Battery drain

[Mario Ivancic]

@Con-Hennekens
There are a few minor issues that consistently occur across the four different devices I've used. Three of these devices were Samsung, and after many years, I decided to try a Chinese brand, Honor. However, the issue persists.

Every so often, the navigation route disappears, only to reload and reappear later. This isn't a major issue unless you're about to make a turn and suddenly can't see your next step.

The occasional lag is most noticeable at intersections. As you approach an intersection or turn, the indicator on the screen doesn't keep up with your actual position, only to suddenly jump to the correct location.

The automatic bypassing of waypoints doesn't work reliably for me. I approach a waypoint, perfectly on route, and suddenly get a message that the waypoint has been bypassed, even though I haven't deviated from the route or reached it yet. The advice I received on a forum was to 'turn off automatic bypassing,' which seems somewhat impractical since the feature should be functional without needing to disable it.

I haven't tested this thoroughly yet, but there's supposed to be some improvement. However, this summer in the Dolomites, I entered an area with no mobile signal, and the navigation completely fell apart. I couldn't even switch to offline mode. This is supposedly fixed now, but as far as I know, you still have to manually select offline or online mode. Also, in such situations, if you haven't downloaded the route in advance, you're out of luck to get it in no signal area, if you restarted app. It doesn't make sense that you need to know in advance about signal loss to prepare accordingly. Ideally, the app should maximize the use of offline maps when available, also automaticly store route on device, only using online data for things like traffic updates, etc. This would also reduce online data usage and alleviate some strain on the device.

With the significant battery consumption, all the above issues have occurred on all my devices. I consistently drive planned routes for several hours at a time. Just in December, I covered over 1000km on routes in the app. During better weather, I travel even more, so I can confidently say that I have thoroughly tested these features.

[C.A. Kielen]

@Con-Hennekens said in Battery drain:

@C-A-Kielen said in Battery drain:

Last summer I tested the accuracy of different map suppliers.
1 Openstreetmap (By far the best)
2/3 Tomtom/Google maps.
Then nothing for a very long time
4 Here.

I wonder how you tested that, did you test that WorldWide? OSM is fine in Western Europe for example, but there are parts of the world where is could be considered unusable.

@C-A-Kielen said in Battery drain:

I do not understand that, for example, phones with the same android version some suffer from draining and others do not?

Because all those phones use different hardware. My guess is that some process in the rendering engine does not comply the the screen refresh rate. In the early beta's the platform has been tested with different refreshrates, but it had no impact on the battery drain. In my own experience it looks like the faster the processor, the uglier the drain gets. So something is maxing out processing power, no matter the settings.

@Mario-Ivancic said in Battery drain:

Here Maps feels like you've gone back 10 years in terms of navigation. It's inaccurate, delayed, and often reloads routes for some reason

I experience none of those problems.

What I experienced navigating last year in the 15.000 km through Africa and Europe, is that the Here maps are outdated and give wrong information. When you are planning your route on the computer you see differences in the maps. After I have driven the part. Openstreetmaps was mostly right. That is also when dirt roads get tarmac. Several times there were new roads for about 3-5 years and it was not on the here maps.
Last year in Albania I drove form Tirana to Klos. There was a new road under construction mostly finished. Here let me drive a D tour of 100km Tomtom and Google about 40 to 60 km and Openstreetmaps knew the new situation precise. After 40 km driving on Here maps the tarmac stopt. I had to drive back to Tirana and search for an other route. I could not use MRA anymore because of the 100km D tour. So I used google maps for small parts of the route given by Openstreetsmap.
Here maps send you over stairs. In Greece I saw the stairs only at the last moment. An emergency stop prevented me drive down the stairs. It happens often to cut of hairpin roads in the mountains. When you follow Here you drive very steep or on stairs. In Barcelona it was really impossible to use Here because of driving against one way roads, driving over pedestrian squares. and so on. Several times Here wanted me to take small pedestrian paths. When I give in no dirt roads I still get dirt roads. So I am really done with the Here maps. But yes the combination of the computer planning and the phone navigation is for me MRA leading.

[Con Hennekens]

@Mario-Ivancic said in Battery drain:

Every so often, the navigation route disappears, only to reload and reappear later.

