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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?
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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
Hey guys - have a question for those of you that have used Dream/Magic.. I notice that most of the really interesting Android apps are location-aware apps.. which got me wondering whether people constantly leave their GPS on and if so, how this goes with the battery life. Or are most of these location aware apps using tower-based triangulation?
For example, some apps let you know if one of your friends is in the area - surely such an app would be kind of useless if your friend had to intentionally turn both GPS and the app on before leaving home.
Thanks!
My understanding is that the Android API has a location call which will use whatever is available... cell tower triangulation, wifi hotspot location and GPS. So apps will just default to the most accurate in any given circumstance, no need to leave on GPS to necessarily get the location features.
Personally I leave GPS and WiFi on and I get about 18 hours out of the battery with some talktime and fairly heavy usage on the screen. I don't get enough for two days even if I turn everything off so the way I see it I'm resigned to charging every day and might as well have the features
georgefrs said:
My understanding is that the Android API has a location call which will use whatever is available... cell tower triangulation, wifi hotspot location and GPS. So apps will just default to the most accurate in any given circumstance, no need to leave on GPS to necessarily get the location features.
Personally I leave GPS and WiFi on and I get about 18 hours out of the battery with some talktime and fairly heavy usage on the screen. I don't get enough for two days even if I turn everything off so the way I see it I'm resigned to charging every day and might as well have the features
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your understanding is not correct. As a programmer, you can specify minimum required accuracy, which means that you can force it to require GPS over cell tower.
@rahux: cell tower location doesn't use any extra power since it is connected to the cell towers anyways. Regarding "leaving your gps on", that is really an inaccurate way of saying "not force-disabling the gps". The gps does NOT consume any extra power just because you have it enabled in the system settings... it only consumes power when an application/service is actually USING it, and you can tell when something is using it because the GPS icon will be visible. In other words, if all your gps-aware software is well behaved, then there is NEVER any reason to disable the gps, and if any of your gps-aware software is NOT well behaved, then you should probably uninstall that software rather than disabling the gps.
@lbcoder
That makes sense. Thanks That makes a lot of sense. Just curious - how long would it take to get a GPS signal then? I know my current WinMo phone always takes over a minute to find satellites, sometimes longer (on a clear day in the suburbs). Suppose it doesn't really matter anyway.
Thanks!
I leave it on solely because of "Wheres my Android". I get a GPS fix in less than 5 seconds and [knock on wood] if I ever lose my phone, I want the GPS ability. The developer had written somewhere that you used to be able to force GPS on through the app remotely but that functionality was removed.
I have a g1 & with my GPS enabled I am only down about 25% of my charge on the average day of probably about 15 hours of intermintent use mainly on messaging & web apps.. And some apps do not work with the cell location, but do with GPS.. 1 being an atm location finder for my bank,,
I always leave mine on. The difference in battery life is minimal. The only time you need to worry is if you have an app misbehaving in the background that is checking your location CONSTANTLY. My favorite GPS Speedometer app does this, once you run it there's no way to get it to release the GPS and it will kill your entire battery in just a couple of hours.
But under normal circumstances, simply leaving the hardware enabled isn't going to make any significant change to your battery life, it all depends on how much your background processes are using it.
Hey guys,
Just updated to the x10 after my samsung galaxy died on me, so far i am rather happy - except for the lack of root, but that will come.
I have noticed many complaints on the forum about battery life, and have experienced the same thing myself. From my experience, i think this looks like the same issue that was faced on a leak of 1.6 for the galaxy - it was referred to as the "No Sleep Bug".
TBH, the name says it all - for some reason, in many builds of android 1.6, phones were not sleeping correctly. There are many theories as to why, from cpu not being allowed to sleep, to permanent communication with google servers.
Despite all these different theories, one thing seemed to fix the problem - turning off all location services. Some people argue that a different carrier build, turning off just 'share with google' under location, turning off just AGPS etc. would fix it, but from my experience, the only real way to fix the issue was to turn off all GPS usage unless you need it. The once you have used it, reboot your phone.
This fix obviously sucks, and a new fix has recently been released by a veritable android-demigod around the Galaxy.
HERE IS A THREAD ABOUT NO SLEEP ON i7500 GALAXY;
(ok, some stupid rule says i can't post links - can a mod help me out?)
HERE IS THE FIX FOR THAT PARTICULAR BUG;
(ok, some stupid rule says i can't post links - can a mod help me out?)
LINKS ARE IN POST #5 - THANKS TO ONDOTEAM (would still be nice to get them in this original post though)
Now, from my experience, no sleep behave exactly the same way on the x10 as it does on the Galaxy;
1) I turn of all location services, and my battery life at least doubles.
