Extend The Battery Life of Your Mobile Devices

Mobile technology has been very beneficial to us in the last few years. It has allowed as to be free of bulky devices and conveniently move around while maintaining productivity, entertainment and communicability.In spite of this convenience, we’re still at the mercy of batteries. Once they run out of power, it’s impossible to use these gadgets unless you have a battery charger or a spare battery with you.

Though high-capacity batteries like Li-on and Ni-MH are used by modern mobile devices, at some point, they still get drained. You must take some measures to extend the life of your batteries. Here are some tips:


Mobile Phone
Your mobile phone is one of your most important mobile devices. If you want to extend its battery life, here are some of the things you should do:

• Avoid using other battery-intensive features like playing games, taking pictures, or simply tinkering around with the phone.

• Turn off the vibrate mode of your phone, at least for a while, until you get your phone recharged again since it drains a lot of power, too. If you can, switch your phone to ’silent.’

• Switch your phone to GSM mode if you won’t be using other bands like 3G and UMTS.

• Lower the contrast or brightness of your phone’s display screen. Often, screen brightness is set too high. Lower it to the most comfortable level.

• If you use a smartphone, close unnecessary applications.
• Turn off wireless services such as bluetooth and WiFi unless you really need them.

Laptop Computer
Laptops are mini computers that you can take almost anywhere. Some models last more than three hours, while others just barely over an hour. To save battery life, here are some things you can do:

• Lower screen brightness and contrast.
• Avoid accessing the hard drive and CD/DVD ROM.
• Close unnecessary background applications like P2P software, IM clients, and media players.
• If you use an automatic defragmenter, disable it temporarily.
• Disable Bluetooth and WiFi if not in use, unless you are using a bluetooth keyboard or surfing the Internet through WiFi.
• Use a cooling pad when the laptop’s on for long periods so that the heat does not build up inside. Heat buildup will cause the fans in your laptop to spin faster, draining your battery even more.
• Turn off or disable unused ports like USB, Firewire, PCMCIA, and VGA using the device manager. Enable only the devices or ports that you really need.

Portable Media Player
A portable media player like an Ipod or Zune may have long-lasting batteries, but to make sure they last longer, here are the things you should do:

• Do not set the volume to max. Set it only to a comfortable level that isn’t too soft or too loud.
• If your player has a screen, lower brightness and contrast. Let the backlight automatically switch off in a shorter period.
• Avoid skipping tracks often.

• Switch off when you’re not listening anymore.
• Disable equalizers, bass boost, loudness, and other signal processing features in your player, too.

Other Tips
These tips will generally increase the battery life of your portable devices. If you rely heavily on certain devices, like your cellphone or laptop, consider either buying an extra battery or bringing a travel charger around. Just make sure that you have the battery charged the night before you go.