How does wi-fi and Bluetooth scanning feature work in Android?
How does wi-fi and Bluetooth scanning work and how does it consume battery? Does it always consume battery in the background or does it only work when there is an application that requests the scan. Google maps demand you have this feature on, but does keeping it on increase battery consumption significantly?
Google offers (or at least used to) an API which takes 4 or more WiFi Mac addresses (part of what is broadcast) and will return an approximate location. I think the data is collected by the street view cars. If you move house and take your WiFi modem with you it causes confusion, hence the need for at least 4 different devices.
The sampling rate seems slower than it used to be.
Also have a similar question about the geolocation feature in android. I remember seeing a post where a guy says that off'ing it doesn't actually power off the antenna, only denies the access to applications. How true is that?