Compass Calibration, Find my iPhone and Motion Calibration & Distance - Location service always ON

It is not draining the battery. And it has not been on since 16.2; it has been on always, on every iPhone (unless you turn it off, which you can do). Why it’s on:

• Find My - so the phone can be located if it is lost, or if you are sharing your location, and for Last Location if the phone loses location signals
• Motion Calibration & Distance - so for outdoor exercise it can determine your pace and stride length, and how far you have moved
• Compass Calibration - so it can correct the compass for true vs magnetic north

TrueLense wrote:

The difference now is that it’s always on. That was never the case. I have seen my battery lasting less since 16.2 and a significant amount of data consumption.

Please note that the purple arrow does NOT mean “always on”. It means that that item has recently accessed location services.

Do you mean the switches are always on? That’s because you turned them on. There is no indication anywhere in an iPhone that location services are “always on”. The closest is that an app has used location services “recently” (purple arrow), which could have been an hour ago, or in the past 24 hours (white arrow). Apps never use location services continuously; they check location briefly by asking iOS for the location of the phone, they then go about whatever they were doing to process that location. And there is only one location daemon; if 5 apps ask for location at the same time it is only checked once, then provided to all of the apps that asked for it. And finding a location uses virtually no energy; it is just a radio receiver.

You also only know when you look at the phone; like a refrigerator light, you don’t know if any app is checking location when the screen is locked.

My current 14 pro shows purple arrows for a lot of apps, not just those 3; I have 7 lit in System Services and 2 other apps, all showing purple. My battery life is incredibly good. By your hypothesis it should have shut off with low energy hours ago.

Something may be using energy on your phone, but it is not location services.