When you install the sun-a-wear app on an Android smartphone, it asks for two permissions: Location and Background Location. These two Android permissions are necessary for the sun-a-wear app to work correctly. Here we explain why.
- Location: sun-a-wear needs your location for two reasons. First, we want to give you a correct UV sun protection recommendation. We can only do that if we know exactly where you are and can match that data with weather forecasts. For another, Google does not allow Bluetooth to be used if location permission has not been granted. The reason for this is that your smartphone could use Bluetooth to look at what devices are nearby and derive a rough location from that. Google has decided to communicate this clearly to its users by requiring location permission to be granted whenever Bluetooth functions are to be used.
- Location in the background: Both Apple and Android require that users are asked separately whether the app can also query the user's location when the app is not in the foreground. Granting this permission is central to the app's functionality because it is expected to receive data from the sensor even when the app is in the background.
Bluetooth: The sun-a-wear sensor sends its data to your smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy. That means your phone has to listen in the background for Bluetooth packets sent by your sensor. By the way, we made sure that the sun-a-wear app doesn't put a heavy load on your battery. Unlike many other devices, we don't establish a connection to the sensor, we just listen passively to receive new measurements. If you don't grant Android permission for location sensing, your smartphone won't be able to receive measurements from the sun-a-wear sensor.
If you don't want the app to do anything when it is in the background, you can turn off UV monitoring in the background completely. You do this by disabling the slider in the settings menu. Be aware that in this case the summation of your UV dose is not possible, because the app does not receive any sensor data.
But: The location data will not leave your phone and will not be sent to our servers! Read also our article Handling your data.
