Thanks all for your feedback. Just to clarify, yes, I know that the user has to grant specific permissions on application install, but that's not good enough at all! Just saying that at some point the app might need to turn on GPS and/or access the network is a good initial precaution, but my point is that you can't stop there.
Currently if a user wants to ensure that app X isn't the one incessantly polling GPS (and draining out the battery) then his only choice is to either turn off location services completely, for all apps, or uninstall app X? Really, that's just pathetic. I think it is a severe shortcoming that Android won't let me temporarily deny GPS permissions to one app, leaving all other apps unaffected. The user should be able to see all apps that have locations privileges and "uncheck" the ones that he's not currently using. Additionally, at any point in time the user should be able to look and see which apps are actively using location services. This could be as simple as making the GPS icon in the notification bar "clickable", so that when the user notices it is on he/she can pull down the notification bar, tap the GPS icon and see which app is using it. This would also be an excellent place to notify the user with a simple icon that the specific app also has network permissions especially if it is actively uploading information. Does that make sense? Do you all agree? Sam