2) After said turning off of services, 'spare parts' no longer says 100% running time under battery usage - in fact it can be as low as 10%.
These two factors are identical to my experience with Galaxy. SO; is there any way drakaz's fix can be applied to our X10's? It seems to me that the files he mods are standard Android system files, not sony/samsung specific.
Now i am no developer, so i dont know it this is possible - the first question that comes to mind for me is "do we need root access, or can this be done through developer tools using the android SDK?"
Can anyone help shed anymore light on this?
Seems to work for me. I disabled all location services. Spare Parts went down from 100% to 7.6%.
I'll just have to enable GPS when I need to use it..
Awesome! Glad to hear it has helped.
Let's keep testing this guys - if it does show up to be a big cause, then perhaps the devs around this place can help is figure out a patch for Drakas' mod to make it work with our x10's!
n3man said:
Awesome! Glad to hear it has helped.
Let's keep testing this guys - if it does show up to be a big cause, then perhaps the devs around this place can help is figure out a patch for Drakas' mod to make it work with our x10's!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello send me a PM with links, I will try to post it
http://androidforums.com/samsung-i7500/61168-no-sleep-has-nothing-do-anything.html
http://androidforums.com/samsung-i7500/78471-no-sleep-bug-fixed-drakaz.html
Links from n3man
No sleep is easy to fix, took me a while to figure it...
Turn your screen brightness from manual to auto, spare parts will now start showing proper running stats, no more 100% running.
The screen is a little dark in auto but it will cure the 100% running.
GPS and location services etc make no difference to my X10i, I am running the 1.6 version unbranded UK handset, the only thing to stop mine running 100% is to put the screen on Auto.
ronnyuk said:
No sleep is easy to fix, took me a while to figure it...
Turn your screen brightness from manual to auto, spare parts will now start showing proper running stats, no more 100% running.
The screen is a little dark in auto but it will cure the 100% running.
GPS and location services etc make no difference to my X10i, I am running the 1.6 version unbranded UK handset, the only thing to stop mine running 100% is to put the screen on Auto.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL... this is already going the way of the Galaxy thread!
My phone came out of the box with auto-brightness and i never changed that option, yet i still had no sleep.
Drakaz has done some fairly deep digging and is next to certain that it is an artefact of the geolocation bug discussed in the thread in which the problem was fixed.
I can't see "Spare Parts" in About Phone -> Battery Info
tuxStyle said:
I can't see "Spare Parts" in About Phone -> Battery Info
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me neither.. I was wondering about that myself!..
Although I'd half assumed that they were referring to the total "up-time" figure which you can see at the bottom of the "about phone"; "Status" screen.. But perhaps not.?
Spare Parts is a standalone Program ...
(i don't know for sure if it is in the market or downloadable as .apk from somewhere here in the forum ...)
Bax
im_iceman said:
Me neither.. I was wondering about that myself!..
Although I'd half assumed that they were referring to the total "up-time" figure which you can see at the bottom of the "about phone"; "Status" screen.. But perhaps not.?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can download it here
Spare parts is indeed available from the market - it is a much more powerful tool for indicating battery usage than the regular android methods. The galaxy stared on 1.5 which had NO indicator of battery usage statistics at all, so we all learned about spare parts very fast.
Perhaps that is why no x10 users have realised about the potential no sleep bug; because so far only the android usage indicators have been used?...
Anyway, hopefully this can help us all understand the way our phones are working better together
n3man said:
Spare parts is indeed available from the market - it is a much more powerful tool for indicating battery usage than the regular android methods. The galaxy stared on 1.5 which had NO indicator of battery usage statistics at all, so we all learned about spare parts very fast.
Perhaps that is why no x10 users have realised about the potential no sleep bug; because so far only the android usage indicators have been used?...
Anyway, hopefully this can help us all understand the way our phones are working better together
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
14% it's mine value for running time, not 100%. By the way thats 30 minutes of 210 in total :S
I'm also experiencing "No sleep bug" after i used GPS. I use Battery Graph to plot my power consumption and after I use GPS, I can clearly see that power consumption is high even if i turn the phone in plane mode.
In addition SE widget, used to turn on/off GPS, seems to not work very well for me. So, to fix the bug, i manually disable GPS in parameter menu and restart my phone. After that power consumption is hardly null (20% in 8h with MP3 on almost all the time).
mimok said:
I'm also experiencing "No sleep bug" after i used GPS. I use Battery Graph to plot my power consumption and after I use GPS, I can clearly see that power consumption is high even if i turn the phone in plane mode.
