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I am currently using my Hermes with an external Bluetooth GPS receiver that has 30 hours battery life. I need this because I do not use the GPS in my car but out mountainbiking or hiking. I love the idea of using the larger Athena screen with digital mapping, but I am worried about battery life if the GPS is built-in since the calculations will probably drain the battery. Has anyone tested the GPS on battery power? How long does it last? Has anyone found good spare batteries?
I have also noted with interest the problems with GPS reception. Has anyone tested this in remote locations (where reception should often be good) or under cloud cover?
I will post a separate thread on this, but I am also concerned about using the hard drive while out mountain biking. Is that just a non-starter given all of the vibration and indirect impact?
Kurvenal said:
I am currently using my Hermes with an external Bluetooth GPS receiver that has 30 hours battery life. I need this because I do not use the GPS in my car but out mountainbiking or hiking. I love the idea of using the larger Athena screen with digital mapping, but I am worried about battery life if the GPS is built-in since the calculations will probably drain the battery. Has anyone tested the GPS on battery power? How long does it last? Has anyone found good spare batteries?
I have also noted with interest the problems with GPS reception. Has anyone tested this in remote locations (where reception should often be good) or under cloud cover?
I will post a separate thread on this, but I am also concerned about using the hard drive while out mountain biking. Is that just a non-starter given all of the vibration and indirect impact?
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Click to collapse
Can't be sure..I wouldn't want to test it....but having said that, my cousin chased someone who stole his Ameo and they deliberately dropped it onto the concrete pavement to avoid a much deserved beating. lol.
It withstood the fall barring a few scratches and still works fine...so who knows for sure. If your truly worried about the Microdrive, why not transfer the GPS software to the Mini SD card?
I know I did, in case I drive over bumpy terrain and suffer the scenario you outlined above. No issues so far for me.
Ameo for outdoor digital mapping
I have the option to test the Ameo (T-Mobile's name for the Athena) for 30 days so will take it out on some rides to test. I am wondering if it makes more sense to continue to use my external Bluetooth GPS receiver since I will want to put my Ameo in sleep mode when I am riding (as opposed to looking at a map) to conserve battery power and protect the hard drive, which I presume will cause the in-built GPS to lose its signal. If that is the case, then every time I stop to look at my map I will have to switch on the unit for hunt for a signal again, whereas if I have the external GPS on all the time (no problem given its long battery life) the Ameo will pick up the coordinates immediately when I switch it on and display my position on the map. I suspect the GPS in the Ameo is better placed for use in a car with constant power supply. It definitely might be useful, however, to have a backup on the SD card. I am not sure that will work for my Memory Map Pocket Navigator though since I need to send a license to my handheld every time I install. How did you manage to do it?
Does anybody know about WAAS/EGNOS support on the Ameo?
I installed GPSInformation and it has a tickbox to enable them, and it seems to say "ok" when you tick it. However, if you quit the app, when you re-run the box is unticked again.
Does this mean you have to enable WAAS everytime you use the GPS receiver?
Does software like Virtual earth, google maps and TomTom etc enable WAAS by default?
had my one day old ameo out mtbing today.
no problems except the internal gps is appalling, it needs direct view of sky, no tree cover at all, with white part facing upwards to get any kind of signal.
maybe I'm doing something wrong...
on my mdapro with bluetooth GPS i would leave memory map running in my gillet pocket with the external in my backpack with no worries.
not tried external with this one yet
I think memory map installs the licence to main memory (maybe a reg key)
As an update to that, after setting both hardware and software ports to none, and turning off the automatic control of gps in the control panel, it's working really well inside the house, and in my pocket.
Battery had dropped 4% after 1hr ride to work, this morning, running mem map & media player. So not bad at all, there were some odd spikes on the mm track record, where I'm presuming the signal got a bit hazy, but other than that good.
Was accurate enough to record when I'd changed lanes on dual carriageway.
Vibration didn't seem to cause any issues, and this was on my recumbent trike, which is prone to loosening fillings..
