Tuning iOS 8 location services to improve battery life

This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’m not convinced my second hand iPhone 5S is as “grade A” condition as it might have appeared when I bought it recently from SmartfoneStore as, as well as having a dull patch on the top of the screen (that I was ignoring), last night, with 26% battery remaining it suddenly decided to turn off and insisted it needed charging. A few minutes later it could be started again, before once again deciding that 26% battery was not enough! Hey ho, I’ll be contacting them after this holiday weekend for a replacement (and they do offer a 60 day warranty) so it shouldn’t be a problem but it did get me looking at why my iOS 8 battery life is so poor.

The first clue was the GPS icon at the top of the screen. Even with all applications closed, it persisted – so what was using my GPS?  I found the problem app, following a LifeHacker article to see which app had a purple arrow in Location Services but a bit more googling turned up a great article on iGeeksBlog looking at how to fix always-on location services in iOS 8.

You can read the post yourself but, in summary, it goes through switching off system services that might use the GPS like location-based iAds, Spotlight Suggestions, Diagnostics & Usage, and Popular Near Me; as well as controlling which apps can use Location Services (my problem app was Dropbox – I’m not sure why it needs to know where I am but it’s not allowed to any more).

Hopefully now my iOS 8 battery life will improve – although I really must get my phone swapped too…

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