gps on all the time

[deceptikk0n]

is it possible to last a day with GPS on for lets say..maybe half a day?
does GPS drain the battery faster than any other thing on the phone?

 

[dkaufman1]

GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth and 3G all drain the battery. I don't know what is the "fastest" drain, but they all drain it. I would suggest you manage all those services and just turn them off when not needed.

Likely you can last a full day with 4 hours of use of one of them. But I guess it is time for you to run some experiments and let us know.

 

[drustvold]

The GPS is defiantly a higher drain the wifi or BT. It is after all trying to get a signal from a satellite. But just having it "on" isn't really going to drain too much, but having something like maps open will defiantly start to drain. I've noticed that the device actually gets hot where the GPS antenna is located (in the chin of the phone) with prolonged use.

 

[dkaufman1]

I have noticed that heat issue too, but I think that is where the processor is as well because I had gps off but just did a lot of EDGE data stuff (web, apps, email) and it got burning hot.

 

[RobFisher]

I've been leaving GPS on in the settings all the time, and the phone has been lasting all day. That's with a bit of 3G web browsing, too. But I don't have an app that uses GPS all the time. I get the feeling that the GPS chip is only powered up when an app wants to use GPS.

The heat is probably from the CPU. I've mostly noticed it when watching YouTube videos. You can be sure that if the phone is getting warm then it is draining the battery very fast.

 

[sleebus.jones]

But I don't have an app that uses GPS all the time. I get the feeling that the GPS chip is only powered up when an app wants to use GPS.

Yep, that's exactly what I've been doing and I've experienced the same results. Locale is probably the biggest covert user of the GPS. It's unfortunate, because it's such a cool app. I leave the GPS on all the time, I just manage which apps use it. It's nice to have it there when you want to use it without having to flip switches.

I'd say that WiFi is probably the biggest consumer of battery power, along with 3G, mainly because they receive and transmit. GPS only receives, which really doesn't take that much power. The problem is that it's generally linked to apps that are very "busy" on the data side, which give the impression of the GPS being a power-hungry device.