SOME VERY FIRST, AND OBVIOUS, TIPS

The most common complaint about the battery is that it “does not last.” In other words, we have in our minds the expectation that our mobile device shall remain powered by this battery for an indefinite time…and when it’s empty, it should recharge very quickly. We will revisit these concepts and solutions to them in subsequent blogs, but for now, I want to set, or rather reset, a few expectations.

First, remember to charge your better whenever you can. An empty battery is useless, and waiting 2 or 3 hours to charge your battery is very inconvenient if not annoying. Yes, you can carry one of these battery sleeves, but now you are carrying a brick, not a thin and stylish smartphone.

If you can and have the time, charge your mobile device using the USB cable attached to one of the ports of your PC or notebook. Yes, it is slow, but it will recharge the battery as you are working on something else. If you are at your desk, you don’t need the charging speed. And it’s way better than getting to your car and realizing you are now down to 20% remaining charge.

If you don’t sit at a desk, or you don’t have a notebook or a PC, put a couple of standard wall chargers around your house, and give your device some charging whenever you can. Of course, try to remember to charge your device at night. There’s no magic in this…it’s just some simple discipline to start with.

For an Apple mobile device, you can use the Apple wall chargers in addition to the USB port on a PC or Mac. Don’t worry about using an iPad wall charger to charge an iPhone or vice-versa. An iPad wall charger will not charge an iPhone any faster (well, with the rumored exception of the iPhone 6 Plus).

For an Android device, you can use a standard micro-USB wall charger (also known as AC adapter) as well as a USB port on your PC…it’s your choice. If you try to use a tablet AC adapter to charge your smartphone, there is a small risk you may damage your smartphone battery. That’s because if your smartphone is fairly new, say a year old or less, then the software inside your smartphone will protect it from drawing too much power and damaging its battery. But if you smartphone is older, then there is a risk it will draw more power from the larger tablet adapter and damage the battery.

One last tidbit…the difference between the wall charger of a tablet and a smartphone is the power rating, in other words, how much power the charger is capable of providing at its output. If you look at the standard AC adapter that comes with your smartphone (iPhone or Android or Windows), it will read typically “5V / 1.2A output“.  This means that it is capable of providing a maximum current of 1.2 Amps at 5 Volts, or an equivalent output power of 5 x 1.2 = 6 Watts. Output here is the electrical power that flows through the USB cable to your mobile device.  In comparison, a tablet AC adapter will provide nearly twice that power or about 12 Watts.

Finally, a car charger is very similar to your standard AC adapter. The difference is that the AC adapter takes 120V from your wall outlet and converts it to 5V that your mobile device can use. The car charger, by comparison, takes 12V from your car cigarette lighter outlet, and converts it to 5V.