Sure, it would be nice to be able to enable/disable GPS for specific apps and see which ones are draining your battery, though I don't think this is really a security discussion. We have some ongoing work to address knowing who is using battery, but nothing planning at this point for per-app GPS control. Patches are, of course, welcome. :)
On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:19 AM, Sam Hiatt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 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 > -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them.
