Monzo, location, iPhones & security

[j06 (Jamie)]

Is there any data on Monzo using battery to geolocate its app?

I actually think the location awareness as a security feature is pretty cool, and miles ahead of legacy banking demanding you let them know if you want to travel (and then still not providing a guarantee that your card won’t be rejected at point of sale.)

But currently Monzo is my only app I have set to geolocate ALL THE TIME (the description changes from cool vendor logos to Big Security when you switch from ‘when app is visible’ to ‘always’) and I wonder what that’s doing to my (already iffy) battery life. I mean, Monzo can’t use my location as security if it has worn out my battery earlier in the day, can it?

I noticed my geolocation arrow has been on almost constantly since I readjusted my settings at the weekend. There are so many rumours around saving iPhone battery life, but can Monzo shed any light on how often the app requests my location, and what that’s doing to my phone?

Cheers

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

Here’s the last comment from the team on this -

Use triangulation instead of GPS

We actually do exactly this already The key phrase for iOS is “Significant Location Change”, which is activated when switching cell towers, and not by GPS. As a result, this feature does not drain your battery like GPS would. We regularly run power profiling as part of development, because we care a lot about battery drain too. tl;dr We’re doing the same thing as Dark Sky Perhaps we should add this to our FAQ? Thanks for the feedback @keirwilliams

[j06 (Jamie)]

Thanks. As ever, extremely useful. I presume the location arrow icon means ‘used relatively recently’ rather than ‘using now’. Great.

[jzw95]

@j06

I actually think the location awareness as a security feature is pretty cool, and miles ahead of legacy banking demanding you let them know if you want to travel

On this point, just to let you know that I’ve never had the Location-based Security enabled, and have not had any problem using my card either elsewhere in the UK, or overseas (France and Iceland). So Monzo are doing some other great things, too, as I also didn’t have to tell them I was travelling.