Why is the Location Services icon always present?
Solution 1:
It's a new feature in ios 5 called "region Monitoring"
The reason it's active even if the app is closed is that this feature runs in iOS 5 core and notifies all apps that are registered when they have entered or left a specific geo-fence.
Reminders does that when you use a location based reminder.
Although the location icon appears at all time. This actually has very minimal impact on the battery due to apple really optimizing this feature by using cell and wifi mostly.
Solution 2:
Since it's a new iOS 5 feature, I'll add some information (even though it's not your problem).
Starting with iOS 5, you can ask the system to notify you when your location is being used.
You can find the relevant options in Preferences > Location Services > System Services.
There you can choose iOS 5 services that are allowed to geolocate:
- Cell Network Search
- Compass Calibration
- Diagnostics & Usage
- Location-Based iAds
- Setting Time Zone
- Traffic
You can also specify whether or not to show the icon in the status bar.
Also, a grey icon in front of an application in Preferences > Location Services means that the app has used your location in the last 24 hours. If the icon is blue, the application is using it right now.
So you could have known right away which app was the culprit.
Solution 3:
Ah - I fiddled around with a few different apps and discovered that Foursquare was the culprit. When Foursquare's new Radar feature is on, it is always using your location data, even when the app itself is not running. I've turned it off for now, since I don't want it running my battery down unnecessarily.