is trapster killing my battery?

[piaband]

I downloaded the trapster app this weekend and my battery life has been terrible ever since. Does this app run in the background? I am talking 15% battery use per hour!

[bobwonderful]

I can confirm. This app will eat your battery so fast that you'll only get about 1 hour worth of usage out of your phone.

[cardfan]

Ideally anything you use like this in the car, you want to keep it plugged in?

[Elysian893]

Just like using navigation, of course it's going to kill your battery.

[Bujin]

Originally Posted by Elysian893

Just like using navigation, of course it's going to kill your battery.

I think the real question is about whether it works in the background. Navigation doesn't drain when the card is closed.

[ksumanth]

I would agree with the fact that this app does suck the battery big time, my battery never died so fast before i used this appp not even if i used the gps app.

As far as runnign in the back ground is considered i do not know but my battery did die real fast after closing this app to untill i stopped the data connection and the background gps information gathering. interestingly after switching all of them off i only lost 2 % of battery in 4 hours while compared to 50% in 3 hours.

[Mikey47]

Well, first, it has to be running in order to advise you, that will cause a small amount of drain on the battery itself. But, it has to use GPS to get your location (otherwise it would not know to advise you), the GPS is a well known cause of very fast battery drain (many using off brand car chargers say that the charger can't keep up with the drain).

So, as the above poster stated, unless you are charging the phone while using this app, your battery will drain very quickly.

[KJ78]

there is a screen dim option. try that see if it helps. but yes anything like this using gps, constantly updating maps is going to suck some battery.

[Syphon]

I think the app is running in the background. After using it as the only app running, if I close it & try to open a couple of more programs I will get the "Too many cards" message. I would have to reset the phone to get rid of it.

I really like the Trapster app, but it has a few bugs that I dont like.
- Maps don't load much of the time. Closing & reopening the app will make maps load, but only for a few minutes.
- Alerts aren't happening. And screen keeps dimming/turning off even though the option is set for it to NOT do it.
- (this isn't really a bug, more like a personal dislike): The map doesn't rotate. If I'm heading south, the blip faces down. It confuses me as all map/gps programs I use, the blip always faces upwards regardless of the direction I am heading.

So even though I really like what this app is intended to do, until they fix these issues I will not continue to use it.

[Elysian893]

Originally Posted by ksumanth

I would agree with the fact that this app does suck the battery big time, my battery never died so fast before i used this appp not even if i used the gps app.

As far as runnign in the back ground is considered i do not know but my battery did die real fast after closing this app to untill i stopped the data connection and the background gps information gathering. interestingly after switching all of them off i only lost 2 % of battery in 4 hours while compared to 50% in 3 hours.

You never noticed the massive drain that is Sprint Navigation? I seriously doubt I could even get 2 hours out of Sprint Nav, it sucks up so much battery, and makes the phone pretty hot.

[Abyssul]

I believe that the app is bugged because I had the app running for a hour to get a "Too many cards" error after a 30 minutes of use. It seems to me that the app has some leaked data.

I also have an expanded memory hack so it shouldn't even come close to running out of memory.

[msgott]

I was so excited about Trapster, but now that I have it, it's a bit disappointing as it doesn't work well. In addition to the issues that Syphon mentioned (i.e., memory hog and failing to terminate when you close the card), it just isn't useful for me in that the maps can't keep up with normal driving speeds. The map generally just goes to all white and becomes pretty much useless. I look forward to an update for this app!

[bobwonderful]

I have to reboot the Pre to prevent the battery drainage. So it looks like something is still working in the background even with the card closed.

[pieler8]

Definitely have to agree with Abyssul, after about an hour, I couldn't open any cards and received teh "too much memory error". I do like the app itself though, just seems alittle buggy.

[LupeValenz]

I tried it, battery drain, deleted it. I'll keep going on with my clean record, no accidents/tickets. Just wanted to see how it work, its nice but yeah, keep that baby plugged in while you use it.

[kjparfekt]

i downloaded it yesterday and after launching the app, checking it out and then closing it my phone was running with a decent lag and I got the too many cards error with just email, a webpage and messenger open. Instinctively I turned off and back on my pre and problem fixed. I haven't opened the app since then but I'm glad to see others are having the same problem. Might try the app once while driving and delete it if it doesn't seem to be worth the battery/memory issues.

[pogeypetey]

Bear in mind that programs that access certain aspects of the Pre's OS (API's) sometimes do not shutdown all active processes. It might be that this app doesn't close out the process that is pulling GPS information, and as such keeps the GPS process running in perpetuity.

Be aware of this as you use Homebrew apps and let the developer know of your issues so they can try to close the battery leak in their App.

[edlex]

Yea I'm pretty bummed but I just deleted it too. Good idea but doesn't seem like it's optimized for the pre yet. Will keep my eye out for a future updated version and see if they work out the bugs.

[maxima2k53]

yeah battery drain is bad...ive gotten the too many cards open twice just by using it...slows down my pre like crazy so i gotta reboot

[Boggs3010]

This app over all needs work. Doesn't follow along as your driving ( at least it didn't with me) and the screens turns off. How am I suppose to use it while driving? I was happy to see this app. It is the only app I might have spent money on so far. If they were to put more work into the app I would spend a few bucks on it for sure.