Battery life?

Submitted by zeiss on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 11:56.

i've got a palm Tungsten T3 and a bluetooth GPS receiver. i was thinking of buying software like geoniche, but then it occurred to me that my palm battery only lasts about 30 minutes in BT mode, which makes it pretty impractical to use for traipsing all over the area to find small trinkets. how do people get around this with their palms? non-BT GPS? built-in GPS? just curious.

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As RayDar mentions, screen

Submitted by Walter Francis on Tue, 05/20/2008 - 17:32.

As RayDar mentions, screen brightness has a great deal to do with battery life.. I've personally cached for 3.5hrs in a row before, perhaps at most 45m of that I turned off the gps connection and turned off the Treo, and I went from around 80% to 20% battery.

That tells me it could easily go 6 hours, which is way more than I personally can do caching. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a backup battery on the Palm if possible, or a larger capacity battery, again, if possible.

I'll do some tests on my new GeoNiche host to see how battery life does with it, I hope it's reasonable. I don't mind charging when I'm driving between charges but I'd prefer to not have to worry so much about it.

Battery LIfe

Submitted by RayDar on Mon, 05/05/2008 - 07:21.

Reducing the brightness on your screen can dramatically increase your battery life. When the screen brightness is as low as possible, you can still see it OK in shady areas and non direct-sunlight.

If you have trouble seeing the display with low brightness, you can make a GeoNiche layout exactly like your favorite one, except using the "High Contrast" color preset. This should be easy to read even in direct sunlight on a bright day. Then, if you assign a hard or soft button to "Layout Next" (in both layouts), you can quickly switch between pleasing colors and "High Contrast" mode.

I get at least 2 hours using my Tungsten T3 with the screen brightness turned down, a Bluetooth GPS receiver and GeoNiche. I get more from my Tungsten T|X. This is enough time to find most caches. A car-charger is a handy accessory.

((RayDar))

I used to use a Palm m130

Submitted by locutisj on Mon, 05/12/2008 - 05:43.

I used to use a Palm m130 and boy that battery drained fast. That was before bt. The GPS unit snapped onto the Palm.
I found a neat little 12vdc gel-cell pack that has an cigarett lighter type outlet that you plug your car charger into. It also has a shoulder strap and belt; measures approx. 3 3/4"w x 6 1/2"h x 1"d. It costs around $70 but it lasts a long time. The charger for the battery pack is an ac type that takes overnight to get back to 100%
Any way, I now use a Zire 72 and the battery drains on that fairly quick too, especially with bt on, so I carry the above pack with me when ever I go out.