In addition SE widget, used to turn on/off GPS, seems to not work very well for me. So, to fix the bug, i manually disable GPS in parameter menu and restart my phone. After that power consumption is hardly null (20% in 8h with MP3 on almost all the time).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have 3G always on?
My phone has no trouble sleeping.
Gps hasn't really been an issue but I keep it off when not needed.
Here's my solid settings:
1) No auto sync
2) No moxier
3) Gps off
4) Restart after using wireless
As long as it's like this my phone lasts 2 days easily
ondoteam said:
Do you have 3G always on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but I made a lot of test with and without 3G enabled and 3G seems not to be a problem for me. I think my problem comes from GPS.
ondoteam said:
Do you have 3G always on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
3G always on.
n3man said:
LOL... this is already going the way of the Galaxy thread!
My phone came out of the box with auto-brightness and i never changed that option, yet i still had no sleep.
Drakaz has done some fairly deep digging and is next to certain that it is an artefact of the geolocation bug discussed in the thread in which the problem was fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been playing with mine for a month to work out what caused mine to not go into sleep, I keep GPS wifi etc on 24/7 but in spare parts I was running 100%, after numerous reinstalls and removing everything i chanced on turning on auto screen brightness, now when i unplug my x10 the running sits at the correct level.
No Geolocation bug here
I have this problem with 100% on and off. Sometimes when I check its under control (~10%), other times its at 100%. I have GPS off, no WiFi, auto brightness... don't know why it sometimes just gets stuck at 100% :/
Hi all,
I am new to the android OS, got my galaxy s a week ago.
I still keep my HD2 and to be honest I may sell the galaxy due to the poor gps reception and keep the hd2 for the next year.
The other thing I do not like is the fact that I cannot program the buttons behaviour.
Any way my question is, is it possible to disable the build in gps and use an external Bluetooth GPS Receiver?
The gps on my hd2 is miles, miles better.
I dont think its possible in this version of android. There is no way to tell the app to use the external gps instead of the internal one.
All we can hope for is a fix from Samsung.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
what is all the fuss about android then...
it doesnot support such a basic thing...
absolute joke
GPS won't start
Hello, I am experiencing an issue with my phone and I was wondering if anyone knows a solution.
Basically the GPS receiver won't turn on when an application requests it, so it won't get any location information (the gps notification icon doesn't appear at all). This is definitely a software issue, because if you go to the settings menu and keep fiddling with the location settings (gps on<->off, wireless on<->off) at some point it WILL turn on and work correctly (and the gps icon appears), but randomly afterwards it will go back to not starting up again and you have to go back to the settings menu.
Is there a workaround for this? I'm hoping that a firmware update will fix it, but in the meantime is there anything that can be done? (I'd prefer to wait for the official firmware before flashing it).
Not really a fix but Extended Controls can make a switch on your home screen that will flip the gps function on and off, that will save some time if you have to go into that menu a lot.
darnap said:
Hello, I am experiencing an issue with my phone and I was wondering if anyone knows a solution.
Basically the GPS receiver won't turn on when an application requests it, so it won't get any location information (the gps notification icon doesn't appear at all). This is definitely a software issue, because if you go to the settings menu and keep fiddling with the location settings (gps on<->off, wireless on<->off) at some point it WILL turn on and work correctly (and the gps icon appears), but randomly afterwards it will go back to not starting up again and you have to go back to the settings menu.
Is there a workaround for this? I'm hoping that a firmware update will fix it, but in the meantime is there anything that can be done? (I'd prefer to wait for the official firmware before flashing it).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can confirm the same issue, rumour is that the upcoming firmware is going to improve the GPS a lot.
You can also use the 'Power Control' Widget that comes with the device.
Here you can turn On/Off a number of items, one being GPS.
I had this issue but it's just a case of going into settings and toggling the gps off and on again.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Good to know about the GPS on/off switch.
I was always rebooting my phone to get the GPS back to work.
There is an option in the secret GPS menu where you can set it to cold start, instead of hot start. Fixed it for me.
More here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=725748
not sure this will work but...
not sure this will work but found thin in Android market...
3 x w. appbrain dot com/app/googoo.android.btgps
Cleaner
Bluetooth External GPS
Hey guys. I wanted to know if we can 'natively' from within Android 2.1 / Samsung Galaxy S use an external bluetooth gps...
In the bluetooth menu I can conenct to the TomTom bluetooth gps module but it can't be paired...
however after some digging I found this app:
http://www.androlib.com/android.application.googoo-android-btgps-AtDE.aspx
It does what it says. I get satellites straight away.