Do you have a better battery indicator program. The standard one only seems to measure in 10% intervals?
Turn GPS Off?
Out of interest, is the GPS chip always running? If so, is there a way to turn it off? I would hope it only turns on when needed, but just trying to increase battery life...
-Krip
The GPS chip only comes on when you use it. You can see its on because there is an extra flash on the left hand led. You get a GSM flash, then a GPS flash.
Pyrofer said:
The GPS chip only comes on when you use it. You can see its on because there is an extra flash on the left hand led. You get a GSM flash, then a GPS flash.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the tip! Never noticed that before. But your correct, the GSM led blinks twice as fast after starting TomTom.
It also flashes a different colour, I see a green GSM flash, then orange GPS flash. I dont know if it changes again when you have GPS lock, because im inside
hello,
on android phones, it is possible to see the actual consumption for bluetooth, gps and so in, and to disable anything shortly before the phone gets down due to a empty battery.
is something like this also available for the hd2?
that means, is there something to:
- see the actual consumption for any running application?
and/or
- to disable (a)gps, for a longer lifetime of the phone? (it is only possible to switch bluetooth/gsm/dataconnection etc. on/off)
many thanks in advance.
best regards
mario
GPS can only be turned on/off by the applications which use it. It is automatically turned off if you close the application (Navi, GoogleMaps). Be sure to have a look in your TaskManager whether the Progs are really closed.
Greets
I've been having a recurring problem where my phone will lock up in a deep sleep, leaving the phone completely off. In order to restart the phone, I have to hold Power and Vol Down which takes me to a charging logo, and then hit power again. This generally happens overnight when the phone is charging, but I've also had it happen once while making a VoIP call. I thought I resolved the issue by wiping the phone and flashing the stock 4.2 ROM. However, the issue just occurred last night after 4 days of bug-free usage.
My question is whether this is some sort of weird software bug or a hardware issue. I haven't seen others report identical behavior but I've seen lots of complaints about freezing and random reboots that seem to be due to software. Should I request an RMA?
+ 1 . I am having the same issue. I would say hang tight. Call the support team and let them know you are having issues. If atfer a few weeks the problem persists perhaps go through an rma. I suspect it is software related. Lets say you did RMA still had the issue then had a dead pixel or other problem? It would suck and you would have to go through the whole process again. rinse and repeat. Only if you want to return the device for a full refund, then I would say hurry up and make that call. My .02 Good luck.
NexUsandThem said:
+ 1 . I am having the same issue.
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Click to collapse
+1
Having the same issue. Although no clear pattern is visible. Sometimes I find the phone dead-locked after putting it aside for 10 minutes and sometimes it seems to run for a day or even two without issue. Running _motley kernel right now without any change on this front.
I rather think it's a software issue than hardware. So I am not going to RMA it.
Strangely when I power off the phone on such a lock-up and then reboot it I will see a substantial drop in battery after the reboot. So the phone seems to be in some state where it still drawns more battery than in normal operation. E.g. with _motley kernel and limited clocks I typically see 3-5% battery drop over night only. When it locks up during the night and I reset it in the morning then battery usually drops much more (e.g. 30-50% is gone). Maybe it's caused by some hanging/deadlocked driver.
If you full factory reset and flashed then i'd say some app of yours is causing the issue.
shotta35 said:
If you full factory reset and flashed then i'd say some app of yours is causing the issue.
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Click to collapse
In fact I got the device in dec 2012. Started to set it up and then decided to root it (including full factory reset). I only have a very minor amount of system-level applications installed. Actually the main reason to root was to use Voltage Control as I intended to limit clock rates and (if possible) voltages the same way I was used to do it on my Galaxy Tab 7 (P1000) where I was very pleased with 6-days battery lifetime.
Initially I found the minimum clock rate was set to 1GHz and I have reduced it to 304MHz (minimum with stock kernel). When I discovered first freezes/lock-ups then I reverted to default settings and found it still locking up occasionally. Meanwhile I am using _motley kernel which seems to include some voltage mod as well. Although Voltage Control does not show options to modify voltages. Then I found Trickster MOD which shows some voltage control but it seems to have no effect (at least I was used my galaxy tab to crash when undervolting too much and it's pretty "strange" to be able to set all clock voltages to 0.6V while still running stable; so I guess the settings won't have any effect right now).
