Ever since I installed Arc, my phone has gotten extremely slow whenever I’m using the Google Maps iOS app for navigation. I wonder if Arc’s usage of Location Services is using up too much RAM or something?
I’m on an iPhone X, 14.5.1
Hm. That should be an already solved problem, so I wonder if it’s something different from what I expect.
What used to happen is Google Maps navigation requests the highest possible location data accuracy level, which results in the phone providing location updates more than once a second. Even though Arc isn’t requesting accuracy that high, it still gets fed that full stream of extra location data.
So the change I made was for Arc to simply ignore location updates that came in more than one a second (or maybe 1.2 or 1.5 seconds - I forget the exact threshold I set). That made sure that Arc didn’t get overloaded with excess location data, processing at a higher sampling rate than intended.
It could be that on your phone the sampling rate is still too high for Arc. The iPhone X is prone to getting too hot too quickly, and if it gets too hot it will start reducing the CPU speed to protect itself. It could be that CPU rate reduction that you’re experiencing - the phone running slower due to heat. Does the phone feel hot at the time this happens?
Another confounder is having the phone plugged in to power, which is of course common when using a navigation app in a car. When plugged in, the phone is liable to get hot more easily. So there’s been similar cases with CarPlay, where the combination of being plugged in, using CarPlay, and running Arc can make the phone get too hot and things go bad.
Though Arc itself does dramatically adjust what it does based on phone thermal state. As the phone gets hotter, Arc reduces its sampling rates, disables all except the most essential tasks and processes, etc. But once the phone gets too hot, there’s often nothing that can be done, and it’s not going to cool down until absolutely everything is stopped (and it gets out of the sun and is unplugged from power too).
So yeah, that’s the first thing I’d look into: is it plugged in to power at the time, and does it feel hot at the time. That’ll narrow down the possibilities of what’s going on.
Aside: I use Google Maps navigation on my main phone whenever I’m cycling. But it’s always run smoothly for me, because while cycling the phone is getting a constant cooling breeze, even in steamy hot Bangkok!
Yes, heat is definitely part of the problem, and the phone is often plugged in while it’s heating up running Google Maps navigation.
Hm, ok. As an experiment, try unplugging it from power when it starts to get into that slowed down state, to see if that makes a difference. It might take a minute or two for the temp to settle down.
The iPhone X unfortunately had quite a heat problem. It improved marginally in the iPhone Xs, and was completely resolved in the iPhone 11 series. (Presumably also not a problem with iPhone 12 models, though I can’t afford to buy the latest gen phones anymore, so I haven’t tested on it yet 
)
I’ll have a think about what I might be able to do to on my end. Arc already aggressively throttles its sampling and processing under bad thermal state, but maybe there’s something more I can do.