Thursday, August 15, 2013

Cell Phone GPS Battery Life

I was reading on the AERC facebook page and someone was talking about wanting to use their phone for a 50 mile endurance ride but her phone's battery wouldn't last that long.
One rider posted she put her phone in Airplane Mode so her battery lasted longer.  I was interested since I use my phone alot for my derby miles (it records more miles then my Garmin GPS).  So I did a google search.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane_mode.  I have a Droid Razr X and on my phone I found out that it does save your battery, but it turns off the ability to send or receive calls or texts.  That's OK for me, I don't really want to send or get calls while I am riding.  If you try to send a text or call it will ask if you want to switch it back.  Saying yes will automatically switch it off and send your text or call.  Since I like to ride lots of miles for many hours this is great news :-)

More great news is if you switch your phone to airplane mode, you can charge your battery faster.  Almost the same as turning your phone off but easier.

Thought I would share a little info with my fellow derby riders.  Gotta get all the derby miles we can :-)

 airplane mode for android

2 comments:

  1. I do that too, but there is one problem...SOMETIMES the GPS app will lose the gps signal if it doesn't also have a phone signal (my old phone never did this, but my new one, a Razor like yours, does this :(...). I tried that at the last ride as I was losing battery after about 20-some miles...every time I turned it to airplane, the gps app would say 'poor signal'...turn airplane back off, it would be back...uggg.. so eventually the phone just died as I left it on...sometimes at home airplane mode works, other times not, and I can't figure a pattern (it varies even when riding on the same trails)... My friend had some kind of little charging device for her phone though, that she carried in her saddlebag..it really extended her batter life and we were able to track our almost 40 miles with no issues this weekend... Forgot to ask what it was...

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  2. Thanks for the info Nat. I have a battery charger that I can use, but I usually forget to put it in my saddle bag :-)

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