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POAndroid GPS tracking and WakeLock
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copied!<p>I need to do background GPS tracking on an Android phone, and I'm currently planning on having two scenarios:</p> <ol> <li>When the phone is connected to a (car) charger, get frequent GPS locations (every minute).</li> <li>When the phone is not connected to a charger, only poll for a location once every 5-30 minutes, depending on how much the battery is affected.</li> </ol> <p>I know that I'll need to implement the tracking in a service, and probably show a notification to keep the service alive. However, I gather that the phone might go into sleep mode at any time, which would stop the GPS tracking.</p> <p>For these scenarios, <strong>what is the best way to do continuous background GPS tracking, without the phone going to sleep, and without draining too much power?</strong></p> <p>So far I gathered the following:</p> <p>For scenario 1, I'll probably need a acquire a WakeLock, and keep the CPU awake all the time (but the screen may sleep). The MyTracks application seems to be doing this in <a href="http://code.google.com/p/mytracks/source/browse/MyTracks/src/com/google/android/apps/mytracks/services/TrackRecordingService.java" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="TrackRecordingService">TrackRecordingService</a>. OpenGPSTracking seems to do <a href="http://code.google.com/p/open-gpstracker/source/browse/trunk/OpenGPSTracker/trunk/application/src/nl/sogeti/android/gpstracker/logger/GPSLoggerService.java" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the same</a>.</p> <p>For scenario 2, I can use AlarmManager to schedule a check every x minutes. My service will need to acquire a temporary WakeLock, wait for a single GPS location, then stop and release the WakeLock again.</p> <p>How would the power usage compare for these two methods (permanent WakeLock vs AlarmManager)? Can the GPS receive an accurate location in a reasonable amount of time when only checking every 30 minutes?</p> <p>There are a few related questions on StackOverflow, but none with satisfying answers. Some semi-useful ones:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6291729/how-to-keep-application-running-in-background-keep-collecting-data">how to keep application running in background? keep collecting data?</a> (pointed me to MyTracks)</li> <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7700924/tracking-users-sms-and-geo-position-in-the-background-is-my-idea-working">Tracking user's sms and geo position in the background - is my idea working?</a></li> <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6934991/android-service-with-always-on-gps">Android service with always on GPS</a></li> </ul>

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