a brick in my hands. That was never the case with the 3GS.
Now, If I reboot the iPhone, and don't use it for anything other than making a few phone calls - I can go two, sometimes three days without needing a recharge.
But, if I use a few apps, Maps, Email, etc.. I typically either wake up in the morning, or end the day with a dead phone.
So, this is clearly not a battery problem - as it is related to App usage. I try to shut-down all my apps every time I use them, and keep the screen locked (and dim), but that isn't working (or I'm not as good at is as I'd like to be)
The one thing that does seem to work, repeatedly, is rebooting the iPhone every time I use a few Apps (and then not touching the Apps).
This is the first iPhone I've had battery problems with - it's clearly something running in the background that I'm not aware of. Eventually I'll figure it out - but anything Apple can provide to me in terms of "What is sucking battery life" would be much appreciated - so - your suggestion that the GPS arrow changes color to indicate that they are draining the battery, would be a huge win.
Even better, would be a screen that would show me which apps were pulling how much battery throughout the day.
And yes, I realize Apple does NOT want to take that approach (feels more androidish/windows mobile) - they want to make a phone that "just works" - but my position is, until they make that phone, i want them to give me the tools so _I_ can make it work in absence of a phone that is "Just working", yet.
Some applications seem to restart themselves automatically in the background. Even when you kill them (via jailbreak tools), they restart themselves. I had that problem with Skype. Those jailbreak tools also seem to be the only way to see what really is running right now in the background. Deleting Skype seemed the only solution so far (without much further hacking).
Absolutely - the very first thing I did was disable every automatic mail setting. It's 100% manual now.
The key data point is that a _reboot_ of the phone, and then doing nothing but making phone calls, results in pretty good battery life for three (sometimes four) days.
But, I'm frequently tempted to click on some apps (zillow, maps, safari) - and then, if I don't reboot the phone, I'm down to 0% within a maximum of 16 hours, regardless of how careful I close all of my apps with the backgrounder tool.
I love my iPhone so much, that this is more interesting than upsetting. But I'd _really_ love to know what, precisely, is pulling the battery down.
The current icon is complicated (i.e. non-obvious) enough as is, thank you. They advertised the arrow solely as a privacy feature and that’s what it is.
The nice thing about differently colored icons is that they
A) Are not more complex. It's still just a Location Icon.
Clearly explains the Privacy Scenario.
B) For those that are alert to the color, provides
more information that can be very valuable.
There seems to be a deeper concept here - creating user interfaces that add information for experts without introducing any more complexity for beginners - kind of like the RSSI indicators you have for WiFi - they show you are connected _and_ how strong (roughly) a connection you have.
Colors are more complex, though: people notice that the color changes and so they understand that something else is going on (something they should know about, presumably!), but don't necessarily know what it is. It causes anxiety to have a device indicating something to the user when the user doesn't know what it is that it's trying to tell them.
Which is not to say that using color would necessarily be a bad idea in this case, but it wouldn't be entirely "free".
That arrow drives me nuts. The formerly used crosshairs icon implies a specific target, and is intuitively associated with a precise location. Arrows, on the other hand, are used for all sorts of things in lots of different contexts, and implies a direction rather than a specific spot.
To me, I'd like to know when my phone is sucking down juice on knowing exactly where I am, and I'd also like to know when the phone just knows about where I am in a low battery usage way.
I suppose that Apple thinks that most people just care if the phone knows where they are or not, battery life is a non-issue.