Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Discussion related to the Garmin GPSMAP 66i GPSr
simonw500
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Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:32 pm

Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by simonw500 »

One of the better articles I found on Garmin's support pages was this one, detailing expectations for battery life across the InReach range and listing/showing the impact various features and typical setups have on this battery life:

https://support.garmin.com/en-GB/?faq=F ... 4MRV1f75g5

However a rather large omission for the GPSMAP 66i is any mention of the "Battery Saver" feature.

So my question is how much does this have a bearing on the battery life (ie. turning the screen off vs. just the backlight off)? I'd presume quite a bit, and that the figures quoted on the link above were with battery saver switched on.. that said, the default config. is with it off and it isn't mentioned.

FYI. personally I'd prefer the on/off switch to manually turn off the screen - I trust myself to turn it on when I need to look at it and off when I've finished looking at it - along with a screen timeout then being set to something like a couple of minutes (just in case I forget).. whereas instead I'm forced to pick a balance aggressively turning it off so as not waste power while remember to have to hit a random key to stop it from switching off if I'm looking at it (usually more thinking about what my next move is).
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GPSrChive
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Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by GPSrChive »

Disabling the display backlight does save a lot of power, as this is the single biggest consumer on most GPSr. When in direct sunlight. most modern Garmin GPSr do not need any backlight to be very visible and readable.

In Battery Save however, even more energy is conserved as the device no longer has to use the processor to make countless calculations for screen updates (very intensive when map is displayed).
simonw500
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Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by simonw500 »

Thanks, exactly as I figured.

Certainly having the screen AND backlight on all the time makes no sense whatsoever (and, in terms of the backlight in when in good lighting conditions, even at all). I'm just trying to quantify how much of a difference turning off the screen completely makes (say a few % or say 30%.. my gut says something closes to the latter).

In my mind is less than ideal these two timeouts are effectively rolled into one, along with no manual screen on/off switch.

Still, on the grand scheme of things, pretty minor! :)
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GPSrChive
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Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by GPSrChive »

simonw500 wrote: Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:22 pm I'm just trying to quantify how much of a difference turning off the screen completely makes (say a few % or say 30%.. my gut says something closes to the latter).
There are some users here that recently did some testing for this very scenario and found substantial battery saving when using..... "Battery Save".

Perhaps they will respond here....
987
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Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by 987 »

Hi.
Some time back i made a test of battery life on a 66st.

Latest test, without battery save
viewtopic.php?p=4014#p4014

Latest test with battery save
viewtopic.php?p=4031#p4031

Hopefully it can provide a hint on what to expect.
simonw500
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Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by simonw500 »

987 wrote: Mon Mar 29, 2021 9:51 am Hi.
Some time back i made a test of battery life on a 66st.

Latest test, without battery save
viewtopic.php?p=4014#p4014

Latest test with battery save
viewtopic.php?p=4031#p4031

Hopefully it can provide a hint on what to expect.
Great info / reference points, thanks.
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GPSrChive
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Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by GPSrChive »

987 wrote: Mon Mar 29, 2021 9:51 am Hi.
Some time back i made a test of battery life on a 66st.

Latest test, without battery save
viewtopic.php?p=4014#p4014

Latest test with battery save
viewtopic.php?p=4031#p4031

Hopefully it can provide a hint on what to expect.
Thank you for the reminder!

I have added a link to the GPSrChive > GPSMAP 66 > Operation > Power Sources page!
sky-eye
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Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:17 pm

Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by sky-eye »

I have done recently some testing with the 'Battery Saver'
I could not measure any real difference between Saver activated or not.
The difference is only the display being active or not.
In both cases the battery endurance was abt 16h with same settings.
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GPSrChive
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Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by GPSrChive »

sky-eye wrote: Thu Feb 10, 2022 11:13 am I have done recently some testing with the 'Battery Saver'
I could not measure any real difference between Saver activated or not.
My first thought is, "why do your test results not agree with others users common test results?"

My second thought is, "what were the unique details of your testing protocol?"

Also, what firmware versions were loaded during the testing?
sky-eye
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Re: Impact of "Battery Saver" (screen) on battery life

Unread post by sky-eye »

OK, I am simply supposed to test many things on those devices, this is kind of my job. The reason is evaluation of those devices for humanitarian aid org which should lead to larger number of purchasing of those devices.
As Garmin promissed very substantial increase in battery endurance in a FW beginning of 2022, I wanted see if this is true. So started testing.

Currently testing this and that on 9.0
Many test I have done with 8.50 I am repeating now, simply to compare if there are some improvements.
In this, testing the battery endurance with same settings as with 8.50 gives me results I have to include in my report.

Found out that regardless of setting 'battery saver' , for given tasks I have abt 16h battery endurance, meaning the setting has no effect on battery.

Details for this test to be reproducible for me:
fully charged, placed outside with clear sky view, 10min Interval moving and 4h stationary, one sent message during this time, devices are paired with phone and server, so BT is running, Wifi is also ON during the test.
Test done with and without battery saver and it was done with 2 66i at the same time.
So in one test the display went off after 30sec, second test display remained on all the time.
Last edited by sky-eye on Thu Feb 10, 2022 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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