Tech Talk: Developers pit Battery Life vs. Location
This article was first published by dmcityview.com There are two sacred cows in smartphone-user experience: battery life and constant connection to information. One of the best features of smartphones is the ability to notify users of new content through a background tool known as push notifications. For years popular services such as email, text messages and social networks have used push notifications to alert users of updates with little uproar, but a new trend in application development is pitting these two sacred cows against each other. Since Foursquare wove user geographic location into the social media universe back in 2009, developers have been frothing at the mouth to capitalize on user location. Global positioning system (GPS) technology has been a standard feature on all smartphones since the original iPhone. At a moment’s notice, users can find directions, traffic information and local businesses, but too much GPS use drains the phone’s battery extremely fast. U...