EEVblog #80 - Nokia E71 + Garmin Mobile XT = Embedded Hell

[Ambasadori2009]

The guy on the video looks like a "bythqir".

[diocleziano01]

I had Garmin XT in my E71: the battery life was only 1,5 days in standby. So I decided to removed the Garmin and install Ovi maps: now the battery lasts 7 - 10 days in standby and, imho, Ovi is way better than Garmin!

[excite236]

how do u know Indians wrote code for this? you probably have some deep sentimental attachment to this... eg. like if something electronics doesnt work in your house you blame the chinese for it.

calling Indians code monkey is racist.. i thought you were smarter than that

get your head checked by a professional and make sure ur are living hate free

[danielruffo13]

pretty sure this guy might be just a pussy, stop crying about the battery life you girl. obviously if you use software on the phone it is going to use a lot of your battery life. the 20 days that was marketed is while it is in standby mode. honestly man, if you wanted to use data, were you expecting it to use no battery power at all?

[EEVblog]

@danielruffo13 I use the phone mostly in standby mode. And I now get 20 days battery life again now that I have removed the app. The software was badly written and chewed the life even when the program was NOT running.

[TheEPROM9]

That's why I don't like modern phones. Every things better on the old ones, especially the battery life.

[dynetrax]

Its a heap of shit!!

[bintintanalexis]

my god i really can't stop laughing:))))

no wonder why it crahses wehn you keep hitting the phone on the tabe like that :))

[jamezray]

you look like one of the wiggles!!!

[EEVblog]

@jamezray So I've been told!

[jamezray]

omfg you are annoying as shit!!! -_-

[SandyStarchild]

it's a symbian phone it's a piece of shit

[HottestLoveSong]

gay... !!!!!!!!!

[williefleete]

epic win, flying spaghetti monster background

[EEVblog]

@williefleete May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage

[exnol]

@EEVblog Where's the RAMEN? You know it's blasphemous to use thy name without 'ramen'!

[mastikulangan]

Thanks, was just about to get the Garmin XT, my Nokia E71 lasts me a 2 weeks and a couple of days, and that's like one 5 min call every other day. Thanks for saving me the grief I would have gotten from it. Thumbs up to you!

[daddyoca69]

Nokia is lame now days... it used to be the best. I am now hooked on android and htc phones... I might need professional help lol...

[ominus1985]

How about send me your nokia... and get a land line

[moAR95]

unlimited data!!!!!!

[ElTonyYorugua]

Gamin XT is a battery killer. The tsautostart.exe can be seen through any task manager software and killing it doesn't help coz it comes back soon. Garmin has changed the software after 5.10 to include an option to stop this service. You can find it here: Tools -> Settings -> System -> Launch Background Service (select disabled here) Also important to note that the above has to be enabled once then garmin has to be shutdown and reopened to select disable again.

[1440hk]

Have you listened to yourself. The only Sh#% I can here is you.

[icemaster13]

Hey, i got one of these and i have a question. Do you have to format the battery?

[heroineworshipper]

Taking notes on how to attract blond bombshells. Say "heap a shit!" "dickheads!" "no way in hell!" "it pisses me off!" "bloody hell!" "unbelievable!" all the time, get extremely worked up & throw stuff.

[eydryan]

I've got a Nokia 5230 and I love it! Most impressive thing is that it is the only phone I've seen so far that achieves almost instantaneous GPS lock, all of the time, kicks the ass of its bigger brother too (5800).

And Dave, you shouldn't take standby time seriously. Modern smartphones, especially 3G ones, don't really get more than a couple of days of battery, especially if you use it (shortest time for battery drain for me was about an hour while using internet radio listening via Bluetooth)

[EEVblog]

@eydryan

Why shouldn't I take standby time seriously?

I rarely use my phone at all, but have it on all the time, so long standby power is VERY convenient.

I now get TWO WEEKS battery life out of my E71.

[michael9515]

@EEVblog hey man... can you tell me what to do on my 5230 nokia? also symbian... but instead of 400h of battery life on standby i get agbout day and a half to maximum three days... i make an average of 5-10min a day of calling and not playing cause i'm on the move all the time and really dont have the time to charge the damn thing...

[chukchee]

What about the iPhone? Is that any good?

[gbowne1]

Dave, i love when you call some things a "heap of shit". LoL.

[BarriosGroupie]

@gbowne1 haha yeah, but even better is that he says it with a genuine feeling of loathing and contempt

[abraxalito]

i won't buy another Nokia as about 6 years ago they blamed me for the restore software failing to work after my phone had been serviced. I was left with punching in everything again manually so all the contacts went into a new Sony Eriksson. bye bye Nokia.

