With all of these new wearable devices
coming out of the woodwork (watches, glasses, fitness gear, etc), a growing condition;
I call BAD (Battery Anxiety Disorder), seems to be getting much worse.
While my kids will probably kill me for posting this, the
anxiety they have over their smartphones and tablets losing power is
real. My daughter Nicole seriously starts to panic when her iPhone gets
below 70%. She constantly recharges her device to make sure it is topped off at
100% before leaving the house and even knows when it is at a low 100% or a high
100% (sounds strange, but they know). If she walks out of the door for
school at 99%, the panic for her next charge starts to kick in. She tells
me how the kids at school find strategic times and places to charge up during
the day.
During our last car ride to North Carolina, my kids were
almost fighting over the use of the in car charger. The bargaining that
was going on to juice up their phones was intense and at many times downright
mean.
How is this going to play out as the new devices enter the
marketplace? As the desire to carry fewer chargers will never be met, we
all must get use to the inevitable new world of power management.
As crazy as it sounds, it wouldn’t surprise me if schools
don’t cover this eventually.
As I started giving Nicole some tips to better manage her
power, I realized some of these may not actually be known by all, so here goes:
- Dim
your screen. Most people know this one. I don’t even know how some folks
can see their barely lit screens.
- Shut
off background apps. Depending on the device OS (iOS, Android,
Windows Phone, etc) you need to shut down apps that may be running and
polling for updates. I forget to do this one many times and find my fully
charged device almost dead by morning.
- Hit
the suspend button when fished (typically tapping the on/off
button). This will turn off the screen immediately versus waiting for your
screen timeout to kick in.
- Shut
down or pause GPS. Again, depending on the device you might find
this a pain in the neck. There are a few 3rd party apps
for each platform that might make it a quicker task. This one tends
to drain my devices battery very fast.
- Notifications
from applications can also be a big drainer if you have a ton of
connections and updates happening 24/7 from apps. Think about the
ones you really need and set up only those.
Note: Many more power saving tips are searchable on
the internet, but might require more user interaction (temporarily disabling
and enabling wi-fi, Bluetooth, etc).
Devices have also emerged on the market to relieve many
immediate needs to re-power devices quickly. This one was just invented
by a teen and should be on the market shortly:
Good luck controlling your BAD!
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