With our society becoming more mobile there has been more emphasis placed on making batteries last longer. Whether you are trying to get more talk time out of your cell phone, more computing time out of your laptop or more light out of your flashlight there are a few tips you can use to keep those batteries lasting longer.
Cellular Phones
Cellular phone batteries have improved a great deal over the last few years, but there are a few things you can do to make them last even longer. One of the things you can do is turn off all indicator noises except the sound of your phone ringing. Notices that you pressed a button or that you received a voice mail are not necessary and drag down battery performance. As far as the ringer goes, set it to ring or vibrate but not to both. You may prefer to set it to a ring tone at a reasonable volume as vibrating takes up a lot of battery life.
You should avoid allowing your phone to be exposed to extreme heat for an extended period of time as heat drains battery life. Don't let your battery drain all the way down before you decide to recharge it. Constantly draining your battery completely and then recharging can reduce the amount of charge your battery can hold.
If you are roaming, turn your phone off until you are back into a regular service area. Roaming drains battery life quickly.
Laptops
Laptops offer extended-life batteries that are designed to last much longer than the standard batteries that come with the unit, but even then you can drain the extended-life battery if you do not monitor your power consumption. Set your laptop screen to the lowest possible brightness when you are using it on a battery. The brighter the screen the more power the laptop draws.
Avoid hooking up external devices to your laptop when it is on battery power. External devices that run through USB ports draw a tremendous amount of power and should be avoided when you are using your battery.
Avoid running anything that is CPU intensive while on a battery. High-resolution games with sound, multimedia presentations and online videos all draw a tremendous amount of power and can drain a battery quickly.
General Battery Usage
If you have a lot of devices in your home that run on battery power, consider investing in rechargeable batteries instead of the standard kind that you throw out. Rechargeable batteries can save you a lot of money over time, and they hold a charge just as well as a brand new disposable battery.
When you are not running something on a battery, take the batteries out and put them in the refrigerator. Even when a device is turned off it is still drawing a small amount of battery power, so extend the life of your batteries by removing them from devices when they are not in use. Batteries retain the power better when they are cold, so that is why they can be extended by being kept in the fridge.
Tags: your battery, battery life, battery power, your laptop, your phone, amount power
