Tracking apps usually run for hours/days on end, therefore the battery of the smartphone must last for very long periods of time. Situm allows to turn on several battery optimizations specially designed and tested with tracking use cases in mind.
Battery saver
Usually, Situm reads the sensor data and computes a new location every second. When the smartphone is moving, Situm produces real-time updates to track the smartphone. However, when the smartphone does not move, this process is somehow unnecessary: after all, the position of the smartphone does not change.
If the Battery saver is activated, when the smartphone does not move (based on accelerometer data), Situm stops reading & processing sensor data. Instead, Situm yields the last computed location as the current smartphone location. When the smartphone moves again, sensor reading & processing is restored.
The following figure shows a graphical explanation of this mode.
Realtime update interval
By default, Situm computes one geolocation per second and sends it to the Situm cloud right away. This allows to monitor smartphone geolocation in real time, but if this feature is not required, we can save battery by buffering the geolocations and bursting the uploads.
The following table enumerates the different update intervals with an approximated estimation of the battery duration under each of them.
| Mode | Update interval | Approximate* battery duration |
|---|---|---|
| REALTIME | Every second | 9 to 12 hours |
| FAST | Every 5 seconds | 10 to 13 hours |
| NORMAL | Every 15 seconds | 12 to 15 hours |
| SLOW | Every 25 seconds | 14 to 16 hours |
| BATTERY_SAVER | Every 30 minutes | Up to 24 hours |
| NEVER | Never | Up to 24 hours |
*Depends on device, ambient conditions, other applications running, etc.
Information Cache
In order to be able to locate an user and provide navigation in a given building, the user smartphone (via Situm SDK) must first download all the relevant building information: floorplans, points of interest, the navigation graph, the positioning model, etc.
Situm SDK caches this information by default for a period of 1 day (cache max age). After 1 day, Situm re-checks if the information has changed and downloads the updates. This is, in essence, a battery & data optimization feature that comes activated by default.
The user may desactivate this feature or increase/decrease the cache max age.