Some of these ideas are common sense, but if you’re stuck somewhere without access to your battery charger, these battery saving tips may come in handy.
Tips on Saving Battery Life
- Turn off all sounds and vibration – shut off the vibration mechanism and the ringing sounds. Go completely silent. Granted, if you do not get too many phone calls, this won’t help you all that much.
- Shut off your bluetooth connection – searching for your bluetooth device and keeping it active takes power.
- Pause automatic email / data syncing – anytime your cell phone needs to transfer data over the cell phone network, it requires power. If your cell phone supports 3G technologies, you can expect this higher bandwidth benefit to require more power than traditional cell phone transmission technologies. Shut it off and set it to manual.
- Lower your brightness / contrast – you’ll suffer in terms of readability but unless you’re doing a lot of text messaging, dialing phone numbers and taking calls shouldn’t require you to look at your screen.
- Use text messaging – instead of calling someone, try text messaging if the message is short and to the point. Text messaging requires much less power than making a voice connection through a cell phone tower. Message a land-line number you can be reached at instead.
- Shut off your phone – yes this defeats the purpose of having the ability to take calls anywhere you want, but desperate times calls for desperate measures! Turn it on to check for voice messages / text messages.
Bonus Tip: Let’s say you’ve forgotten your cell phone charger at home and you’ve already boarded the plane for a 4 day trip to some remote location. What can you do if your cell phone is your only reliable source of communication for the entire trip? When checking into your hotel, ask them if they have any cell phone chargers. Every hotel I’ve been usually has a LARGE box of cell phone chargers that were left in rooms. They usually just give it to me even when I ask just to borrow it.
Looks like Apple is in the same boat as Dell – they both use Sony-made batteries. You do not want your laptop to explode, period.
Prepare to send in your batteries.
Be safe.
If you haven’t heard already, there are several Dell laptop batteries that have been recalled due to the danger of spontaneous combustion. Here are a few mug shots:
If you want to know more about why your batteries may be susceptible to exploding then check it out here.
Straight from the horse’s mouth:
Potentially affected batteries were sold with the following models of Dell notebook computers or separately as secondary batteries:
- Latitude: D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620, D800, D810
- Inspiron: 500M, 510M, 600M, 700M, 710M, 6000, 6400, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 9400, E1505, E1705
- Precision: M20, M60, M70, M90
- XPS: XPS, XPS Gen2, XPS M170, XPS M1710
If you have one of these – it’s time to swap. Check out the Dell Website for more details.
Be safe.