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Originally Posted by jusmee
I was referring to the Astak firmware. To my recollection, the one it came with, and certainly the next one I loaded, had everyone complaining about short battery life. Then a version came along that everyone agreed solved the battery issue. Now, this firmware has been re-called, but it seems battery life issues, of some type, were apparent. Astak have not told us exactly why they recalled it, i.e. which were the show-stopper issues, but maybe this was one of them.
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You are right, the early Astak firmware releases for the V5 had serious battery life issues, totally unrelated to whatever reader application was being used. Those early releases did not correctly get the system power management worked out correctly when the OS put the ARM processor into sleep mode. That is only my assumption from running that firmware myself, but I have written that kind of code myself for other systems, and that is the usual cause of excessive sleep mode battery consumption in my experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jusmee
Plus ALL versions have poor battery meters. If it's not a basic sensor (i.e. hardware) fault, then the software needs to be improved to correctly and linearly indicate battery levels.
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They do not have "poor" battery meters, just very conservative battery meters. Battery discharge is not a linear process, and the non-linearity varies from battery to battery and also with the temperature and specific load on the battery at the time measurements are taken. That is why most cellphones usually only show battery levels as just four or five bars. Also resolution and accuracy are two completely different things. It would certainly be easy enough to show battery levels to a resolution of 1%, but the reading would not be even close to an accuracy of 1%. 10% resolution would be nice instead of 25% resolution, but even that would not be completely accurate given the variations due to different battery sources and operating temperatures and conditions.
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Originally Posted by jusmee
who would write a driver that does that?
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All cell phone manufacturers and other high volume battery powered equipment manufacturers for the reasons stated above. More resolution does not equal more accuracy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jusmee
It may be an explanation, but it is no excuse  |
Again, more resolution does not equal more accuracy. Battery discharge performance is not a precision process and varies with specific batteries, temperatures, and load conditions.