Sunday 22 April 2012

TomTom Go, 940 etc battery goes flat when turned off


Anyone who has used TomToms such as the Go series, or the 940 Live, will have found that the battery goes flat when it is turned off. So you have it fully charged, turn it off and take it in the house. A week later you want to plan a route or something, or just fire it up and set the destination - but its completely flat. Its very very annoying.


Finally I have worked out how to turn the thing off so it does not drain the battery.


Basically the TomToms have three modes: On, Standby, Off.
When you turn it off normally, it goes into Standby.


You can tell if it is in standby, because when you turn it on, it goes straight to the splash screen. If it was Off, then it goes through a much longer bootup process, including a progress bar and so on.


The problem is how to make it really turn off.


I now know of two methods!!


1. Full reboot and turn off during reboot.
- Press and hold the Power button for 20 seconds (really, keep holding it this long)
- You then get a little drum roll sound and a small TomTom logo. Let go of the power button.
- It starts a reboot
- As soon as you see this, press the power button, and it will abort the reboot, and turn off.
- You can check you did it right, by turning it on again normally, and you should see the long startup process.


2. Plug it into the computer
- Turn it on
- Plug into the computer
- The TomTom will do a reboot - TomTom logo shows up
- As its rebooting, press the power switch to turn it off
- Unplug
- You can check you did it right, by turning it on again normally, and you should see the long startup process.


There you go - now you can leave your chuffing TomTom on the shelf and still be able to use it a month later!!


Enjoy!
Jez

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