I have not seen this. I have used three different brands of Android devices (CAT, Huawei and Pixel). During a recalculation (usually a deviation from route) it is normal to not show a route since it has to be calculated still. What I have seen is that under some conditions the online recalculation can take a while, what could explain what you experienced.

The occasional lag is most noticeable at intersections. As you approach an intersection or turn, the indicator on the screen doesn't keep up with your actual position, only to suddenly jump to the correct location.

Lag in the position was a great problem in the early beta's. For the vast majority it has been solved quite a while ago. But it seems some people still experience this. I do not, on all three devices.

The automatic bypassing of waypoints doesn't work reliably for me. I approach a waypoint, perfectly on route, and suddenly get a message that the waypoint has been bypassed, even though I haven't deviated from the route or reached it yet.

This has occurred occasionally for me too, seemingly random. But never to the extend that it gets problematic.

I entered an area with no mobile signal, and the navigation completely fell apart. I couldn't even switch to offline mode. This is supposedly fixed now, but as far as I know, you still have to manually select offline or online mode.

If you rely on online navigation, yes it falls apart without it. But if you have offline maps downloaded, the app switches to offline automatically, and the route is in your cache, so no problem. The apps looks for internet availablity every two minutes and switches back to online if possible. If you want to restart the route without internet connection, yes you need to have the route available offline. Do you know there is an option in Navigation Settings - Functional that enables the offline download of all routes you start?

I am not saying no improvement is necessary, but most of the things you mention have already been solved or at least improved. Can you share the version number of your app? It sounds like you are some versions behind.

[Mario Ivancic]

@Con-Hennekens
i do not think im behind with app ver. Im beta tester, and app is version 4.0.7-239

[Mario Ivancic]

@Con-Hennekens said in Battery drain:

If you rely on online navigation, yes it falls apart without it. But if you have offline maps downloaded, the app switches to offline automatically, and the route is in your cache, so no problem. The apps looks for internet availablity every two minutes and switches back to online if possible. If you want to restart the route without internet connection, yes you need to have the route available offline. Do you know there is an option in Navigation Settings - Functional that enables the offline download of all routes you start?

I believe part of the issue has been resolved, and considering I now always make a local download of the route and have all the offline maps I need, I don't think the situation will repeat itself. However, caching didn't help because everything ultimately froze for me. I found myself in a foreign country, in the middle of an alpine forest on a small path, unable to reload the route. Even logging into the app stopped working.

I think it's mostly resolved now. But the idea that the route you are using does not automatically download in its entirety after starting it is flawed. The concept that the app should primarily use offline maps if available, and only resort to online maps if those aren't available, is better and more efficient. Having to manually select and switch between these options is not ideal. Honestly, I have not yet encountered another navigation app that requires such manual handling.

But as I said, I've gotten used to these quirks. I manually download the route, have all the maps loaded, and have turned off the automatic viewpoint skip. The other inaccuracies and occasional lag don't bother me much. So, more or less, everything works fairly well. The biggest issue now is the battery life; if the phone isn't fully charged, there's a risk it will run out, especially if I don't turn off the app during long trips. That's currently my main problem with the application.

[Mario Ivancic]

@C-A-Kielen said in Battery drain:

Here maps send you over stairs. In Greece I saw the stairs only at the last moment. An emergency stop prevented me drive down the stairs. It happens often to cut of hairpin roads in the mountains. When you follow Here you drive very steep or on stairs. In Barcelona it was really impossible to use Here because of driving against one way roads, driving over pedestrian squares. and so on. Several times Here wanted me to take small pedestrian paths. When I give in no dirt roads I still get dirt roads. So I am really done with the Here maps. But yes the combination of the computer planning and the phone navigation is for me MRA leading.

Here is adventurous engine, but you do not get it.
Since I prefer routes on local and less-known roads, almost all my drives involve taking some gravel paths with my fat bike and its passenger. And i always turn off dirt roads, but in vain. Initially, my wife used to scream about where I was taking her, but now she's accustomed to the fact that a dubious section with a questionable surface for a road bike and tires is normal for me. I've explained to her that it's all about the adventure, and that adventurous rides are quite trendy nowadays.

However, you're definitely right about the maps being inaccurate. I generally don't trust navigations much, so my disappointment is probably less. This is often the case when I'm riding in Eastern Europe and countries where maps are, at best, only good for main roads. Examples, as you mentioned, include Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, or the Balkans and Eastern Europe in general.

