Cybershot HX20V - GPS and Battery

[skkrbt]

I just bought the HX20V...so far so good, and exploring! The salesman told me that if I have GPS turned on, but don't have the GPS tracking turned on, then when the camera is off the GPS does not drain the battery. Does anybody know if this is true? Also, does anybody know roughly what effect having the GPS turned on has on the battery?

[Mick2011]

Hi skkrbt, welcome to the Sony Forums

The salesman is right; even with the camera switched off, you can conserve battery life with GPS turned off. It's a power-hungry feature and is not fully disabled when you power the camera off.

In practice, if you use the camera quite frequently you will charge the battery regualrly and won't really notice a significant drain in between uses. Stored for a number of days or weeks, however, the battery can become depleted unless you switch GPS off.

Cheers

Mick

[skkrbt]

Sorry - didn't make myself clear. What the sales man said was - GPS ON and GPS Tracking (recording log) ON......battery will get depleted even when camera turned off. GPS ON and GPS Tracking OFF.....battery will not get depleted when camera turned off. (Obviously, when you turn the camera on and the GPS tries to lock onto the satellites again, then more battery will be used than if GPS were off).

So - if the salesman were correct in what he said, if I was away from a power supply and had GPS ON, but GPS tracking OFF, and the camera would normally take about 420 photos....any idea how many this might be reduced to?

Hope that is clearer....maybe I have used wrong terminology, but hope that this makes more sense

[Mick2011]

Ok, I see what you're asking. I'm not sure simply switching the tracking off will stop GPS depleting your battery completely unless GPS itself is also disabled, although it will certainly reduce it considerably.

Unfortunately there's no formula or table to chart the rate at which GPS usage affects battery capacity. The camera's shot capacity on a single charge is a theoretical count to start with & assumes all shots take exactly the same amount of time to capture, image playback isn't used, and so on. Real life isn't like that...

I've heard GPS can reduce your shot capacity by as much as 25% but I would suggest you try it yourself and see. If you're careful to keep reviewing (and screen use in general) to a minimum and elect to leave tracking switched off, you might well mitigate much of that loss.

Cheers

Mick