Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Smart Phone, Dumb Battery

[There is an update at the end.]

So I finally got a smart phone because it made sense for me to have one professionally despite the annoying monthly cost. (I'm one of those I.T. people),  I must admit that I love having a small computer with an internet connection right in my hand whenever I want.  It's way cool.  I can be in a lengthy presentation and don't have to be away from work email.

But what I'm not happy at all about is the smartphone's battery is lucky to make it through the day and only if I turn it off part of the time.  Dumbphone will last for 3 days.

I still have dumbphone and have completely mixed feelings about giving up on it.  I sometimes go into the wilderness and for safety want to have a working phone with me.  I think if I get into the habit of turning the phone off in that situation it will work, but the thought of having the phone just completely die is very unsettling.

I could just get an additional dumbphone and have it be a pay-as-you-go phone (my dumbphone is ancient and needs to be replaced though it has outlived two younger phones).  T-Mobile has a great deal where you pay $100 for 1000 minutes, but T-Mobile doesn't have the best reception in my area.  I switched to Verizon for their great reception, but their pay-as-you-go deals are not good deals.

There is also a Motorola device that holds two charges which sounds intriguing and would be cheaper than carrying a second phone.

But I think I need to buck up and at least take the leap and stop paying contract prices for two phones.

A friend of mine who keeps up with these things tells me there are 100 companies working on this battery issue as it affects everyone with a smartphone and that's a lot of irritation.

In the meantime I get to get used to charging my phone every night.



So after that bit of whining I came across Battery Defender.
I was dubious at first but let it install.

What it does it that it puts a lot of unused applications to sleep (and I had already disabled or uninstalled several of them too.)  As a result I now have a phone that can easily go two days which is much more livable.