Yeah, this whole work to use location services is just for that. But, on the contrary of some people, I think this is good for privacy. You know, before that change, AOSP (the open source version of Android) used Google Services for location, even when no GApps were installed, because these location services where integrated into the system, and there weren’t any method to change it. That was bad. Now we can choose, .
The article is referring to the network location (proprietary on phones with Google Services) and the pure GPS location (open source on every phone). microG or UnifiedNLP (which doesn’t need signature spoofing) fill the gap of network location left by Google Services (when no installed).
Of course microG/UnifiedNLP is less battery-consuming than the whole Google Mobile Services (spying) framework.
For a more technical explanation, read this:
Just for the sake of completion, I’ll explain to you how location is achieved by Android OS. There are two qualities of location, each with pros and cons: GPS location, directly accessing GPS satellites, so you need to be outdoor. This method is more accurate (metters) and doesn’t need an internet connection, but it’s slow and energy consuming. Network location, which is an approximation (geometry triangulation) based on which cell towers and wifi points your phone has access to. This metho…