As much as I’ve (apparently) been one of the lucky ones with my Pod Tracker, I think it’s coming to end of life for me.
I have a second 2.0 version. They shipped me a new one because of build issues in the first one which caused the battery and case to crack.
However, two things are making me reevaluate using the Pod.
Battery Life
The first is one others have complained about, but wasn’t much of an issue for me until this latest Pod: battery life.
I’ve been running the Pod on standby only. This means it should use the least amount of power. I’ve also told the Pod about my home Wi-Fi, which should mean less power too. In theory I should be (and used to get) 4-6 days of time out of the battery.
Instead, I’m getting less than two days. I changed the Terror’s pod yesterday morning before 8am, and right now (10 am) it’s telling me it has 10% left.
According to the App (Android), I have ‘Adventures’ off, ‘Safe Mode’ off, and ‘Activity monitoring’ off.
Having said that, when I try to turn Safe Mode on, then it doesn’t seem to be able to. I managed to turn it on via the Web App, but not off. But then I could turn it off via the phone App. So … who knows what state it’s all in?
The 2G network is going away in Australia.
The Pod works over the 2G mobile network. However, in Australia at least, Vodafone (Pod‘s carrier) is taking away 2G on 30th of September. The Pod Support area has an FAQ on this, and for other countries (depending on carrier) it’s not so bad, but the End Times are coming.
The last part of that page says this:
The Good News:
We will be releasing a 3G version of Pod in early 2017 and discounted upgrade options will be available for our customers once it’s available.
The mobile contract that came ‘free’ with my Pod ends on the 30th of July in 2017. In my case I’m not really that worried about having just bought the Pod and then paying for an upgrade – after all, I’ve had it for over a year at that point. If I had ‘just bought’ the Pod now, I would be irritated.
Without knowing what the upgrade price will be, I would hope it will be proportionally cheaper the more recently you’ve bought your Pod. Regardless, it’s still an extra cost and I wouldn’t be buying a Pod now until they have the new 3G one. Even then, I’d wait for reviews.
3G chips are likely to use more battery, and this will affect battery life. I have no idea how badly it will affect it but it’s something to be aware of.
So, it may be that my history with the Pod Tracker will be ending soon. I’m looking at other options, and we’ll see if anything else comes close. Regardless of the issues, the Pod has been very handy for tracking down my little Terror, and I’d really hate to lose that functionality.
