My wife and daughter both have Samsung android phones on the same provider and network (wife: Z Fold 3, daughter: A15). They both have the HA companion android app configured (as far as I can tell) with identical settings; this includes battery optimization turned off and location permissions on “always”. However when it comes to location tracking, they couldn’t be more different. Here’s an example of a portion of a road trip the two of them took.
My wife’s phone is blue, and my daughters is teal. Can anyone think of a reason that my daughter’s phone would update so infrequently? This screenshot represents a distance of approximately 50km.
This is a well-travelled route for us that does not require GPS, and neither phone is in high-accuracy mode. I’ve been over the settings with a fine-toothed comb trying to figure this out. Hoping someone else might have insider knowledge.
Edit: Also, this isn’t just a problem when driving. It’s all the time. Daughter’s phone is just stingy with location updates – it can sometimes go more than 20 minutes without one, whereas mine or my wife’s phones are at least every 5.
I use GPS to work every day.
It gives me heads up on accidents and road blocks so that I can go a different way or just be prepared for cars slowing down ahead.
I use GPS to work every day.
It gives me heads up on accidents and road blocks so that I can go a different way or just be prepared for cars slowing down ahead.
I’m not quite sure what your angle is with this. I agree that GPS can be useful even on a known route at times.
Are you saying that although neither phone was actively using GPS in a foreground app, that there could have been other GPS-enabled apps running in the background that cause the HA companion app to send location updates more (or less) frequently? Lots of apps use GPS in the background; even weather apps, but I’m only talking about the frequency of updates from the HA companion app.
I am not a Android man but maybe think or look into something like this.
Look into the battery settings and power saving settings? A lot of power options to look at.
If your daughter hasn’t used the HA app recently or it may be closed.
Is your wife using the phone and your daughter is not on the trip?
Could be.
But I doubt that is the case. Most apps do not want accurate fix for those kind of things.
Possibly if she used a run/biking app that tracks her.
It is a possible scenario, but perhaps not likely.
But to me those positions looks too close for being just standard background tracking.
Usually when I see background tracking without an app using the GPS then you get more misses, this has followed the road perfectly.
On the other hand the daughters tracking looks to seldom to be normal background tracking.
Perhaps her phone just has a worse antenna and it gets less good positions.
Reading that documentation the really interesting part for me would be Location Tracking When Outside a Home Assistant Zone, but the only information listed is for iOS and not Android It makes sense that it would send an update “when your devices detects a significant location change.”, and I’m sure Android works in some similar way, but it is a mystery to me what defines a “significant location change”. Surely driving 10km is more than significant enough – and on some phones it appears to be.
The background sensor is definitely ‘on’. Otherwise it would not be reporting any location data at all. I just don’t know why it’s not reporting data points every 1 - 3 minutes as this documentation says. I do not have ‘High accuracy’ mode turned on for any of these devices because I tried it, and battery life definitely suffers.
I should check what the accuracy threshold is set to, because I can’t remember if I set that or not.
check location tracking history, do you see any data points for when you expect? If you do not then simply Google has not sent us an update. If you do then it should tell you if it was successful or not
I think this is what I was missing. I don’t have the delinquent device right now (it’s my daughter’s), but I’ll check this out when I can get my hands on it.
Took another deep dive into the location sensor settings, and found a small difference. My daughter had the Include in sensor update toggle turned ON in the Single accurate location sensor settings, where I did not, and her location history seemed to have been affected by this. So, I turned it off and did some quick testing where I triggered her phone to provide a location update and it seemed good. I’m going to hold off on saying this has fixed the problem until I see some actual normal usage data throughout the day.
It makes sense that it would send an update “when your devices detects a significant location change.”, and I’m sure Android works in some similar way, but it is a mystery to me what defines a “significant location change”. Surely driving 10km is more than significant enough – and on some phones it appears to be.