Samsung cell phone for sheep hunt?

AKHUNTER

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I'm debating on whether to just take my Samsung S5 phone as my camera on an upcoming sheep hunt. It seems like the pics are as good or better than my point n shoot camera and I have a phone scope adapter that I'll take for digiscoping.

One concern is battery life. I don't have a good idea how long the phone battery will last while taking a few short video clips (~1 minute or so) and the normal amount of pics to document a hunt. I see people buying phone charging devices, but they are kind of spendy and heavy. It looks like for $10 I can buy a Samsung battery. I'm guessing with 1 spare battery I would be good to go. I also understand I should put the phone in airplane mode to conserve the battery. Also, do you guys leave the phone on most of the day or shut it down to conserve the battery? Anyway, I'm looking for feedback on battery life under those conditions.
 
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If the phone is in airplane mode your #1 consumer of juice will be the screen, so this will depend completely on how often you use it. My phone is 3 years old and the battery barely lasts the work day when I'm down here in Denver, but on a recent trip it lasted 3-4 days with minimal use. A single extra battery might be calling it close for a week hunt. I personally wouldn't want to risk not having juice to document the hunt just for an ounce or two. Buy 2 spares; still cheaper and lighter than most external options.

Another way to conserve battery would be to disable location services. By default the camera app will try to GPS tag your photos, so getting a GPS lock for every picture you take might take it's toll.
 

Owenst7

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My Galaxy S4 Active did fine for about 2-3 days on airplane mode taking about a dozen pictures a day and using Google Earth about as often (airplane mode usually doesn't turn off the GPS btw). I also had about a 30 minute phonecall and some Facebook posts in there. That was with a three year old battery.

I have a Zendure A3 that I've used heavily for about four years that is awesome. It will charge that phone 4-5 times I think. It weighs 7.3 ounces and has a very durable aluminum case.

I upgraded to an S8 Active last week. So far the battery seems to last a lot longer on this phone, so I may not end up needing to carry a backup battery anymore. I'm thinking of picking up the smaller version of my Zendure A3 just to see if it will be enough to stretch me along for a few more days with this new phone.

I really liked how the older Samsung's allowed you to replace the battery, but I know the sealed setup is more reliably sealed. I still wish they hadn't dropped that with the s5. The external chargers are almost as good though since you'd need something to charge your dead battery anyway on a business trip or something.

My S8 battery is 4000 mAh I think, so this A1 would probably give me about a 67% charge I think (I can't remember what I calculated the efficiency on my A3 at when new). On an S5 battery at 2800 mAh, I bet it would give you a full charge from 0%. For 2.5 ounces, that's not much worse than a spare battery. I'm hoping they come out with a USB-C version soon though since my new phone uses the updated connection.

My S4 took better pictures than my 6 ounce point and shoot, but I'm not much of a photographer, and just used a default setting. The optical zoom was a little helpful on the point and shoot, but I really didn't use it much. I don't think I'd ever use it for digiscoping anyway.

A1
Amazon.com: Zendure A1 Mini 3350mAh Portable Charger, Lipstick-Sized Compact External Battery Power Bank for iPhone, iPad, Samsung Cellphone, Tablets and More(Silver): Cell Phones & Accessories
 
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AKHUNTER

AKHUNTER

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I was also thinking that if I used a spare battery I wouldn't need to bring a cord as I would if I brought a charger.
 

Owenst7

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I was also thinking that if I used a spare battery I wouldn't need to bring a cord as I would if I brought a charger.

I've got a handful of ~3"-6" long cords that are light enough that I have difficulty weighing them on a cheap digital scale.

If I were counting ounces on a sheep hunt, and had a phone with a swappable battery, I'd do just like you're thinking though. It's just nice being able to go from 0% to 100% in a minute. You could probably carry two spares for the weight of the lightest USB battery anyway.

If you're worried about battery, just put your phone on airplane mode for a day or two and run some tests to simulate the conditions. I guess you could probably even do it for a few hours/overnight and project things from that data with some math. Battery meters on modern phones seem to be a lot more accurate than the first few generations of lithium battery stuff.

I always feel like turning the phone off and on a bunch in between random pictures in the day consumes more battery than just leaving it on airplane mode. I have never tested it though, and it's probably just me justifying my impatience while waiting on the phone to boot up.

If you're going with a buddy, you guys could leave one phone on at a time to conserve battery. My girlfriend usually leaves hers off during backpacking trips and takes pictures with mine. Mine's usually dead by the time we're getting back in to service, and her's will be full if we need to make a phone call for something. There's really no reason to have two out unless you're splitting up for long periods of time.
 
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AKHUNTER

AKHUNTER

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More good thoughts - thanks. I think I'll buy a battery or two and make it work. Another week and we'll be chasing sheep!
 
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Best of luck with the sheep hunt!
I would regularly get 4 days on my S5 in Ultra Power Saving mode but I can't remember if the camera was available in that mode. Turn off location and as many other apps and functions as you can. If you are in a use situation where the screen is your biggest energy drain you can actually save a little with a completely black background and screen saver.

One more thing....I don't want to rattle you right before the hunt but....if you get an operating system update notice you may want to hold off on the update installation. My S5 just turned into a shiny paperweight a few weeks ago due to the update "trying to write to a bad memory sector" according the the techs that I spoke with. After installing the update it tried to restart and got stuck in an endless reboot loop. So if you want to depend on the phone camera do what you can to save battery and don't make any system changes until you have the pics backed up.

Hope to see some S5 pics of you and your adventure!
 

grfox92

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Send me a PM with your address and I will send these to you. Spare battery and wall charger for the S5. Spare batteries are less then 10 dollars on amazon.com

Airplane mode is going to dramatically increase battery life and allow you to use maps. Just download the Google maps section you will be hunting and service or no service you will have clear mapping.

Gary
5b1a35ec80052c8cbed44df3793a26e1.jpg


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awaldro7

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The most important thing with cell phone batteries is to keep them warm. I have seen my phone come out of my pack/pocket/jacket at around 75% and be dead within minutes in the cold. Make sure you keep it in a warm spot and if you pull it out to use it make sure that you put it right away again. Sometimes I will put it in my front pocket with a "hot hands" pack.
 
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AKHUNTER

AKHUNTER

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Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up buying a portable battery pack (X2 power, 5200mAh). I charged the phone each night after using it and it worked fine. On my 2nd hunt this fall I did not turn the phone off all day, although I took very few pics. I put it in airplane mode, dimmed the screen, turned off location, and it would be like 97% charged at the end of the day w/o taking any pics. The point being I don't think it's necessary to completely shut down the phone throughout the day, which is kind of a pain to wait for it to boot up. Anyway, I think I'll leave the camera at home and just take the phone for now. I got some good digiscoping of the caribou I harvested. It's in the Caribou forum.
 
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