I have also tried to remove all modifications and applications and/or profiles which could cause the issue without any difference. Even when run stock settings it occasionally completely locks-up the device.
Edit: I was wrong regarding voltages. In fact I found my device happily works at 1134MHz using 600mV. Since I am used to limit max clock rates to 810MHz I could simply put all voltages to 600mV without seeing a crash/reboot.
CAUTION: This does not necessarily have to apply to all devices. My one is "faster" binned Rev. 11 device. Some voltages of different users are collected here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnlqtEwFJwR6dE55WkZYSThEM3U4SGtKMVl2V1VqMmc#gid=0
I have an I9505 running lollipop and struggling to address intermittent lag.
Broadly speaking the phone starts off working well, snappy.. but after a while can start to lag. By this I mean a press on the home button may result in a 20s+ delay for the task manager to come up. Switching a task may be slow, the keyboard may take 10-20s to appear, the screen may be mostly blank for a while. It doesn't crash, and does "come back" but it's nearly unusable. Usually once switched to a task and settled down scrolling is ok. then it may work just fine, snappy for a while
I don't see oddly high figures in the various stats I can see - cpu time isn't excessive. memory is harder to interpret and at times I do see kswapd busy just after a wakeup.. so my suspicion is it's a memory leak but one I can't prove
I've tried alternative kernels - hulk, imperium, and they don't appear to help matters at all.
The lollipop build was clean & Current firmware is I9505XXUHOD7, BTU
I am rooted and have progressively disabled various packages I don't use in an effort to lighten the environment
I've disabled animations (a cause of memory leaks in 5.0.1, though supposedly not affecting samsung touchwiz)
I am a software engineer and very familar with better battery stats, gsam, even a quick peruse through dumps via adb yet still haven't got to the bottom of my issue. I'm also very aware there's little in the way of solid facts to help debug a problem in this posting......
The next step is going to be a strip back - clean install, slow addition of apps. In the meantime can anyone identify any issues they've seen with any particular apps?
planetf1 said:
I have an I9505 running lollipop and struggling to address intermittent lag.
Broadly speaking the phone starts off working well, snappy.. but after a while can start to lag. By this I mean a press on the home button may result in a 20s+ delay for the task manager to come up. Switching a task may be slow, the keyboard may take 10-20s to appear, the screen may be mostly blank for a while. It doesn't crash, and does "come back" but it's nearly unusable. Usually once switched to a task and settled down scrolling is ok. then it may work just fine, snappy for a while
I don't see oddly high figures in the various stats I can see - cpu time isn't excessive. memory is harder to interpret and at times I do see kswapd busy just after a wakeup.. so my suspicion is it's a memory leak but one I can't prove
I've tried alternative kernels - hulk, imperium, and they don't appear to help matters at all.
The lollipop build was clean & Current firmware is I9505XXUHOD7, BTU
I am rooted and have progressively disabled various packages I don't use in an effort to lighten the environment
I've disabled animations (a cause of memory leaks in 5.0.1, though supposedly not affecting samsung touchwiz)
I am a software engineer and very familar with better battery stats, gsam, even a quick peruse through dumps via adb yet still haven't got to the bottom of my issue. I'm also very aware there's little in the way of solid facts to help debug a problem in this posting......
The next step is going to be a strip back - clean install, slow addition of apps. In the meantime can anyone identify any issues they've seen with any particular apps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should add that I did previously use CM12 and that left a little laggy too, though not tried CM12.1 . The two factors holding me back - a) better/reliable camera in TW b) Beep'n'go - love the app. works everywhere unlike every other loyalty card app I've tried (uses proximity sensor pulsing, Samsung TW specific)
planetf1 said:
I should add that I did previously use CM12 and that left a little laggy too, though not tried CM12.1 . The two factors holding me back - a) better/reliable camera in TW b) Beep'n'go - love the app. works everywhere unlike every other loyalty card app I've tried (uses proximity sensor pulsing, Samsung TW specific)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
try to disable swap devices, if there is any. If I know well, stock Lollipop ROM uses compressed swap devices in memory, like in stock KitKat ROM (zram).
