jQuery Forum

Removing this in jQueryMobile 1.2 fixes this behaviour:

(Line 846)

1. // DEPRECATED
   if ( $.uiBackCompat !== false ) {
       $.Widget.prototype._getCreateOptions = function() {
           return $.metadata && $.metadata.get( this.element[0] )[ this.widgetName ];
       };
   }
   

Doesn't work that way for me with the same iOS version or on the iPhone 4, 4S, or 5.  I can browse jQuery Mobile sites all I want and geolocation is never enabled unless the application actually performs geolocation activities.

You'll have to activate the status icon for system's location-services. Looks like that in german: http://www.macmaniacs.at/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ortungsdienste.png

Go to settings -> privacy -> location services -> the very last item all down at the bottom -> again scroll down to the bottom.

Not sure what that "Status Bar Icon" setting at the bottom of Location Services, System Services really does, as it's actually not possible to turn off the display of active geolocation in the status bar.

There are a number of new possibilities for showing the icon during "system services", which have nothing to do with anything your app might do, including compass calibration, setting time zone, etc. etc.

What color is the location icon when this happens? White is active geolocation. Other colors are for system services, including in some cases ones that have occurred any time in the last 24 hours. I think it is the display of the icon for these "system services" that is controlled by that setting, and is certainly is confusing - which is why I assume this is defaulted to "off".

I am guessing that with the setting "off", you have to drill-down into the settings to see if system services have used geolocation. If you want to see them in the status bar, then you need to turn this setting on.

This does NOT mean that geolocation is constantly active, causing a battery drain.

I sent a tweet to the jQuery Mobile team about this odd behaviour having searched for the culprit for several hours. Googling doesn't help you much because it doesn't seem that a lot of people have noticed this. Maybe their app uses geolocation anyway.

So the team pushed a fix into the master branch just shortly after my tweet. Their theory was that when they run an accelerationIncludingGravity and bind a devicemotion event it hooks this to the geolocation api somehow if I understand the problem correctly. Their fix is to set $.mobile.iosorientationfixEnabled to false for iOS and only bind events if this is true.

Thanks to the jQuery Mobile Team for the really quick solution. We searched for hours to find the culprit.

1. $.mobile.iosorientationfixEnabled = true; // JQM Team Fix!
2. 
   
3. // This fix addresses an iOS bug, so return early if the UA claims it's something else.
4. var ua = navigator.userAgent;
5. if( !( /iPhone|iPad|iPod/.test( navigator.platform ) && /OS [1-5]_[0-9_]* like Mac OS X/i.test( ua ) && ua.indexOf( "AppleWebKit" ) > -1 ) ){
6.       $.mobile.iosorientationfixEnabled = false; // JQM Team Fix!
7.       return;
8. }
9. /*.................*/
10. $( document ).on( "mobileinit", function(){
11.       if( $.mobile.iosorientationfixEnabled ){ // JQM Team Fix!
12.             $( window )
13.                   .bind( "orientationchange.iosorientationfix", zoom.enable )
14.                   .bind( "devicemotion.iosorientationfix", checkTilt );
15.        }
16. });

Yeah! That's it.

I think binding to devicemotion causes this behaviour.

The funny thing is that, since it's used as a system's location services, there seems to be no way to disable it except disabling any location services...

I think the reason this has not been widely noticed is that that option is defaulted OFF, so most developers would have their phone in the default setting. They still get the icon showing for real geolocation.

I recall that I did set this option ON when I first installed iOS6, but quickly turned it off, because it is annoying to constantly see a location icon in the status bar. It is not just jQuery Mobile, but many native apps. If you set that switch on, you will almost always see a location icon (of various colors) in the status bar.

For example, if you leave the "Compass calibration" setting on, AND you have "Status bar icon" on, then you will get a purple location icon in the status bar constantly for 24 hours after a compass calibration!

So, I'm not convinced that this is really a bug that needs to be fixed.

Apple hasn't done a good job of documenting this. It is quite confusing.

Apple got consumer backlash on privacy disclosure over access to the Contact List, geolocation in photos, etc. and they went a bit overboard on fine-grained disclosure...

The funny thing is that, since it's used as a system's location services, there seems to be no way to disable it except disabling any location services...

You can enable/disable various system location services with the setting just above the "status bar icon" setting. But you can't individually enable/disable their display in the status bar - that is done for all of the "system services" as a whole.

So, I'm not convinced that this is really a bug that needs to be fixed.

We've noticed this because we're developing a PhoneGap app using jQuery Mobile and if the app is activated, GPS is constantly on and the battery goes down super fast... Same when staying on a website using jQuery Mobile :)

We've noticed this because we're developing a PhoneGap app using jQuery Mobile and if the app is activated, GPS is constantly on and the battery goes down super fast... Same when staying on a website using jQuery Mobile

I do not experience this.

Again, if the location indicator is only showing when the Setting for Privacy > Location Services > System Services Status Bar Icon is on, that does NOT mean that GPS is being activated.

Turn this setting OFF. NOW, if the status bar icon comes on, it means some application is requesting geolocation. With that setting turned on, the status bar will icon will come on for many other situations which actually have nothing to do with active geolocation. It's a hyper-sensitive setting that Apple wisely opted to default to OFF, because otherwise it would unnecessarily alarm users.

In fact, I've recently been working on a number of location-related apps using jQuery Mobile: as a web site (1), as a PhoneGap app (2), and as a Rhodes app (2). (A total of 4 apps, one is both web and PhoneGap). NONE of them demonstrate this behavior.

The location indicator comes on when the app turns on geolocation. The Location indicator goes out when the app turns off geolocation.

FYI, here is the checkin for this:

https://github.com/jquery/jquery-mobile/commit/492fabda0aa93efd5e4f1be3654b465eaf7a609f

Unfortunately, there is no Issue for this on GitHub, so no tracking of the rationale for this change.

I did some testing, and determined that this occurs when you enable Compass Calibration in Location Services > System Services > Compass Calibration. This is enabled by default.

The setting below that, Status Bar Icon controls whether this (and a number of other items on the same page) displays a status bar icon when used.

Apparently, iOS uses GPS to calibrate the magnetometer. Makes sense, since it would need to know where you are on earth to compensate for the difference between true north and magnetic north, and it would also be useful to know the local gravity at your location (which does vary slightly in different locations, doesn't vary much over time, and can be obtained from published data.)

The magnetometer is being used, apparently, because JQM is getting devicemotion events. Well, to get device motion, the OS needs device acceleration. And to calculate device acceleration properly, you need to subtract-out the gravity component. And, to subtract-out the gravity component, you need to use the magnetometer. And somewhere along the line the OS is deciding that the magnetometer should be calibrated...

Apparently there was an issue with iOS 5.0 with GPS being left on when this calibration was done, and fixed in iOS 5.0.1. But now we are at iOS 6.0.1. I do see this with magnetometer calibration enabled and the setting enabled to show this on the status bar. It's not clear, though, that GPS is really continually active, or if this indicator simply stays on as long as an app that has performed calibration is still active.

It does go out after you close any app/browser that uses JQM. And the description of the indicator says that it means that magnetometer calibration was done recently.

It would be more useful to open an Issue on this so that it can be tracked and could be insured that this really is a "fix".

According to the commit, the default has not been changed. You will need to set $.mobile.iosorientationfixEnabled = false if you want to override the default behaviour (which has not changed).

If you do this, you give up having JQM detect acceleration. Not quite sure what it is doing here, seems to be disabling zoom at orientation change if acceration exceeds a certain threshold. If you disable this, that will no longer be done, and not sure what the consequences are.