get a GPS fix before the human has to wait for the phone

[Alan Bell]

for battery efficiency the GPS is in a power saving mode when the phone is off, if the user unlocks the phone and turns the screen on there are various activities they might want to do that require a location fix, for example taking a photograph or visting a web page that requests the location.
Apps may be able to look at the timestamp of the location provided and request an update if it is too old, but this will result in the user waiting for the phone.
At the point of unlocking the screen the phone should start getting a fix, anticipating any location aware activity happening.

[Alan Bell (alanbell)]

probably needs to go around here http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~unity-team/unity8/trunk/view/head:/qml/Greeter/Greeter.qml#L403

[Thomas Voß (thomas-voss)]

Disagreed, instead of randomly polling for a location fix we should make sure that a location fix can be obtained fast enough. In addition, if we start polling, we would have to do so all of the time. A single shot estimate is not good enough as we cannot reliably determine whether the device is moving or not.

[Thomas Voß (thomas-voss)]

Also note that we do not put the GPS in an explicit battery saving mode when the phone is in deep sleep. It is the overall system state that implies maximum battery saving.

[Alan Bell (alanbell)]

so the procedure for taking a photo will remain that you have to start a navigation application like google maps, wait for the circle to move and shrink then switch to the camera and take your photo. This is sub-optimal - you can't even take a series of photos on a walk without waking up the GPS with a navigation app for each one.