Smartphones, tablets and other similar gadgets have become an indispensable part of our everyday lives. We use it to stay in touch with our friends and family, to organize our business and private routines, to have fun and to capture various moments in our lives, big and small. All these activities take their toll on the device’s battery, and when you’re on a tour to Israel, for example, and not planning on getting near a charger for most of the day, keeping your electronics alive is an even bigger challenge. And you’d definitely need your little gadgety companion to immortalize those beautiful moments of travel or to find your way around, with the help of a map app.
Here are a few things to consider while you prepare for your next trip.
Adjust settings
To make your battery’s life last longer, you can adjust settings on your tablet or phone that take up a lot of battery juice. Adjusting the setting varies by device, but they can be found in the general setting section. Some of the steps to do so include:
- Dimming the screen: when your screen runs constantly at the full brightness mode, it uses more power. Turn your screen’s brightness to the lowest setting; this mode will use less power.
- Adjusting screen timeout: Your screen shuts off once it’s been idle for some time. It is a great way to preserve your device’s battery life. You can always use a button to turn off the screen once you don’t need to use your phone or tablet, or you can adjust the settings of your screen timeout at about 1 minute, or even less.
- Turn off Wi-Fi: Leaving Wi-Fi on when you don’t need it uses a lot of power. Once you don’t need the internet anymore, turn Wi-Fi off. The same applies to Bluetooth.
- Turn off notifications: Receiving notifications is important, but when you’re trying to make the most of your battery life, turning them off will definitely help. Sometimes, you’ll have to do it manually for each app, or you can disable syncing on services you do not use during your trip. These two steps depend on your device, whether you’re an iOS or Android user.
- Minimize apps: Apps take a lot of power. If you’re not planning to use some apps during your trip, turn them off. Our phones and tablets keep some apps running until we turn them off.
- Turn on Airplane Mode: When you turn on airplane mode, it will disable all wireless features of your device, such as Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, cellular data, and other location services.
- Turn off vibrate: Vibrating uses more power than a ringtone. If you do not want to disturb others with ringtones, and still want to save battery life, turn off notification indicators and make sure to leave your device so you can see it anytime.
Have an emergency backup
If you have difficulties finding a battery case for your tablet or phone, you can try an external battery pack. There are some universal backup batteries that are compatible with any micro-USB powered device.
They are quite small and can fit any bag you carry around while sightseeing, or hiking. All you need to do is charge it at home and take it wherever you go. To charge these batteries, you can use your standard home wall charger.
You can also find some solar powered chargers, such as Joos Orange battery pack. Another one is the Tekkeon TekCharge. A great thing about these packs is that they include multiple adapters and can charge various kinds of mobile devices.
Get a battery case
To add extra battery life, you can use a battery case. Battery cases have connector plugs that match your phone’s charge port.
They are a bit pricey, but they are definitely worth every penny. One of the high-quality battery cases is the Mophie Juice Pack Plus, which doubles a phone’s battery life. You can sync your phone using the USB-to-Micro-USB cable. This battery case has an on/off switch so you can control it.
You can also find external battery cases for tablets. They are a great choice if you watch videos during your flight or car trip. One of such external battery cases is the Padacs Enduro. It is a slim battery that provides 8000mAh- just plug the adapter cable into your tablet and turn it on when the battery gets low.
A car charger
If you are on a road trip, a car charger is a must. One of the most popular car chargers is a super powerful The Scosche Revolt C2 Dual USB car charger. It has two USB ports so you can charge two devices at the same time. With 10 watts of power supply each, you can charge both devices at their normal charging rate.