[MSCompuServ]

Get a Jail Broken iPhone or a Google Nexus one phone. Both have built in GPS software and decent battery life.

[sqweeks85]

I love the videos were you go off on a device. Something about them makes my day :)

[tomvleeuwen]

The HTC G1 is advertised as 5,5 days. I can actually achieve that when everything is turned off. I found that out when I was on holliday where 3g is not an option.

But since I have to charge it every day, the battery was broken (blown up like a balloon) after a year.

[AllenKll]

Garmin is not really to blame.Think about it.They need to make a generic app that supports many different platforms. If Garmin was specifically targeting the e71, then they CAN customize the power consumption, and you'd get somewhere near the performance of the Nokia maps software..

The reality is, a generic software house CAN'T do that, and still expect to turn a profit. It's just not feasible. Add to the the proprietary-ness of the hardware and Garmin couldn't even if they wanted to!

[EEVblog]

@AllenKll The E71 was one of the officially supported device. For a company the size and resources of Garmin I would certainly expect testing to have picked up this issue.

It's not impossible to write generic apps that do not effect the device, if fact it's not hard if you follow some rules, especially when the app is NOT running! Garmin are clearly just shit at doing this.

[jpelczar]

@EEVblog I think the main reason for poor quality is because they've outsourced code monkeys instead of paying real full-time programmers to do the job or the code was written by some guys in basement, far in the "food chain" of consulting companies (the first company in the chain gets 50000$ for the code and the guys who do the real job get maybe couple of thousands and very short deadlines, happend to me once, because I needed cash quickly - so there's no motivation to write quality code).

[0LoneTech]

Ovi is just one of Nokia's brands - for their online features. The maps are Navteq, which Nokia bought a few years back. Did Nokia finally get free navigation to the E71? Because when they announced it, they hadn't enabled the nav function, only broken the preferences.

As for the phone itself, I could rant for days. Unfortunately I didn't have a better option when I got it.

[wasssup1990]

My nokia updates never worked!

[shiftplusone80]

I think most people who have these sort of phones are used to having the device plugged in and charging when they're at home. At least I am. My current phone (HTC G1) gives me about 1.5 days of heavy use or 2.5 with an extended battery. I think that's pretty reasonable for the sort of functionality it offers. I reckon smartphones aren't for everyone. If you just want to make phone calls and not have to charge the phone all the time, there's no need for a smartphone.

[EEVblog]

@shiftplusone80

Not when it's advertised as having up to 480 hours standby! The fact that it now works as such proves that it was always capable of the advertised duration, so it's just inexcusably bad firmware design.

[shiftplusone80]

@EEVblog Don't get me wrong, I hate the "up to..." standard for specifications. Should just be "average" then +- certain percentage or standard deviation or something meaningful.

[skonkfactory]

I actually wrote the chapter on performance and power consumption in the Symbian kernel internals book. It specifically says not to do half the things Nokia loves to do, and the exact thing Garmin did.

The truth is, there are millions of lines of code in that phone; it's running a big, sophisticated OS. While power consumption was certainly a major driver in its development, like Steve Jobs said, real artists ship.

[onlywhenprovoked]

This industry drives me insane with that shit. It's bad enough when they lie about stats to sell an item, but you can't even count on the data sheets to be accurate, and you can't even count on the components being to spec. It's an extra big mind fuck for those of us who are terrible at memorizing numbers.

There should be enforced truth in advertising laws, worldwide.

Next they'll be telling you there's a dozen eggs, when there's only 2.

[killerman4ever]

My htc desire has 750 hours standby, but it's not cheap.

[ParadigmaticShift]

Ahhhhhhh, its the flying spaghetti monster.... run for your life!!!!!!

[EEVblog]

@ParadigmaticShift May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage!

[dan20n]

I have it's older cousin the e61i, the battery life is excellent I usually get one week per charge and I use bluetooth.

I was considering an upgrade to the e71, perhaps Ill look elsewhere

[EEVblog]

@dan20n It's been 11 days now and I've still got two bars left, so they have *finally* fixed the battery issue after all these years. The E72 is out now I believe.

[kb1kix]

So Dave....... Tell me what you really think!!!!

Great video as usual.

I like the Nokia energy usage program.  Nice to know where all the "standby" power is going!!!

What a shame. I had the Nokia E61 and absolutely loved it.

[tamakisanmafia]

Garmin software is useless for sure.