![]() Original work licensed under a Creative Commons License. The man wants to wander, and he must do so or he shall die. I don’t think my phone is integrated enough into my life to make its other capabilities relevant to me (though I might set it up to only enable GPS when mapping applications are open), but I was happy to pay the low price to retake control of my wireless radio. This is probably because Tasker can do a lot of other things. It took me a while to figure out how to achieve my desired behaviour. I found the Tasker interface to be somewhat confusing. That new location will not automatically be stored as a trusted location, but if I want it to be remembered it only takes a minute to create a new profile and hook it up to my two wifi tasks. The task to turn the wireless off is only triggered when I leave the location, which means I can still manually turn the radio on when I am somewhere unknown without Tasker immediately turning it back off. ![]() Profile : Home ( 1 ) Restore : no State : Cell Near Enter: Wifi On (4) A1: WiFi Exit: Wifi Off (9) A1: WiFi Profile: Work (2) Restore: no State: Cell Near Enter : Wifi On ( 4 ) A1 : WiFi Exit : Wifi Off ( 9 ) A1 : WiFi When I leave, the wireless radio turns off. The result is that when the phone sees the cell towers near my trusted locations, the wireless radio turns on. The latter is added to the profiles as the exit task. The first task is added to both profiles as the main task. Then I created two tasks: one to turn wifi on and one to turn it off. Like the Smarter Wi-Fi Manager of old, this just stores the identities of nearby cell towers. I setup one profile for home and one for work, both using the “cell near” context state. In Tasker, a profile can be created to recognize a location using a few different means. Add Profile > State > Net > Wifi Near (as in these questions here and here) Enter SSID Network Name(s) / Select Networks currently in Range. Fortunately I found that Tasker can be configured to replicate the behaviour. I thought I had heard something about the behaviour being integrated into the latest version of Android, but it seems that is not the case. Recently, when setting up a new phone, I discovered that Smarter Wi-Fi Manager had been abandoned. It helped save battery, and prevented information leaks when wandering around meatspace. This was a simple solution to the problem of only wanting wifi turned on at known locations, like home and work. In all other cases it would keep the radio off. Whenever it saw those towers again, it would turn the wireless radio on. When that happened, it would store the location by identifying nearby cell towers. It kept the phone’s wireless radio disabled unless I explicitly enabled it and connected to a network. With GPS turned on, WiFi would be up and connected before I got into the house or office.One of the earliest programs I installed when I bought my first smartphone in 2013 was Kismet’s Smarter Wi-Fi Manager. Sometimes I would be home (or at work) 30 minutes before my rule would fire to turn WiFi on without the GPS turned on. I had much better (quicker) results with location based rules with GPS on than I did with it off. I don't use Tasker, but instead use Setting Profiles. I waited about two weeks an repeated the test with the same results. My battery died between 11 and Midnight that week also. I then did the same thing with GPS off for a week. My battery would die between 11 and Midnight. I tried to use the phone as I normally would. I went for a week with GPS on and took the phone off the charger at 6:00 am and let it go until it died. I did a personal, very unscientific, test on this a while back. "GPS ON" only makes the GPS available for use it something calls for it. Why not just leave GPS on? A lot of folks think that leaving GPS on drains the battery, but it doesn't. ![]()
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