Loving Your Batteries

While traditional PCs are happy to spend all day plugged into the nearest electrical socket, modern laptops and smart phones (which are rapidly replacing both) are not so comfortable with life on charge. Manufacturers recommend in most cases that both laptops and phones are discharged fairly thoroughly from time to time to maintain the battery life and to even improve it. While it’s possible to buy batteries online to replace older, worn out ones, it makes sense to maintain the life of those nearest and dearest to us, which for many of us means those in our smart phones.

Image Source: Creative Commons Flicker Image Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

‘Appy Eaters
Apps are great and without them many of us would probably die. However apps can eat up battery power like nothing else. While there are millions of apps available to download, there are also millions that continue to use battery power, even when you think you’ve put your phone down for its nap. There are thankfully several apps now designed to monitor your phones (mis)behaviour and highlight what is using up all that charge. Different apps are available depending on your phone and they are definitely worth installing.  Ensuring that snooze means snooze with your apps will save considerable amounts of talk time!

App Monitoring
Knowing what your phone is getting up to and ensuring that it’s snoozing when it should be is essential. Luckily it’s fairly easy on both iOs and Android to find who’s been eating your battery juices. On an iOs device all you need to do is double click your home button and a list of running apps appears at the bottom of the screen. Press and hold any of these and a ‘minus’ sign appears on all running apps, allowing you to shut them down. On Android systems visit the settings page, pick applications and then check under the running applications in order to kill any additional apps that you weren’t expecting to be still running.

Battery care
Simply ensuring that your battery and phone doesn’t overheat will extend the life of the battery. While most batteries can cope with a little cold (not too much) exposure to excessive heat will have you quickly searching to buy batteries online to replace the dead ones (assuming you can find somewhere to get online). Replacement batteries are, of course, relatively easy to source, but with a little tender loving care, a battery should last for that little bit longer.

While it’s easy to buy batteries online, it makes sense to look after them in the first place, a little good battery care can go a long way.