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Someone asked a question on our forum about the GPS Accuracy/Battery Life Slider that Gaia GPS had in v1.x, and I had a chance to write up some information about the battery life of the app. I thought I’d share that on our blog too.
Depending on what other programs you have running, on a 3GS Gaia GPS can take almost 6.5 hours of tracks, based on some independent tests from a user.
To get the best battery life, make sure to:
- Turn off any Push Notifications – I have been told that Yahoo’s push app shaves off 2 hours.
- Turn off Notifications via iPhone settings (~.5 hours recording time)
- Turn off Wi-Fi and 3G – (maybe 15-20 minutes each, depending on where you are)
- Once you start recording, put the phone in standby by clicking the top button to get over six hours.
- Using the Lock Button on the front or map screen, instead of putting the phone in standby, will shave an hour off the recording time. It’s still pretty efficient though, since the screen will black out when you put it in your pocket, using the proximity sensor.
Also, here are some things Gaia GPS does to improve battery life in the background:
- Writing to disk efficiently
- Throttling the frequency of GPS readings based on your velocity
- Using the proximity sensor to blank out the screen when the app is “locked,” which some other apps copied after we came out 🙂
