I'm trying to increase battery life of my Diamond when I use it as GPS device for mountain biking. I use the great GPS Cycle Computer software. Usually maps are already in the phone, so I disable map downloading.
But even so, the device won't last more than 3 hours (actually not even 2 hours). I was thinking that an external GPS, connected by Bluetooth could be helpful? Instead of receiving GPS signal, the Diamond would use Bluetooth connection. Will it last for more?
Not sure if bluetooth uses less than the gps chip.
You could also look into the huge 3000mAh battery available somewhere. Its around 60 usd I think.
It is the fact that your phone is constantly processing data. Try standby mode to increase battery life
mc4ren said:
I'm trying to increase battery life of my Diamond when I use it as GPS device for mountain biking. I use the great GPS Cycle Computer software. Usually maps are already in the phone, so I disable map downloading.
But even so, the device won't last more than 3 hours (actually not even 2 hours). I was thinking that an external GPS, connected by Bluetooth could be helpful? Instead of receiving GPS signal, the Diamond would use Bluetooth connection. Will it last for more?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bluetooth uses less power than GPS, as it is just receiving a signal, and not doing all the leg work of searching for satellites etc. You can get a good Bluetooth GPS from eBay for about £10 which you can charge with your Diamond's charger.
Related
Following reports elsewhere of high temperatures being generated when the built in GPS was operative, I wondered if the battery life could be extended by using my Globalsat BT-338 GPS receiver instead of the Kaisers' built in GPS receiver. To find out, I first put the internal GPS to the test.
After fully charging my standard 1350mAh battery, I soft reset the phone, set the screen brightness to minimum, disabled phone, Bluetooth and Wifi. I started Memory Map (GPS setting set to COM4) and the stopwatch on SPB Time. When the phone eventually ran out of power and switched off I fully charged it again and ran the same test, with all the same settings except this time I enabled Bluetooth and configured Memory Map to accept GPS input from my bluetooth GPS receiver.
The results were interesting. When utilizing the internal GPS, the phone ran out of power after 5hrs 16mins. When using the external GPS it switched off after 5hrs 32mins.
I must admit I expected the battery to last much longer when using the external GPS receiver. I guess the extra power required to maintain a BT link offset the power saved not running the internal GPS receiver almost exactly.
I really need to get out more.
For what it's worth - I'm just like you! I do the same types of tests and wonderings. I think your findings are actually pretty interesting as since I've had my TYTN I haven't used my holux BT receiver, and have been wondering about power drain.
One thing you may not have considered - you tested with the phone off. With the phone on, the TYTN uses cell-towers for assisted GPS - which may actually cause more battery drain.
That's an interesting observation. I don't really know that much about the inner workings of assisted GPS. I was under the impression that assisted GPS helps the GPS receiver to get a quick fix but I wasn't aware that it continued to "help out" following this. Would assisted GPS still be operative, and draining the battery, if I had a perfectly good GPS signal I wonder? You see, I mainly use GPS whilst I am out walking (hence Memory Map). I always have a good view of the sky so I'm supposing assisted GPS would not be called upon under these conditions?
Hello,
I have a problem with builtin GPS, which is common on every WM device, I think. When I want to use GPS logger, GPS will stop, when the device is goig to standby mode. But if I have external GPS connected via bluetooth, GPS logger still logs data from bluetooth GPS.
Is here any program or way to manually control GPS power ? I thing, that automatic providing of GPS is because of battery drain.
For example music player still plays even the device is in standby, but GPS not run.
Yes I can use "do not power off device" and only lock, but display without backlight still consume too much energy.
Any idea ?
The only way I ever found is to switch off the display with psShutxp, and the gps still on as my off road program (compegps).
It works onme
see you
i was looking for this too...will try it out
I dont know how long this has been happining because up to 2 days ago I dident use any bluetooth devices with my phone but I just found out yesterday I was having a problem and after hours of searching and narrowing the problem down I finnaly found that enabling wifi caused my bluetooth range to drop to just a cople inches.
The reason I need wifi is that I dont get anything past "E" were I live and thats not vary good for orb and streaming Movies and TV
The reason I started using Bluetooth is I bought a hands free headset and a BT Gamepad, both of there ranges are 1-2 inches but jump to the correct range when wifi is off.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the bluetooth and wifi probably operate off the same sytem in the kaiser?
