GeoLog reduces the drain that location-based services have on your Android phone's battery

GPS can be a very useful feature depending on what you are using your phone for. Maybe you use it to track your cycling or running progress, do photo walks and want to make sure that the location information are as correct as possible, or need it for navigational purposes.

A downside to it is that it is a rather power-hungry feature that can drain the battery faster than many other features that you activate.

Making sure that your smartphone is fully charged before you head out is just one of the things that you can do to make sure you do not run out of battery half-way through or so.

GeoLog is a new application for Android 4.0 or higher devices that changes tracking characteristics based on your location and what you are doing.

What this means is that it factors in if you are standing still or moving, and will adjust the location feature accordingly to take that into account.

For instance, if you are standing still, you do not really need to pull location based data as your location is not changing at all. Another example is if you are driving in a car, as your location is changing this fast usually that it is not really feasible to update the location in real-time or near that.

GeoLog uses the new fused location provider to determine how fast you are moving to adjust the tracking parameters accordingly. It switches between location data gathering methods automatically (Wi-Fi, GPS, cell sensors) to provide you with the best location-based information possible.

This alone sets it apart from the majority of apps that provide you with those information. Once you run it you will notice that it will add new location information in regular intervals to the log.

The whole application is profile-based. It ships with a selection of default profiles and options to modify those existing profiles, delete them, and to create new profiles.

New profiles let you pick detailed preferences to set the location tracking mode, as well as the location tracking and activity tracking interval for when you are not moving at all, when you are on foot, on a bicycle or in a vehicle. There is also an unknown mode that kicks in when the phone cannot determine your activity level at that point in time.

As far as the location tracking mode goes, you can select a low accuracy low power mode, or a high accuracy high power mode only.

The log screen finally logs time, activity, battery and location based information in intervals. Location information can be exported to GPX or KML file formats with a click on the save icon on the log screen. Here you can configure a large number of filters to customize the output. This includes for instance options to set a start and end data and time, a minimum time span or distance covered by the tracking, or accuracy filters.

Verdict

GeoLog has been designed to optimize battery consumption while you are using location-based features of your device. If you own an Android 4.0 or higher device and make use of location-based apps or features regularly, you may want to give it a try to reduce the battery drain during that time.

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