Location always on? [Location reminders run in low-power mode.]

[Cicloid]

Previously whenever I used Omnifocus, the location icon in the iphone will be left on but fill. From what I remember, that means that the location is being checked on the background at regular intervals and it uses less battery.

But since one or two updates ago, it seems to be used all the time (arrow completely filled in blue) and started noticing the battery started lasting less, is it just me? or was the behavior changed?

[Andrew]

That's due to a change in iOS. We use "significant location change" notifications, which are low-power, but that location arrow change is unfortunately leading some people to believe that we're polling the location (which would indeed use more battery). I'm not on that team, but my understanding is that we're trying to make some changes that will alleviate this.

[nevin]

I have similar situation as well. It was showing the right icon that indicating the use of geo-fencing detection. But recently it shows the filled-icon that referring to the full geo type location.

My phone's battery last half-day unless I cut off the location service for Omnifocus.

Anything I can do to help troubleshooting?

[hnn]

I can confirm that I also get the filled out purple location services icon instead of the outlined one and that leaving it on consumes quite an amount of battery power.

It used to be different for me as well.
(iPhone 4, iOS 5.1)

[cdhutch]

I realize that tis is anedoctal, but my iPhone 4S seems to be drawing power more than usual lately. The purple location arrow remains even after "killing" the OmniFocus iPhone app. Running iOS 5.01.

[carlsson]

Me here as well. On a normal workday I got 5-15 location reminders, and I'm not even touching the iPhone!

Extremely annoying, just turned the reminders off.

[gennad]

I was looking for an app that uses location-based alerts, found OmniFocus for iPhone and spent $20 to realize that it uses location polling. Extremely disappointing! PLEASE fix it ASAP!

[whpalmer4]

You can get a refund within 30 days of purchase. Contact the Omni support group for help with that.

I'm curious how you know that it is using location polling, when the Omni engineer says it uses a different mechanism, and that an iOS change makes it appear as if it is using location polling? Which iPhone version and iOS version do you have?

[gennad]

That engineer said he's not in that team and taking into account the fact that Reminders.app and some others still use previous mechanism I suppose it is actually polling.

[whpalmer4]

It's a small company with a collaborative culture, and the iOS geofencing support is something new. I would expect that even if Andrew hadn't personally coded it, he's in frequent contact with the engineer who did so, and in my experience, it's hard to shut up an engineer who has a shiny new gadget to play with :-)

[Brian]

In case it helps: a post (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=109699&postcount=4) from an engineer on the OmniFocus for iPhone team about the power requirements for our location reminders.

The purple indicator does appear due to our use of significant location change monitoring. However, that service, as designed by Apple, has low power requirements.

[gennad]

I'm sorry but I'm definetely unsatisfied with the power consumption. Today I enabled location in OF again, opened Safari and noticed that location arrow is always on and battery is decreased about every minute. I turned it off again.
I do believe you guys definitely should do something with it.

[whpalmer4]

Again, what are you using for iPhone hardware and iOS version?

[gennad]

iPhone 4, iOS 5.1.1, OF 1.14.1

[vkxmai]

The purple indicator does appear due to our use of significant location change monitoring. However, that service, as designed by Apple, has low power requirements.

I have an iPhone 4 with iOS 5.1.1 and am running OmniFocus for iPhone 1.14.2. When I activate Location Services for OmniFocus for iPhone in Settings, a solid arrow appears and the battery drains by approximately 1% every 3-5minutes when the device is "asleep" on my desk and 1% every minute when it is awake on my desk. I have 3/5 AT&T Service bars with 3G activated.

[stodge]

I'm hitting the sam location & geofencing issues with v1.14.2 and it's a bit of a shame as i can see the function being really useful. There's not much point, however, if the phone battery won't even last the working day!

Please find a solution soon...

[Brian]

Thus far, folks mentioning their hardware when posting in this thread have all had the older iPhone 4 model; I'm also running on that generation of hardware.

As the batteries in those phones age, chemical changes mean that they will hold less charge than they used to. I'm observing this in my own iPhone 4, purchased when the model first launched. As an example, if I'm going to get driving directions from the phone at this point, I pretty much have to do so while it's plugged into the charger in my car, which wasn't previously the case.

Regardless of the use of Location Reminders in OmniFocus, my battery is more run down at the end of the day than it used to be. I suspect battery age is a factor in what folks are reporting here, and I'm sympathetic to the folks that want to use location reminders but can't tolerate the power drain.

However, we've verified that the feature is using low-power APIs provided, designed, and coded by Apple. The feature can be enabled or disabled, but we have no further control over the amount of power the API uses.

[stodge]

just to clarify, my problem is with an iPhone 4S that is approx 6 weeks old so no decaying battery life there. I've switched the location services off for now and will try it on future releases of both iOS and OmniFocus to see if the situation improves.