I’m not convinced my second hand iPhone 5S is as “grade A” condition as it might have appeared when I bought it recently from SmartfoneStore as, as well as having a dull patch on the top of the screen (that I was ignoring), last night, with 26% battery remaining it suddenly decided to turn off and insisted it needed charging. A few minutes later it could be started again, before once again deciding that 26% battery was not enough! Hey ho, I’ll be contacting them after this holiday weekend for a replacement (and they do offer a 60 day warranty) so it shouldn’t be a problem but it did get me looking at why my iOS 8 battery life is so poor.

The first clue was the GPS icon at the top of the screen. Even with all applications closed, it persisted – so what was using my GPS?  I found the problem app, following a LifeHacker article to see which app had a purple arrow in Location Services but a bit more googling turned up a great article on iGeeksBlog looking at how to fix always-on location services in iOS 8.

You can read the post yourself but, in summary, it goes through switching off system services that might use the GPS like location-based iAds, Spotlight Suggestions, Diagnostics & Usage, and Popular Near Me; as well as controlling which apps can use Location Services (my problem app was Dropbox – I’m not sure why it needs to know where I am but it’s not allowed to any more).

Hopefully now my iOS 8 battery life will improve – although I really must get my phone swapped too…