Battery and data consumption when using Google Navigation

This is just a short notice, on how much data transfer and battery lose you should consider, when using Google Navigation.

Here are conditions of my first test trip:

  1. I was driving for 40 minutes in a very bright sun, so my LCD brightness was set to maximum.
  2. I was navigating between cities, without many steps (voice guides), so LCD was dimmed a bit during most of the trip.
  3. My route was fairly straight and chance of loosing GPS signal or performing trip recalculation was reduced to minimum.
  4. I travelled quite a long way, so there were many maps downloads.

40 minutes of driving in these conditions took 3,26 MB of data and 17% of battery life.

Data consumption was higher then average, because of fairly many map downloads. Battery consumption was lower than average, because screen was dimmed most of the trip and there were not many voice guides.

My second test trip was in following conditions:

  1. I was driving for 30 minutes, also in bright sun.
  2. I was travelling through big city centre, so there were many manoeuvres (screen not dimmed at all and many voice guides),
  3. My route was through fairly small area, so map wasn’t changed too often.

30 minutes ride in this conditions took only 1,15 MB of data (nearly exactly half of above), but 25% of battery.

This time situation was quite opposite. Battery consumption was higher because of often use of screen and speaker (many steps and voice guides), but data transfer was lower, because map downloads were small and not too often.

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