With the M7 chip in the latest iOS devices one can get programmatically notified as the user goes from stationary to running, walking, etc using CMMotionActivityManager. Stava and Runkeeper have both used this to auto-pause GPS polling (shut off the GPS antenna) when it detects the user isn't moving via the M7, and then re-enable GPS updates once they are moving again. It is able to do this while the app is in the background state, which is the key here.
The issue I run into while duplicating this functionality is that if I turn off GPS updates while my app is in the background I stop receiving activity updates, and can no longer detect when the user moves again via the M7 to turn the GPS back on.
If I leave the GPS running the whole time I'll continue to get movement updates from Core Motion the entire time the app is in the background.
I'm assuming they aren't playing white-noise or some other cheap trick to stay active. How did they go about this?