You may think it strange that I have included Battery Life as a separate feature of child tracking locator devices, but it is actually one of the most important to consider when buying a personal tracker. Whereas a vehicle tracker can be connected up to the battery or a cigar lighter socket, there is obviously nowhere that can you plug it in on your child! Recharging on-the-fly is not possible at present.
Having a tracker that has good overall features is all well and good, but if the battery dies then it is simply an expensive plastic ornament. Moreover, if this event is too frequent then it will soon become expected to happen and the parent will not monitor with the same enthusiasm. One day the tracker may go out of service due to a real situation, such as an abduction attempt, and nobody would be any wiser!
I’ve seen battery life on some models as low as 24 hours, which effectively means having to charge it up every day from the day of purchase. It’s also worth bearing in mind the memory effect of batteries that are repeatedly charged, whereby the usable time of a battery reduces over time between charges. It is anybody’s guess how long it will take for the unit to require charging too often to be practical in daily use. I’ve had a mobile phone (an early smart phone) which needed daily charging and it very soon effectively became a static desk phone because it always needed to be near a electrical outlet socket. In that case, you could say that at least the phone was still usable, but the same would not be true for a static tracking device.
For a device to be worthwhile it is simply a case of the longer the battery life, the better. Watch out for manufacturers quoting the “sleep” time, or “standby” time for batteries. This measurement may help for comparison of different models, but you are going to want the device to be actively monitoring the child on a regular basis which will drain the power faster than the quoted rate. Once again, if experiences with the mobile phone industry are anything to go by, it is unlikely that such quoted battery life figures will be directly comparable between different manufacturers. This is because they will have different methods of testing the devices. They have tended to use pretty unrealistic testing scenarios, such as having the device always in an area with solid signal reception, having no calls made or received, and so on.
So how can we realistically make comparisons between products? In a nutshell, try to find independent product reviews. A good review should include tests of battery life under a variety of practical uses. If the tests show a wide divergence from the manufacturers quoted life, then other claims about the device could be suspect.
In the meantime, look out for devices that have good quality batteries with long usable charge time. Also, check whether the battery can be charged outside of the tracking unit itself (i.e. in a separate charging unit). Then by having two batteries, you could charge the spare while the tracker is in use and swap them over when required.
Here at childtracking.org we will be conducting our own tests and sourcing independent reviews of child tracking devices and services. We welcome any input that you may have and will bear this in mind during our own research. You can contact us with your views.
