Pocket Adventures.com has just released a new, 1.7 version of the Travel Collection (review & comparison here), a great Chess / Checkers (aka Draughts) / Reversi (aka Othello) / 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe / 4 In A Row (aka Connect 4) / Dots game.

The most significant change in this version is the new battery meter icon on the game screen and the, with many (but not all - read on!) Pocket PC models, decreased power requirements.

I’ve thoroughly tested the latter to see whether it’s really the case (see my previous power consumption benchmarks of the previous, 1.6 version in my Pocket PC Thoughts frontpaged article “Extend your battery life – never before published tips and comparative benchmarks!”, also to be published in the forthcoming Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine). This is of extreme importance because it’s essential for games like this to have as little power consumption as possible – after all, you may want to play a chess game even for hours, as opposed to fast action games.

The Good

There is indeed significant power consumption decrease with my Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 and my WM5 HP iPAQ hx400.

On the hx4700 (using the hacks described here, keeping the main memory storage), the new version consumes about 260 mA, as opposed to the 410 mA consumed by version 1.6. A screenshot of the latter can be seen in here. Note that I’ve left the battery counter enough time to monitor the between 108 and 140 mA’s fluctuating power usage (one of the worst things in the WM5 implementation of the hx4700 – all this after applying the hacks (another screenshot of this effect here). I will try to further reduce it though by, for example, completely killing the compaction thread); only after this time did I start the game and played some chess against the AI. As the hx4700 has no explicit means of setting the CPU speed (neither under WM2003SE nor under WM5), I’ve only made tests in the default, automatic mode.

The Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 (PL720) also delivered outstanding results showing that PL720 users may really want to upgrade to version 1.7. In auto (that is, 520 MHz) mode, the ner version had 210 mA, as opposed to the 300 of the old. In the slowest CPU setting (208 MHz), the new version consumed 160 mA’s as opposed to the 190 of the old one.

The Bad

On my Dell Axim x51v (ROM version A06; a freshly hard reset device, as with the hx4700), on the other hand, it was only in automatic (which equals to 624 MHz when running games) CPU clock mode that I’ve noticed some kind of power consumption decrease (the Amperage usage decreased from 410 to 400 mA’s). At the recommended 208 MHz, however, the situation became worse: instead of 210 mA’s, the device operated at 240 mA. This means the new version actually consumes more power than the previous one when run at a lower CPU speed. This means you will want to extensively test the two versions of the game on your particular PDA model to see whether the new version indeed delivers a power consumption decrease and stick with the older version if it's not the case.

Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices, 2006, 2007. See my PPC & SP blog HERE.