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I'm currently using a GPS bluetooth dongle, which has a Sirf III chip, connecting to a Nokia 9300i with WhereAmI running on it for generating GPX tracks etc. I have been considering swapping over to a cheap Android phone, specifically a Samsung Galaxy Y, running OsmAnd or equivalent. To not put too much strain on the battery life of the Samsung (and presumably better accuracy) I'm planning on using the dongle with the new phone. Is this possible, and how much more battery life can I typically expect to save by utilising this approach? And am I correct in presuming that the chipset/accuracy of the phone's internal GPS would not be as good? |
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Not quite what you asked but I found a pay as you go Motorola Defy for £100 in Orange just after Xmas.It will, with only the following Apps running.... "MMtracker" running to display my old Ordinance Survey files,"GPS Status" and "Orux maps" that will record a trace (gpx) and display it over cached openstreetmap I can get six hours of use, Orux can work with external blue tooth GPS as well.Hope this is of interest, also spare batteries that are available from £10 are a good back-up |
I suspect that among other things the actual software used on the Samsung (and how and how often it hits the GPS) is going to determine battery life difference. Even if no-one's familiar with that phone as an OSM track collector, they might be familiar with the software (if you know what you're going to use already, of course).
I agree turning off mobile reception,wi-fi,having screen on lower brightness and off most of time will make battery last a lot longer. in ORUX-map app I used (in answer below) you can set point recoding from 1sec to 1hour. on 8sec interval I got 6 hour use.8 seconds is not ideal for a mapping trace but it is usable with bings help. Orux also as a distance interval plot but I think it would have to use the gps to know how far it had moved so it would have used the power.
but the dongle would or could work great as you only need refer to phone to check map.minute intervals or longer could be fine