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NickG
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 Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 2:32 pm Post subject: |
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| matthewj wrote: | | Can I ask a daft question about these voices? Am I right in thinking that they lose all the nice street names and "follow A111 for 15 miles" type stuff? If so, then it seems such a big step backward. |
Yeah but the prerecorded files have a big advantage on TomTom x30 devices - battery life. The x30 series has a hardware design fault which means the battery can't supply enough current to the device while playing a computer voice if the battery has dropped below about 50% (depending on current brightness/volume etc). If you use a recorded voice, this problem goes away and the device will last sometimes more than twice as long (2 hours-ish instead of 45 mins or so). TomTom "fixed" this problem in a firmware update by rescaling the battery meter and instead of going silent, it will detect the problem and tell you that the battery is flat and promptly turn off the device (which is a lie - if you turn it back on again and immediately change to a recorded voice, it will happily carry on navigating for another hour or so). This is why some (all?) x30 devices appear to have far less battery life than say, a very old 910 or a brand new 950. |
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Darren
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Location: Hampshire, UK
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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And not an issue if you connect to in-car power.
Of course many of us use them in-car on battery, but for anything other than a local journey the internal battery is insufficient.
TomTom may quote battery times but in practical use it should be plugged in.
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Darren Griffin |
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NickG
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Darren wrote: | | And not an issue if you connect to in-car power. Whilst they may quote battery times, for most practical purposes it should be plugged in. |
Agreed, but similarly TomTom should not exaggerate or lie about battery times (or any other stats). If they print "up to 3 hours" on the box/website, I would expect to get at least half of that time with all the power saving features turned on and the brightness on 0% - otherwise it's just misleading. I cannot plug my 930 in while on the bike and therefore it's not fit for purpose as it specifically states it supports cycling routes and has a long battery life. The latter of which is totally incorrect.
Even my old 910 had better battery life than the 930 - and that had to support a 20GB hard disk instead of the 4GB flash-RAM of the 930. |
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dhn
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Location: Toronto CANADA
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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But the 910 had a larger form factor that allowed for a phsically thicker battery with a larger capacity than the (necessarily) thinner battery for the latter model with a smaller form factor.
Not necessarily disagreeing, just saying ...........
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NickG
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 3:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Agreed, but the battery was hardly any bigger than that in the 930. Most of the extra space in the 910 was just a huge aluminium block and a much larger speaker. I'm not saying battery life needs to be better - just that they shouldn't exaggerate when advertising the product. If their website showed realistic figures, I'd have bought a 940 or 950 in the first place, instead of wasting my time on a 930 as the former models can actually get close to their claimed battery life, whereas a 930 cannot. |
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