GPS stays on with stock camera app

Tracing down the fact that sometimes my GPS remained turned on draining the battery quite noticably I found this:
When I start the stock camera app, GPS is turned on. When I close the camera app by back button or by switching between apps GPS remains turned on. When I force-close the app by swiping it off the app overview the GPS icon will immediately vanish. So there is a bug in the camera app that should turn off GPS when the app loses focus.
Can anyone confirm this behavior on the FP2? (I use the open OS)

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My FP2 shows the same behavior with the open OS installed.

The AOSP Camera app, when first started, asks you about appending your current geolocation to the images taken with it (in the EXIF metadata stored in each picture file). Make sure you disabled this feature in the app’s settings.

This feature was included on Android 4.0.x Ice Cream Sandwich and I remember it had a bug that causes the geolocation to be appended even when the feature was disabled by the user. The bug was fixed as of Android 4.2.X Jelly Bean, if I remember correctly.

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Hi Roboe, thanks for that. However, I do not want to disable the feature, I like it :-).
But there is clearly a bug in the camera app which should be fixed and which is not acknowledged yet in the list of known issues. I work around this by using the OpenCamera app which is better anyway, but it had bitten me a few times, so I think it will bite others too.

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Well if you want to keep using the feature you’ll have to quit the app after using.
It’s not a bug but intended behavior that GPS stays active while a feature that uses GPS is active.

Or you could try a different App that has an equivalent feature but doesn’t keep GPS active in the background. E.g. with OpenCamera I never experienced this.

Another App you could try, if you want to keep using the stock camera is FineGeotag. I never tried it but it’s description sounds like it could replace the geotagging feature of the standard camera.

Hey paulakreuzer, I would argue that this IS a bug, because the GPS remains on when I quit the app through the back key or by, e.g. starting another app. I have to explicitely FORCE-CLOSE the app in the app overview to turn off GPS. Android philosophy is to never have to explicitely close an app and having the camera app in the list of recently used apps is enough for GPS to remain on.

But I will not go on harping about this issue. If you believe this is how it is supposed to work, fine, I am not going to have an argument here :-). I disagree that this is intended though and believe that this might be the cause of a few battery-drain problems that people have.

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