There's a new, currently in beta, web planner for TomTom that looks promising. Since I don't expect to do much riding in the next two months, I haven't decided to try it yet. But if they continue as they have started and iron out the issues with TomTom Go, which also reportedly has problems, they could become serious competition for MRA.

[Con Hennekens]

@Mario-Ivancic said in Battery drain:

@Con-Hennekens
i do not think im behind with app ver. Im beta tester, and app is version 4.0.7-239

No, that's the same as mine.

But the idea that the route you are using does not automatically download in its entirety after starting it is flawed.

But it does exactly that if you enable this:

The concept that the app should primarily use offline maps if available, and only resort to online maps if those aren't available, is better and more efficient.

I strongly believe this is already happening, and manual switching for online or offline maps is not necessary at all (there is no toggle for it at all). The only switch that is necessary is for online or offline navigation. Offline maps are being used in both scenarios when available.

Problems arise mainly when Android reports an available internet connection, you have offline navigation enabled, but bandwidth is too low or too laggy. Devs intentions are to change to internet availability test (probably not more than an ping) to a bandwidth test (preferably to the necessary servers).

I am not trying to downplay your issues though. I have experienced more than a handful of them myself. There is certainly room for big improvements. However with the Offline mode enabled, having the maps downloaded and the toggle in the picture above enabled the app seldomly fails me. The route menu can be used also in offline mode, whenever you have an internet connection (wifi or cell). So for starting (and auto downloading) you can just rely on your home (or hotel) wifi network. To enter the download folder is only necessary when you have no internet connection at all (read: underway when something happens).

[Mario Ivancic]

@richtea999 said in Battery drain:

@Mario-Ivancic said:

I think today's developers have become a bit lax.

Yeah, bloody slackers!
I think the issue is two-fold:

• modern development systems (like Flutter and Unity) distance the developer one more layer from what's actually running underneath. It's necessary to do that to make Swift (ha!) progress nowadays. If your app isn't out in 6 months, you'll get eaten by the next startup. Time matters more than computing resources in general. You only come back round to tuning when there's a problem. We're there now, and it's someone else's APi that needs tuning. Oops.

• phones are MORE complex than PCs. They're much more resource-bound (CPU, memory, battery, temperature, screen space, etc), less open (security, legal APIs only, etc) and have more complex sensors.

You're right on both points. Is there anyone lazier than IT crews and programmers? I admit I'm lazy too. The only reason I push myself to thoroughly check and test others' APIs, SDKs, and software libraries is to avoid extra work later. I don't want to be stuck fixing issues in production. My laziness has often led me to seek quick solutions, only to end up spending more time and working harder. Especially SDKs can be detrimental to your project if they don't function as intended.

As a burnt-out programmer, my current job mirrors what I'm doing here: critiquing developers and their work, which leads to quite a bit of hate towards me But when we finally produce a good product, everyone is happy, and we can relax, watching everything operate smoothly.

I, too, rely on others' work. Writing something new when multiple versions and ready-made solutions already exist seems foolish. Whether it's a software library, an API, or compiled code, the source doesn't matter.

But if you did not created a solid logging and debugging tool for all the stuff you're using, and you end up in production with main SDK in question, you are f....d.
In the end your speed of development, it may not even matter. Basing your entire project on someone else's SDK, only to find out it's faulty when everything's finished, can jeopardize the whole project. Others might easily take your ideas and choose different, more reliable components.

I certainly wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the MRA developers. If 'Here' shows no signs of progress, replacing it might not be straightforward. Yet, I'm hopeful that a solution will emerge, and 'Here' will pull through. As we all agree, MRA is great platform.

[Con Hennekens]

@Mario-Ivancic, you consequently use the term MRE. At first I thought about a typo, but it seems there is a reason behind it?

[Mario Ivancic]

@Con-Hennekens said in Battery drain:

@Mario-Ivancic, you consequently use the term MRE. At first I thought about a typo, but it seems there is a reason behind it?

Sorry it is mistake, i have something MRE in my head... Sorry.

[Con Hennekens]

@Mario-Ivancic, Promise me to use MRA from now, and I won't get mad...
Just kidding! It triggered my curiosity