If I had to guess, it would have something to with your battery. If you have a weak phone signal, your battery has to work harder to keep the call up. Just my guess
Thats another thing to try, try keeping the phone plugged in while you do this and see if the results vary from not having it plugged in.
I actually saw it to vary from ROM to ROM. On XDA Live 2.0, i could never use both simeltaneously. If i turned wifi on, my headset would disconnect. After I made my ROM, i had no problems whatsoever with both coexisting.
It's normal. Both interfaces use the same frequency band and must share it. When one uses a lot of the available bandwidth, the other is likely to be thrown off. Now if people report different behavior between ROMs it might be stuff like the prioritization between the 2 being different, or simply low-level settings like the number of retries in case of failed transmissions (as many of those will occur when both interfaces are used simultaneously) before a packet is dropped/connection is lost.
An example of the other way, if I use my stereo handset to listen to music (bandwidth-intensive), the Wifi will disconnect even if I'm 2m away from the router.
mech_supernova said:
I dont know how long this has been happining because up to 2 days ago I dident use any bluetooth devices with my phone but I just found out yesterday I was having a problem and after hours of searching and narrowing the problem down I finnaly found that enabling wifi caused my bluetooth range to drop to just a cople inches.
The reason I need wifi is that I dont get anything past "E" were I live and thats not vary good for orb and streaming Movies and TV
The reason I started using Bluetooth is I bought a hands free headset and a BT Gamepad, both of there ranges are 1-2 inches but jump to the correct range when wifi is off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Off topic, but which bluetooth gamepads did you get?
Thanks for all your replies
kareem9nba said:
Off topic, but which bluetooth gamepads did you get?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its the BGP100 works great with Morphgear Emulator heres a link
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/peripherals/input/chainpus-bgp100-bluetooth-gamepad-102114.php
http://www.xperiadepot.com/freedom-keychain-gps-2000/10A95A2869.htm
There are no good description for this product. Does anyone know what they do?
I think this is an ordinary gps modul and description made by someone who does not know there is already a gps receiver built-in in X1.
maybe you use it to help find your keys?
Feezer said:
maybe you use it to help find your keys?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right but the description confuses me and it does sound exactly like what jabe said. But I would so buy this if it was key finder.
It just a bluetooth GPS module that fits on a key chain. You don't need it as the X1 already has a built in GPS chip. If you had a smartphone without a GPS chip, then there's be some benefit to it.
Or if you wanted to use GPS stuff on a laptop or something with BT etc.
Suppose your X1 is positioned in your car that way that the GPS reception is bad but you cannot relocate it. You can set it up to receive GPS signals from this external module. The module itself can be put anywhere like near a window or on the car's roof or so.
WTF? Did you even read? "The Freedom Keychain GPS 2000 is the world’s lightest and most compact pocket GPS receiver."
It's an external GPS receiver.
gps is receiving only!
you pick up a signal from several satellites and the device calc your position
this keythingy have gps and bluetooth
bluetooth have a range of 10m so even if it could transmit
it's cords to your phone then you would have to be pretty close to the lost keys
an external gps, my brother has one but of a different brand. his loads really quick and there's no need to wait on finding satellites. i'm not sure how this performs though, but for a keychain it seems promising for other phones without a built-in gps
I actually have one of those. Well, mine is a white Vodafone branded one, but it's the same chip, hardware, box, everything. It's actually still vaguely useful - it's DGPS capable (WAAS/EGNOS), which the X1's GPS chip is not (augmented accuracy within certain systems, WAAS for North America/Canada and out to sea within several hundred miles, EGNOS for Europe etc), and it has apparently far better reception - my X1i couldn't pick up a GPS signal to save its life inside a BA Boeing 777 flight. The bluetooth'd external reciever picked up and held a strong signal for the entire 3500 mile flight at 40k ft. And inside a plane fuselage, that's got to be borderline faraday cage.
Which GPS option would consume less battery power, the interal GPS or an external Bluetooth GPS unit?
TIA
WT
Thats a good question, I know a few people have said they run external receivers.