Now one big big problem with this app is that it closes as soon as I try and open another app by pressing the home button or even holding down the home button to switch between apps...
when the app closes it ends the connection between the TomTom bluetooth gps module meaning by the time a satnav app has opened the message box pops up and says 'do you want to enable gps'
why does this app close when you try open another app? No other apps like Asphalt etc close like this...
is there a way to use the external gps?
many thanks
From my limited understanding, no it's not possible. I don't know why, but Android has been a bit slow on the uptake for Bluetooth.
It's taken to FroYo to actually get Bluetooth Hands Free dialling - we'll see how good Google is in interpreting what you say to it, so far, it hasn't been successful for me on the phone itself let alone Bluetooth.
With regards Bluetooth GPS, I understand that it isn't possible. There would at least have to be some kind of underlying interface to overrule the internal GPS and feed the Bluetooth GPS information into the OS in place.
I want it to be possible, then we wouldn't care so much about broken GPS's.
Cya
Simon
Another GPS fix
Hey guy give this a try and let me know if it works for you.
http://theandroidrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/07/android-tips-tricks-samsung-galaxy-s.html
working like a charm, faster fix and i can actually use the GPS while driving (EU)
Isn't this like turng skyhook on?
Ie ,..whilst locki it uses wifi to identify where u are?
this fix it seems very accurate in Maps, whereas all other "fixes" did not work for me.
i don't notice anything different in GPS tester (i still hardly get any satellites if any) but in Maps my position seems to be very accurate....i'm just inside in my flat, but all other fixes never helped me before even in this situation.
Hello
Thanks for your suggestion for a GPS fix
Immediate I can not see the big difference in standard configuration and the change which you refer to.
I still have a unsettled GPS fix when I use Google maps.
However, I think I can see a slight improvement in the Google navigation. Now I remain almost always in the correct lane.
I use (default) I9000XXJF3
I've read that a newer version should resolve the GPS "problem", but is it possible to change the parameters of GPS I9000XXJF3 match the parameters of the new versions. ?
And just one question more.
If I close the GPS from the phone to calculate my position after mobile mast or WIFI.
How do I get it to find my location by WIFI.?
Hope for a response.
Thanks
Herman
This fix gives an instant , i mean instant gps fix with a clear sky.
on gps test gets 8-9 satellite now , when previously i could max get 1-2, that too not connect.
thanks a ton for this.
outside this fix i also had operation mode as ms based and had skyhook on.
I found this suggested fix a few hours back as well and have been trying it out.
I didn't get much better results from it to start out with but having played the accuracy setting I've found putting this up to 150 seems to make a big difference. Once I made this change GPS Test seems to show that the Galaxy is a bit less picky about the signal strength it needs before making a lock.
I've not gone any further in testing accuracy numbers beyond 5, 20 (the default I believe) 50 and 150. It might be worth trying other values.
Hi
I installed darky 10.1. And since then can't enable GPS via SMS GPS enabler or Tasked.
also when I tap the GPS on power widget instead of turning the GPS on it opens the GPS menu
Help?
it's because of Gingerbread. And I do not believe there will be a fix. Ever.
so do i need to be always with my GPS on ?
isnt it drains battery ? and what about radiation ?
i read about that the GPS doesnt drain battery when not in use but i have the Google maps service on and cant kill and am afraid it will use gps
any way i can check if something has been using gps ?
also, in the GPS menu there are 2 more options: use wireless networks AND use sensor aiding. can i please have some information about them ??
thanks
Anyone please?
Delete Darky rom install stock rom with pit and repartition checked is my generic fix for the multitude of Darky rom problems .
jje
But is it a problem on Darky's ?
the guy above says its just like that on GB. is it ?
and another question please:
I have autostarts, and dont know what services can i shut down in order to save battery life ?
and do you know another tweaks ?
(i dont use juice defender because i shut down screen, wifi\bluetooth anyway by myself)
You can leave GPS turned on. It doesn't use any battery. Unless of course, you are using an application which is explicitly using it (google maps, my tracks, etc.)
It's a 'feature' of Gingerbread. Apps can't turn the gps on anymore. I had some tasker profiles that turned the gps on when I opened one of my map apps, but now at best it sends me to the gps settings menu for me to enable it. You can no longer enable it other than manually, via notification menu or settings menu.
Bites the big one if you ask me, but oh well.
well, if leaving it on doesnt drain battery or radiate my balls, then its fine
GPS doesn't emit anything, it's only reception.
And unless you see the GPS icon in the top bar, it uses no energy