Member Avatar for GH23

I'm working on a mobile application that is meant to send the device's GPS location to a server ever minute or so. We might adjust the time later depending on data usage and how useful a minute interval is when tracking our drivers. The interval between polls will be no more than 5 minutes though.

Anyway my question is would it be more energy efficient to turn off the GPS antenna between polls or should we just keep it on?

Bonus question: Does the GPS use the data plan? I'm pretty sure it doesn't but I haven't been able to find a definite yes or no on this.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

On a mobile phone, the GPS won't use the data plan. However, the location functions on most mobile phones will use cell tower triangulation, or WiFi, to locate the device if it can't find enough GPS satellites to get a fix, or if the GPS is turned off. The WiFi won't add to the data plan, but the cell tower methods may - I'm not 100% sure of that however, and then I work for Nokia... :-) I'll have to ask some of our L&C (locations & commerce) experts to be sure...

Member Avatar for GH23

Wow, thanks. That's good to know. I had no idea that there were so many methods for determining location.

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