If they don't reply I would suggest you do a test and let us know.
Same here good ? I'd guess that an external would use less as it's only running BT "external units self powered" and the software compared to GPS & software.
ah but really, which antenna uses more power? the BT or the GPS?
If you are using GPS while driving, then you can use car charger to charge. But if you want to use GPS while hiking etc, then just keep a couple (or even more) extra batteries. These days you can buy extra batteries very cheap (as low as $5).
More over there are programs which can save battery by connecting to GPS every 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes etc (e.g gpsVP).
In short, you can do much better without external GPS.
So then maybe you can do even better if you do what you're suggesting and use external bt gps. hmmm
ChumleyEX said:
So then maybe you can do even better if you do what you're suggesting and use external bt gps. hmmm
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But then you have to carry external GPS, its charger, may be extra battery for external GPS. All that can be avoided by carrying extra batteries for Kaiser.
Is that what the OP is asking?
Thank you gentle for your input. The real test will be simply try it I suppose.
What I have found out is that the BT-359 has superior GPS accuracy over my Kaiser and that I like. Thanks again
WT
Working Tools said:
Thank you gentle for your input. The real test will be simply try it I suppose.
What I have found out is that the BT-359 has superior GPS accuracy over my Kaiser and that I like. Thanks again
WT
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah i used to use a Magician with extrenal GPS and it fixed so much faster than the Kaiser on board does
I've found the power consumption using the same backlight, same application, etc, but using internal vs Bluetooth GPS was around 100mAh. You do the math.
And the Kaiser's GPS blows.. Doesn't turn off sometimes (continuing to use battery), doesn't work well at all for low speeds (walking), not very sensitive, can be extremely slow to start, and sucks battery.
Thanks khaytsus, what current drain were you able to measure while using the internal GPS unit?
As you can tell I am quite the noob when it comes to the internal workings of the Kaiser but I am learning much from this forum. Thank you everyone for your offering of knowledge!
WT
Pros and Cons of external GPS.
Pros:
Less drain on phone battery.
GPS receiver can be placed where it gets best reception (such as on top of the dash).
Cons:
Another device to haul around.
Another battery to charge.
The hassle of pairing/connecting.
Can't use BT GPS and A2DP simultaneously.
Is it even possible to switch between internal and external GPS on the Kaiser without a hard reset?
Wilhelm said:
Pros and Cons of external GPS.
Pros:
Less drain on phone battery.
GPS receiver can be placed where it gets best reception (such as on top of the dash).
Cons:
Another device to haul around.
Another battery to charge.
The hassle of pairing/connecting.
Can't use BT GPS and A2DP simultaneously.
Is it even possible to switch between internal and external GPS on the Kaiser without a hard reset?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what does this have to do with the OP?
Wilhelm said:
Pros and Cons of external GPS.
Pros:
Less drain on phone battery.
GPS receiver can be placed where it gets best reception (such as on top of the dash).
Cons:
Another device to haul around.
Another battery to charge.
The hassle of pairing/connecting.
Can't use BT GPS and A2DP simultaneously.
Is it even possible to switch between internal and external GPS on the Kaiser without a hard reset?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Switching? It's just a different com port. Now, if you're doing registry tweaking to route the external GPS through com4 so that 'any' program can use it, even those without the ability to modify the com port, yes you'd need a soft reset. Otherwise, of course not.
Pairing and connecting are a zero issue. You do it once.
I thought changing the hardware port on the GPS settings meant you couldn't return to the internal GPS without a hard reset.
Eh that post was just too mean. SOrry
Wilhelm said:
I thought changing the hardware port on the GPS settings meant you couldn't return to the internal GPS without a hard reset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, there's a GPS switcher app out there too, and private builds of CamerAwareBuddy supports switching too.
Also, I don't know about AD2P, but I can use BT GPS and BT headset simultaneously.
Well, from my own experience (Tilt is broken now but I used to use Igo My Way 8.1) the GPS has a function that saves battery...
How does it handle it?
Simple: if you for example have to drive straight forward for 5 kilometers the screen will turn black (standy) and won't turn on (unless pressed) but at the moment when you're getting new directions (Turn left, right, bla bla)
I used to have an external GPS only for my SE M600i but that's a different story