My first problem....GPS Won't Turn Off Anymore

[f4phantomii]

Having had my G1 for a couple of weeks now and using it extensively, I've gotten pretty used to using it day and night.

I usually turn it off (i.e. completely power it off) at night. This morning when I turned it on, it booted up as usual. Then the GPS icon appeared.

I had not even run any apps. I waited a few minutes to see if it would stop, but no luck.

So I completely powered it off again and then powered it back up. Same result.

I can manually turn off the GPS feature, but I shouldn't have to do so. The previous two weeks it has behaved normally. The GPS would power up when I was using an app that required it. As soon as I exited that app, the GPS would power down automatically.

Now it runs full time.

I received the OTA update (RC29) on Monday, but it's been several days and I don't believe that is the cause.

I've only installed apps directly from the Market. I do not have any of the apps that toggle the GPS on/off.

Is there a way to list the running processes to see if I can determine what is accessing the GPS in the background? It *has* to be one of the apps.

Any other ideas that might help me track down the problem?

-Michael

[juice]

Your phone is haunted by the GPS Ghost of Technology's Past. Because there was no GPS back in the day, he goes around turning all of them on because of the 'mind-blowing technology.'

[gavinfb]

try take battery out and back in....dunno but sometime this trick works

[f4phantomii]

try take battery out and back in....dunno but sometime this trick works

Rats....no luck with that either.

Anyone else have constructive ideas to try?

[birdtales]

Try running maps, hit "my location" then back out of maps. Mine got stuck once and this worked for me. GPS icon went away about 10 secs after I exited maps.

[f4phantomii]

Try running maps, hit "my location" then back out of maps. Mine got stuck once and this worked for me. GPS icon went away about 10 secs after I exited maps.

Nice to see we think alike....that was actually the first thing I tried.

No luck there either. Right now I'm one-by-one uninstalling apps that might use the GPS.

[juice]

Anyone else have constructive ideas to try?

Preform an exorcism?

[MrGibbage]

Mine has the same "problem", but I actually consider it a "feature"! Anyway, I can easily see why some people wouldn't want this behavior, so let me see if I can figure it out. I have installed a few applications that use GPS, and some of them run in the background. You can easily figure out what programs are running in the background using the pTerminal program and running the "ps" command. You'll see entries like "edu.mit.locale" which means (wanna guess?) Locale is running in the background. Believe it or not, the program that I think that is keeping the gps running all the time on my phone is a program called "AccuTracking". I've installed it, but never activated it. I can see that it runs in the background as it is listed as "com.accutracking" when I run the "ps" command. So give that a shot. Even if you haven't installed accutracking, it is probably an app that you have installed. Run the ps command and look at the entries near the bottom of the list. I'll bet it's one of those.

[f4phantomii]

Wonderful! I'm a long-time linux user...just didn't realize pTerminal gave me access to the command line.

I'll take a crack at that and see what's up.

Thank you!

[Stanovoy]

This is not an RC29 issue.

I have had this problem ever since I downloaded the app, ToggleGPS. There seems to be no way to fix this except for a hard reset. I have already uninstalled ToggleGPS, that did not help. I also have GPS Tracker, but that is not shown as running in the background. I have even removed it to see if that would help. It didn't. Other apps that I have that use GPS are iSafe, ParkMark, The Weather Channel, cab4me, and PinPoint. None of those are running in the background either. My guess is something in ToggleGPS screwed the GPS up.

On a good note, however, this is making my "initial" GPS lock a lot faster. It currently takes approximately 1 to 3 seconds to acquire an accurate lock. My battery life is very good, so having the GPS constantly collecting data doesn't really bother me.