In a terminal/shell:
- List currently used swap devices:
Code:
cat /proc/swaps
- Switch to root:
Code:
su
- Disable swap devices:
Code:
swapoff /dev/swapdevice
or if you have Busybox installed:
Code:
busybox swapoff /dev/swapdevice
Where /dev/swapdevice is the swap device/partition, which you want to disable.
It's the best to do this in some kind of init.d scripts before the system starts.
I am on still KitKat+rooted, but this should work on Lollipop, too.
Good luck!
planetf1 said:
The next step is going to be a strip back - clean install, slow addition of apps. In the meantime can anyone identify any issues they've seen with any particular apps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think this is the best thing to do. I suffered a weird wifi issue that no else had. A fresh/clean install of the same lollipop ROM and kernel fixed it. Haven't noticed any apps causing lag on lollipop.
[HOW-TO][NEWBIE GUIDE] Optimize & proper set up your Galaxy S6 Edge (stock firmware)
As I've read across this forum and on several specific threads related to usage, battery life and so on, as well as discussing with some of my friends having a S6 or S6 Edge, I realized that most of the people don't really know how to properly set up their phones or how to use them efficiently.
OK, I get it, this is a fancy phone, not every owner is a developer or tech guy so it might be that many choose it based on the looks and don't really know how to optimize it...then they start complaining about different things like lag or battery drain not knowing that most of the problems are caused by miss-usage or improper setup. Of course there are bugs too, nothing is perfect. Of course there are many firmwares available and some are market or carrier dependent so some features or settings might be missing from some of them or even work differently.
What I will try here is to provide some guidelines and tips for setting up various things on the phone in order to maximize it's battery life and for a better usage. I will also make some recommendations based on my experience, tests and usage that might not apply to everyone. Use common sense and logic to apply similar settings in your particular case. Don't come screaming that you made that or that and now something is not working.
And YES, I know there are similar guides like this posted over the Internet and I'll probably make similar recommendations here too but I couldn't find such a guide here on XDA that is particular to this phone (if there is a better one than you might as well ignore mine).
All these things I'll describe below are applicable to any STOCK, NON-ROOTED 5.1.1 firmware and won't break warranty or your phone.
Now that was a long (and maybe unneeded introduction) but I thought to write this for everyone...let's start.
Model No.: SM-G925F
Android: 5.1.1 r2 (LMY47X)
Baseband: G925FXXU2QOI7
Kernel: 3.10.61-5672012
Build date: Fri Sept 4 2015
Carrier: Orange RO
DISPLAY
First I would like to say some words about the display. We have a great display, high resolution and it is most likely the biggest battery drain factor. There are two major things about it that you should keep in mind and will help you to get a better battery:
1. It's AMOLED...that means that the black pixels on it will consume no power because are not lit. Studies showed that even if not completely black, AMOLED displays use less energy if the displayed picture is darker compared to a lighter one.
2. The brightness level. Most people use it on "auto" or high level settings and this will be a major drain factor.
You can drastically lower the battery drain caused by your screen by selecting as much as possible dark (black) backgrounds and/or themes. There are some nice ones available in the Theme Store (my favorite is the Dalkomm Coffee Theme), that make most screens and menus dark/black. Also choosing a dark wallpaper for lockscreen/homescreens will help.
Don't use screen brightness at maximum...never. You don't need that in 99% of the cases. Also you won't probably need the automatic setting either since most of the people are spending most of the time indoors (either at work or home). A low manual setting will be fine most of the time, I have it set up at about 20% and only need a brighter one when going out. At that time I just tap on "auto" and it'll increase based on ambient light level. So you don't even need to tweak it alot every time. Find a low manual setting that's fine for your eyes and just tap on "auto" when you go out in sunlight.
