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Battery drain with Cachly


bblais

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I am a recent Cachly user, converting from Geosphere, and mostly it has been fantastic.  One issue which has happened to me, and now my wife who is using it, is battery drain.  The pattern is that you'll be using the app on and off for about 4 hours and the battery life would slowly go down and then plummet very quickly - like, 40% down to 8% in about 2 minutes.  Is there a reason this app might use battery more than, say, Geosphere or some other apps (I've never experienced it with anything else)?  Is there anything we can do to avoid this problem?  

thanks!

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Cachly doesn't use location services and differently than other apps. GPS is only turned on while on screens with a map and is turned off when you navigate away from those screens.

1 minute ago, bblais said:

and then plummet very quickly - like, 40% down to 8% in about 2 minutes.

This doesn't sound like something that Cachly could be causing. That quick of of a battery drain isn't likely something that an app can do.

What device are you using and what version of iOS? Does it have an old battery?

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43 minutes ago, bblais said:

cachly must use gps when the compass is being used even with no map, right?

Compass data comes from what Apple calls Location Services, so there will be radios inside your phone being used for this process that take battery. When on the compass tab GPS is still in use.

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Take a look at the Battery info in Settings and see usage percentage by app.  I found a couple of bad actors that way 

My iPhone 6s acts roughly the same -- slow decline followed by faster drop. But then so does my gas gauge. Non-linear. 

This article has a lot of good tips. https://www.payetteforward.com/why-does-my-iphone-battery-die-so-fast-heres-the-real-fix/

That said, if I'm in the field Geocaching more than about 4 hours, I will need an external battery to replenish. Also activating Settings>Battery>Low Power Mode before setting out helps some. 

I'd guess, having the option on in Cachly to sort the list by distance once a minute is not free so think if you need that on. 

2-3 years is my general expectation for cell phone batteries to start having trouble holding a charge. There are finite number of charge/discharge cycles. 

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38 minutes ago, Nic Hubbard said:

Another thing if out in the field to save battery is to put your phone into Airplane mode. GPS will still work but everything else will be turned off. This will maximize your battery when caching.

I was just about to pop back in and add that tip. If your at poor cell signal strength, the phone ups the power to the antenna to try to keep connectivity. Unless you really need the phone, turn it off, especially in the woods. 

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Reporting in with today's experiment. I applied all the techniques in the article I linked above. Today's hike was about the same duration as an earlier one where the iPhone went from 100% down to low 20s before engaging external battery. Today it dropped to 52% by end of hike. Cell was LTE much of the time so that may have helped. Encouraging but need more data. 

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49 minutes ago, barefootguru said:

If any GPS-using program is left open, the phone will chew through battery at somewhere around 10% an hour.

This would only be if the app is the current app being used or if an app uses location services in the background. Cachly only uses GPS while Cachly is active, not in the background. 

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