Feature request: standby mode
Answered
I have already received a response from Support via e-mail, but posting here as well for visibility:
With battery life clearly being an issue on the Karoo devices, I want to suggest:
1. whereas a long click on button B brings up the power off menu, a short click on button B should put the unit in standby, where it draws little or no power, but all state information is preserved.
2. when the device is paused, it should enter standby mode automatically after a set period of time (e.g. 10 minutes)
3. waking the unit up from standby mode should be more or less instant, as opposed to the long wait when powering up
4. this should be the "normal" way of working with the unit. Actually powering off should be exceptional, and only used when I know it will not be used for a period of time
5. This includes going into standby in the middle of a ride - it should be possible to continue the ride when the unit is awakened again. State must be persistent, so in the event of the device freezing and having to be cold-booted, the ride can continue where it was.
The above behavior is, in my experience, how the vast majority of devices in modern times behave (e.g. my Garmin 830).
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Hey Ola. I appreciate you for sharing your suggestions regarding the stand by mode on the unit.
I would suggest you use the battery save mode to optimize the functionalities of your unit to save the battery. You can choose to toggle on the battery save mode and you can see the extension in your battery life.
As you would already know, currently, we do not have the stand by the option on Karoo 2. But, we have considered saving the charge drain by implementing the battery save option under the Settings app.
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FYI - I accidentally discovered it is also possible to temporarily turn the screen off by pressing buttons B+D simultaneously, without powering down the unit.
I don't think it puts the unit into a sleep mode, as such, but it may help with any battery drain issues you may be experiencing, Ola.
Steve
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@Abhishek, is pressing the buttons to turn off the screen the same as entering battery save mode, or does battery save mode enable additional savings?
(On other devices, going into this kind of mode will also change the frequency of GPS position updates, turn off wi-fi/communication and so on.)
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Hi,
I totally agree to the use cases Ola described, especially points 2 - 4.
There are millions of Android devices out there that support standby mode ever since. There is nothing special about the Karoo 2. Simply another mobile device, integrating a Qualcomm mobile chipset and Android 8. Components that have been designed and tailored to get the most out of limited energy resources.
Nobody of us would accept if a phone would itself turn off when not being touched for an hour or two. The OSes and state-of-the-art chipset are prepared to throttle everything down to a bare minimum to last for days in such a state. However, Karoo doesn’t. Simply try it out. Without having an activity started wake up the device every hour and observe the battery drop, ~5-7% on my side. That’s tremendous. Thus, it becomes clear why the device itself shuts down.
To me it’s simply a mandatory workaround for a missing, well-engineered standby mode.
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@hammerhead, can I ask about the status of this again?
Yesterday again I went on a tour that was long enough that ride out + planned break + ride home would not be guaranteed to fit within the current battery life of the K2, even in battery save mode. I really did want it to be a single activity, so I had to bring the Garmin instead, which is a shame...
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Yes, I totally agree: Just got my karoo 2 last week and googled for standy by mode, and there is none? Every phone has an airplane mode... I also want to use it for bike packing with a lot of breaks for sight seeing a day. A workaround would be that a ride would NOT be "finished" once the unit is turned off (in which case it does not automatically sync the ride to Komoot...).
I am coming from a Garmin Edge 530 which is super buggy, but had both these (simple features). Actually, I think this is a no-go, thinking about returning it and getting a Wahoo :( -
I wrote the support, here is the main part of the answer:
As far as the timeline goes, we follow a structured workflow to pull a feature into the software pipeline. This involves discovering the pros and cons from competitors, researching from customer interviews, designing and then when all these are finalized, it will be moved to development.
We prioritize each feature based on the number of user requests, impact on current customer base, usability, market value etc. Because of all these considerations, we are unable to provide an exact timeline, but rest assured it is on our software roadmap for development. Thank you for your patience.
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I've been iterating on my long-ride battery strategy. My latest long ride was 9h20m ride time and 10h40m total time. I had 24% left at the end without using a powerbank. I did not use battery saver mode. Woohoo!
My Tips:
- Use battery saver mode with skepticism. Go ahead use it, but if you hit bugs then switch it off again and be happy. Otherwise keep using it and be frustrated for the rest of the ride :) The screen will stay on during strava segments, on climbs, turn on when you are paused (rerouting but also other random reasons). Sometimes you can't override and manually turn the screen off (it comes back on again), one time I got stuck in a state where I could no longer pause the ride). I've raised the issues with them but it's not a priority for them yet.
- Manually turn off the screen via the shortcut menu (squeeze 2 top buttons in ride) when you don't need the stats. I do this on long downhills and breaks.
- Minimise routing. Routing comes with a bunch of reasons to keep waking up your device and chews battery too. Routing wakes up the device during pauses/rest stops, so try disable routing during breaks.
- [per the help pages] Turn off bluetooth, dim the screen to min. You have to squint in the sun but it's workable. I use the black background, unclear if that makes a difference or not.
- Tracking battery: I work on a baseline of 10% per hour ride time. The first hour uses more (due to startup scans and syncing probably) but it should even out by the time you get to 3h with 70% left.
I found a small powerbank for this ride but didn't end up needing to use it! It's the TAU 1400mAh - it's small enough, intended as a keyring. The built-in cables are a little short and elastic - USB-C and Apple only (would like micro-USB for my lights but oh well). I tested my setup by securing it to my out-front mount with a rubber band. I haven't tested it on the road though - I hope it stays plugged in despite the road vibrations.
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Adding my support for a standby mode, for an additional use case. It would be nice to get everything queued up at home, while you're at a computer to prepare your route, etc., and then put the unit into standby mode so that (a) it remembers your ride settings, (b) it's not spending energy displaying the screen, and (c) not accidentally going to register bumps to the touchscreen. Once you're at your destination you can just wake the device up and go.
Sure, you could use a combination of touchscreen lock and turning off the screen entirely, but that is not intuitive and doesn't necessarily disable all the things you'd expect in a true standby mode (like listening for GPS signal or other sensors).
Also worth noting that the comments above about using buttons B+D to turn the screen off no longer work. That now opens the drawer (same as swiping up). To turn the screen off with the new Control Center (as of 1.257.1131) swipe down or press A+C, then go to the screen that has the "Screen Off" control.
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+1
I'm using the Karoo also for commuting and I find it quite annoying to wait 1 minute twice a day for the Karoo to boot.
That's the reason why I still use my old Garmin Edge 1000 for commuting because of it's standymode.
So a standbymode (flight mode + screen off) would be great.
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