CONNECTIVITY
Another battery drain factor is your multiple connection/radios features. In most cases you use just several: Mobile Data, WiFi, GPS/location and BT (when applicable). That means you should turn off all the others you don't use...NFC or BT (when not connected to a headset or car-kit or not listening to music). I don't listen to music and don't have a BT headset so I mostly not using BT (just when I'm in my car) and almost never use NFC so I have both disabled and I enable them only when needed via the Quick Settings.
WiFi
WiFi should also be properly setup otherwise it'll have impact on battery. It was incorrectly assumed or considered that keeping WiFi on all the time will drain battery faster. That was proven in different tests that's not true and in fact keeping WiFi on all the time won't make a big difference and in some cases was even better than to turn it off/on. I think is something similar with the car engines that suck more fuel when started that when running at idle. The major power drain is not when WiFi is running while is not connected to any network, but when the WiFi radio is powered up. When is on and not connected, it's going into a lower power state so the battery consumption is negligible.
I had a case with one of my friends that had WiFi setup to turn off when display was off...wrong choice, he got about 30% battery drain overnight because instead of having it connected to his home WiFi, the phone was using his 4G/LTE connection to make all the background sync/updates. That was eating his battery and also his data plan. After setting WiFi to "always" his overnight drain lowered to as little as 2-3%.
In some regions/carriers there are 2 other settings that were proven to help battery life: WiFi calling and VoLTE. I don't have either of them but based on different articles and what people say, they surely help with that so don't forget to turn them off if you don't use these features.
You might also want to try turning off "Always allows scanning" and "Smart network switch". I have the second turned off but I keep on the first one. Basically the first option tell the Location service to use WiFi for locating the device even if WiFi is switched off (by the on/off switch) so that means the radio is active. Second option should make you switch faster from WiFi to mobile data in case the WiFi signal is not strong enough or fluctuating. In my country there are plenty of WiFi hot-spots and they have mostly good connections so I don't use this feature.
GPS
Well here the opinions are split but I am currently having it ON all the time and Location Service is set to "high accuracy". I personally haven't noticed such a major difference with or without it so I preferred to let it on as it is used by many apps or services. You can try to set Location to "wifi and cell only" but don't think that will bring you a major benefit.
RUNNING APPS/PROCESSES
Well this is an important one. I've initially started to turn off/disable/uninstall everything I don't need or use. This can be done mostly from the Settings - Applications - Application Manager or if you want to go further, you can install Package Disabler Pro from PlayStore, about which I'll detail later.
Now why we should do that? There are lots of apps, processes and background services running on our devices that take care about all the things we do on the device. The problem is that ALL are using resources: processor time, memory, space and so on. In the end these are translated for a user in LAG or battery drain. Of course we cannot kill everything and I learned long time ago that installing Task or memory managers on Android it's the worst thing you can do. Android it's smart enough to take care better about it's resources and processes (at least to a certain point) and keep killing a certain process won't give you more battery life but will eat more of it in the end,
What I wanted to say is you shouldn't start disabling, killing or blocking everything cause you might end up with an unstable or not properly working phone (case in which only a factory reset might help). First of all look at the ALL tab in Application Manager and try to identify what you don't need or use. For example I'm certainly not using some things like: music, books, news feeds, Samsung's keyboard (I use SwiftKey), the TouchWiz launcher (I use Nova), health services or whatever, S-Voice, S-Health, S-Finder, I don't have any smartwatches so I don't use any Gear processes, fancy device wake-up functions (like wave gestures) or animated wallpapers either.
