ST2 stopped the GPS Lock In when the battery reached 1 bar

Bugreport for Sports Tracker

26-03-2009 13:59

I went for a walk on a small hill nearby. Since it was an impromptu decision, my phone was not fully charged. Yet it seemed the battery had just enough juice to power the phone till just about the end of the walk.

But when the battery reaced 1 bar, sports tracker stopped accessing the GPS to get the lockin. I opened the phone's default GPS app and it was able to get the GPS lockin within a minute.

So is it something with the sports tracker which made it stop using the GPS? I just needed a few more minutes and the walk would have been complete!

Comments

Submitted by mbrett on 26-03-2009 14:14.

Mine seems to work till phone death, but I could be wrong. I beleive this due to experience phone death mid run a few times.

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

Submitted by djh.sthlm on 26-03-2009 14:35.

We have a new feature included on the mobile app within the map view, selectable as "Show fix quality"

When on this screen and "Show fix quality" selected you can see the ratio of fixed to available satellites shown as green, yellow and red colorizations.

While on that screen, press the select key/joystick to the right and left to immediately access views to your other saved workouts.

I went through all my hundreds of workouts and saw a pattern of yellow immediately before a dying or dead battery situation.

Summary: A weakened power supply results in low satellite fix quality.

-David

Current setup: e61 unbranded product code 0529654 Euro-B1 Silver. Firmware: 3.0633.09.04. Theme: Ovi blue. Service provider: 3 Sweden. Peripherals: Bluemax ext BT GPS module

Submitted by alsiladka on 26-03-2009 15:21.

@djh
Low battery power should have nothing to do with the satellite fix. I had checked the Fix Quality yesterday itself when i could not get the GPS lockin, i had a few patches of yellow, but no red. And the yellow patches were irregularly spread out through the route.

I forgot to mention in the first post, but the phone had automatically switched to power saving mode.Although i had deactivated the power saving mode, but that did not help ST get the GPS lockin.

My suggestion here is to let the user stop using the GPS at his discretion. I could have easily completed my walk yesterday with the amount of battery i had.

Submitted by mbrett on 26-03-2009 15:30.

If NST was in Power Saving Mode this may have been the cause. From discussions with the NST team it is apparent that the power saving mode is quite expansive. It may be that they have set the GPS to turn off when the battery power reaches a certani limit. As I say I did not notice this when My phone battery died and I recharged it and restarted NST the recoverd workuot for me seemed to have stopped when my phone died and not at the 1 bar point.

mbrett
N95 8Gb (Product Code: 0558787 (UK)) FW 31.0.018

Submitted by djh.sthlm on 26-03-2009 15:41.

If I understand your suggestion correctly, are you asking that the app be used for merely timekeeping, or stopwatch, functionality if one were to choose to stop GPS tracking?

OT- A low battery indeed has an affect on GPS fix quality. The exhausting energy output of the battery follows a curve. The demands of the GPS chip and antenna are not a constant. Some sat radio beacons are weaker than others and get missed in low power situations, resulting in lower fix ratios.

-David

Current setup: e61 unbranded product code 0529654 Euro-B1 Silver. Firmware: 3.0633.09.04. Theme: Ovi blue. Service provider: 3 Sweden. Peripherals: Bluemax ext BT GPS module

Submitted by alsiladka on 26-03-2009 16:25.

Thats not the point i am trying to make. What am trying to say is that use the GPS if the user asks ST to use it.

@mbrett
Yest, i manually turned off the Power Saving mode. After that, ST did display the "Searching for Satellites" prompt a few times, but eventhough the S60's GPS had locked in to my location in the background, ST wouldn't lock in to my location.