A problem in Apple’s location services triggered by the iOS 5 update could be causing battery issues, reported by some owners of the iPhone 4S.
According the The Guardian, the ‘Setting Time Zone’ option (located in the System Services option of the Location Services menu), is running in the background. This means it’s continually using location services, even when you haven’t changed position.
Oliver Haslam from iDownload Blog comments: ‘it appears that iOS 5′s GM release introduced a bug that causes the Setting Time Zone function to keep the location tracking circuitry running constantly, draining battery power considerably. Switching it off may mean that your iPhone will no longer set its own time zone when you travel, but that’s a small price to pay for having your iPhone last more than 12 hours on a full charge… We have tested this method on 4 different iPhone 4s handsets, including an iPhone 4 and an iPhone 3GS. All have reported drastically improved battery life after switching ‘Setting Time Zone’ off.”
We checked it out in our test iPhone and found that sure enough adjacent to it it a purple location services icon indicating ‘an item that is currently using your location.’
As well as using aGPS location services also use mobile and WiFi information to pin point your exact location, which unsurprisingly can be quite heavy on your battery. Especially as location services are more integrated into smartphones than ever, as well as features like maps, many apps utilise network data to bring information.
We’ve swapped the Location-Based iAds to ‘Off’ and we’ll let you know if this improves our battery life.
Via: Guardian
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