@enigmatico Ehh, writing to NAND flash does take a bit of energy, as to write, (relatively) high voltages are required (as handled by a charge pump), but the working voltages are pretty small and the energy required to read is far less.

Assuming that very unoptimized proprietary software is used that saves the images byte-by-byte, I'm thinking that ⅛ to ¼ of the battery would be drained by the time the 1000th photo was saved on any recent tracking device.

The actual amount of electricity stored in the battery is negligible even so - charging a tracking device every day for a year ends up costing ~$5 in electricity if I remember correctly.