So after all considerations above, you decided that you can safely disable some apps/processes. All good but you'll quickly learn that some of them cannot be disabled via Application Manager (the "disable" button is grayed out). Now what? Well here comes handy that Package Disabler Pro that I've told you about in the beginning. That app is able to disable ANY apps/processes on your phone, including those that are protected and cannot be disabled via the normal way (and yes it can do that without being rooted). The downside of it is that you must be careful what you choose to disable not to have something that is needed for the normal functionality or the apps you're currently using. The app has also a backup/restore function (via an xml file) for saving the list with apps you have disabled and easily import them back after a factory reset for ex. I've added to this thread my list of disabled apps as it is exported by the application (just unzip and copy the file on the root of your internal memory and it can then be imported in the Package Disabler app)
Another important thing is WHAT apps you're using. I know that socializing and social networking are some of today's most trendy things but keep in mind that some of the apps used for that are not so well made. An example could be the Facebook app/messenger which are reported to drain alot of battery. RSS feeds, news feeds, multiple weather apps or widgets, all contribute to battery drain and lag. Don't install several apps/widgets for the same purpose (like several calendar apps or weather apps). Each will take resources and won't have an added value. Want to use another weather app/widget than the one coming with the phone? Fine, install it...but don't forget to uninstall/disable the built in one or others that do the same thing. Same goes for keyboard for ex; I use SwiftKey for years and got used with it. For me it's better than any keyboard that Samsung might put on the device, therefore I've disabled the standard Samsung keyboard. I also don't like TouchWiz launcher and use Nova that offers me much more flexibility so...I've disabled both the "easy" and "regular" TouchWiz launchers. I went to the point that I've even disabled the different embedded font types, you have 5 of them and I doubt someone uses more than one at a time.
So as you all can see it's not only a matter of setup but also a matter of usage. When you have a device you have to use it properly otherwise it'll not perform as you expect. Imagine a car that has a manufacturer fuel consumption value of 5.5 liters/100 Km....that's under certain conditions not on ANY type of driving. Fly with 200+ km/hr on a highway and I'll guarantee you won't have 5.5 liters/100 km consumption. That doesn't mean the manufacturer has lied or mislead you. Same goes with a phone, if you don't know how to use it and optimize it, you'll have a bad experience.
I work in the IT industry for years and I mostly laugh when I hear someone advising somebody to reinstall the operating system to solve a problem. Same goes for "factory reset" for a phone. Yes, this method works some times but that won't solve the root cause of an issues if you're using it the same way. After several days it'll perform as bad as before and you'll just say that "factory reset" did nothing. Of course it didn't...YOU have to do something different, not the phone.
Now I apologize for the long post and I do hope that at least some will learn to better manage their devices and to understand what they're doing not just running certain commands or procedures blind. Both S6 and S6e are great devices but we should learn how to properly use them in order to benefit the most from them...otherwise we just come here asking for help or mumbling about what crap devices they are.
Thank you, I will check to see if I get an improvement on the standby battery drain.
Your part about not setting the screen to Auto is flawed. You mention that we are mostly indoors, and you don't need a brighter screen for that. Auto mode also knows that and sets the brightness lower. It already does automatically what you do manually.
Tnx. And yes....keeping screen at 20% brightness and just switching to auto when in outdoors works great for the battery life.
ArmedandDangerous said:
Your part about not setting the screen to Auto is flawed. You mention that we are mostly indoors, and you don't need a brighter screen for that. Auto mode also knows that and sets the brightness lower. It already does automatically what you do manually.
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Click to collapse
Not quite, I've tested it. If you're on "auto" and use a lower setting on the slidebar, in a dark room the screen is too dark, you'll have to turn off "auto" and the manual brighteness set on the same level will be much higher than on auto.
Now if you have such good eyes and you're able to use "auto" in all cases with the slider at 20% that's good for you...unfortunately I am not so that's why I use it as I've described. The point is that "auto" mode consumes MORE battery regardless of how it's set, than a lower 'manual' mode. So I preffer to have it like this than to use auto all the time.
Thanks for the awesome guide. I'll start disabling some useless processes and see how my battery life is working. Anyway without much editing the battery of S6Edge is pretty good. I can use it a whole day and still 19% remaining. As a comparison I wasn't able to do it with my S3 having to recharge it 2 or even 3 times at day.
Again, thanks for the guide!
Enviado desde mi SGS6e mediante Tapatalk