3 questions. gps speed / battery / tomtom splashscreen

[zandadoum]

heya. i've got 3 questions, hope some1 could help.

i recently upgraded my p3300 to WM6 (official HTC rom) and as i was at it, started to wonder about a few things.

1) in tomtom, when configuring the GPS, i can change the baudspeed (actually at 4800). if i increase that, would a) the GPS navigation while driving be smoother, b) i get a faster satelite fix and most important: c) would the battery last less or same?

2) about the battery... i use very few apps and most of the times i make sure they are 100% closed. i use the calendar, notes and few phonecalls per day. sometimes i turn on tomtom for a few minutes to find a street when walking... but i think the battery life is very short (an average of 1% per hour in standby, more battery loss when using the pda, making calls, etc)
is there any tweaks, programs or whatsoever to see what exactly is consuming XYZ of my battery? and improve it's life?

3) after upgrading to WM6, whenever i start tomtom, i get that logo-splash screen (didnt get that before) is there a way to remove it?


i have many more doubts, but i think i'll leave em for when i solved this things. thx for answer.

[varvocel]

1) in tomtom, when configuring the GPS, i can change the baudspeed (actually at 4800). if i increase that, would a) the GPS navigation while driving be smoother, b) i get a faster satelite fix and most important: c) would the battery last less or same?

2) about the battery... i use very few apps and most of the times i make sure they are 100% closed. i use the calendar, notes and few phonecalls per day. sometimes i turn on tomtom for a few minutes to find a street when walking... but i think the battery life is very short (an average of 1% per hour in standby, more battery loss when using the pda, making calls, etc)
is there any tweaks, programs or whatsoever to see what exactly is consuming XYZ of my battery? and improve it's life?


1) I didn't noticed differences neither in fix time nor in navigation smoothness.
2) I doubt that it is possible to measure power used by certain application directly. I had problem with power drain and resolved it by switching applications off and on (S2U was guilty), but it seems to me that my Artemis use more power after upgrade to WM6 to.

[zandadoum]

any1 got any more comments? which is the best way to track your battery life and improve it? any program around to help on this task?

[varvocel]

If you want to compare your device power consumption to my Artemis I'll give you some measurements (not very accurate actually):
When I tested my device while playing 320x240 divx movie with TCPMP, fullscreen, brightness set to max, no audio - battery operated about 5,5 - 6 hours before PDA powered off automatically.
During 8 hours in stand-by (I didn't used PDA at all) it was about 5-8% battery drained, but when I switched Pocket Plus indicators (memory, battery, SD free space) off - after 8 hours of stand-by there was 100% battery (full).

Hope this will help you. If you do your own measures let us know.
Good Sunday :)

[zandadoum]

ok, as far as i have seen, there is no application that tells your how much battery each application you run, uses. i guess thats normal.

but, is there something like the windows taskmanager, telling you how much CPU and MEMORY each application that runs in the background uses? i think if there is one, that would give a good start on my investigations.

[varvocel]

but, is there something like the windows taskmanager, telling you how much CPU and MEMORY each application that runs in the background uses? i think if there is one, that would give a good start on my investigations.

You could try BatteryStatus

[zandadoum]

You could try BatteryStatus
i'll try it, however i've read somewhere that this program itself is a battery-drainer already?

[varvocel]

With BS I had 100% battery after 8 hours standby and I didn't noticed more power consumption while normal use (some phone calls, PIM, games, Internet), but you must try to know how it works on your device. Try it and then write about your findings.

[gertaap]

Hi,

baudrate has noting to do with refreshing inverval of GPS. The refresh wrt the satellites is determined in the chipset, and the baudrate is the speed in which the chipset (which is actually an external device) communicates with the serial port of the device. Normally speaking the baudrate for gps is 4800 (it is NMEA norm), but also other rates exist for example for bluetooth devices the baudrate is only the speed with which the serial transfer of data is done. It is in the end the GPS software you use that will determine how fast your position is updated on your screen. It can happen that if you set the baudrate wrong, that the data is not received properly, because the software expects the data to be presented at the baudrate you set, and the device delivers at a different rate (like speeking too fast to somebody). It is therefore important to set it correctly.

[hiitsme]

but, is there something like the windows taskmanager, telling you how much CPU and MEMORY each application that runs in the background uses? i think if there is one, that would give a good start on my investigations.

You could try TaskManager 2.7 (http://www.dotfred.net/TaskMgr.htm) from FdcSoft. It shows CPU load en memory load.
Just add the .exe to the sd card and run the file. Use the tabs to selct Process / CPU or any of the other tabs.

[zandadoum]

Hi,

baudrate has noting to do with refreshing inverval of GPS. The refresh wrt the satellites is determined in the chipset, and the baudrate is the speed in which the chipset (which is actually an external device) communicates with the serial port of the device. Normally speaking the baudrate for gps is 4800 (it is NMEA norm), but also other rates exist for example for bluetooth devices the baudrate is only the speed with which the serial transfer of data is done. It is in the end the GPS software you use that will determine how fast your position is updated on your screen. It can happen that if you set the baudrate wrong, that the data is not received properly, because the software expects the data to be presented at the baudrate you set, and the device delivers at a different rate (like speeking too fast to somebody). It is therefore important to set it correctly.

thanks for the explanation.

going back to batterystatus, i am tetsing it now. specially the overclock tool to actually UNDERclock my phone, hoping the battery lasts longer.

however, as for what i've seen, when the phone goes into suspend, batterystatus sets back to the 201mhz until it is unsuspended. so that's actually useless.

but it tells me enough info to get an idea about my power consumption, etc.

[varvocel]

however, as for what i've seen, when the phone goes into suspend, batterystatus sets back to the 201mhz until it is unsuspended. so that's actually useless.
but it tells me enough info to get an idea about my power consumption, etc.

Not exactly useless - if you read e-book or WWW pages your PDA can save power with BS (although I don't know exactly how much).
About underclocking in standby there is explanation from BS Howto:


Could you make the cpu clock down while it is in standby?

There is no need to. Most of the devices are doing this by themself. As soon as you push the power-button (explicitly not a program mapped to a custom button for this job), your device will gradually stop execution of code and clocks the cpu down.

The latter implies that as soon as you push the power-button, BatteryStatus and any overclocking by BatteryStatus stops working.
Some tests showed that your device automatically steps down to 52MHz and maybe there is a state while the cpu is completely stopped (0 MHz) too.

I'm curious what is CPU speed of Artemis in standby. Maybe somebody knows that and will share with us?