Without power our fancy gadgets are merely
expensive paperweights, so it pays to have A plan B to get you through the day.
There's nothing worse than feeling a little
flat late in the day, especially when there's still work to be done. Just like
your mid-afternoon coffee, your gadgets might also need a pick-me-up to make it
through.
The battery lives of our devices are
certainly improving, but it can still be a struggle for your smartphone,
notebook or tablet to make it through a busy day on a single charge. Thankfully
there are plenty of options for people on the go who can’t afford for their
gadgets to run flat.
Time
for your nap – One way to conserve MacBook power is to adjust the sleep and
display dimming settings in the Energy Saver preference pane.
Make it go further
Before you go spending money on extra
charges and other gadgets, it’s worth seeing what you can do to stretch your
battery life a little further.
The screen is one of the biggest battery hogs
on most gadgets and you’ll find that turning down the brightness even a little
can make a big difference.
One
for all – If you have multiple iPads and iPhones, recharge stations like the
Kanex Sydnee make power management a lot easier
If you’re cranked the brightness up to full
on your iGadgets, try sliding it back to 75 percent or less and turning on
auto-brightness. This change alone could be enough to get you through the day.
Reducing the time before the screen
automatically locks can also preserve your battery life.
The radio transmitters also chew through
power, so you might consider reducing the number of apps on your iGadgets which
use location services and push notifications. Also try switching some of your
email accounts to Fetch rather than Push, or telling those using Fetch to check
for new emails less often. With a MacBook, you can dip into the Energy Saver
settings to control how long the machine idles before the screen and hard drive
go to sleep. It’s probably set to automatically dim the display when running on
the internal battery.
Spare
yourself – It will set you back $25 to buy a spare Lightning to USB cable for
your desk at work
You can also go to the Displays preference
panel to alter the screen brightness and select ‘Automatically adjust
brightness’, which changes the brightness according to the ambient light in the
room. You can always override the brightness settings using the function keys.
If you’re running on fumes at the end of
the day, turning down the screen brightness even further is one of the best
ways to save power until you can make it to a charge. Disabling Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth can also make a difference, as well as dropping back from 3G/4G
mobile broadband to slower 2G. you also might want to kill non-essential apps running
in the background.
To it up
If you still can’t make it all the way home
on a single charge, you’ll need to look for ways to top up your gadgets during
the day.
In the good old days you could carry around
a second battery, but unfortunately Apple’s quest for thinner and lighter
devices means the batteries are sealed away in new iPhones, iPad and MacBooks.
Two
in one – The Scosche revolt c2 car charge allows you to charge two devices –
even two iPads – simultaneously. It even works with a free reVIVE battery
management iOS app.
Admittedly battery times are proving, but
it’s not always enough to get you through a busy day. If you’ve got an older
MacBook with a removable battery, you’ll find that Apple still sells spares.
If your devices get a good workout during
your daily commute then keeping a second charger on your desk at work could
make a difference. Topping up your gadgets during the day should hopefully be
enough to get you through the evening commute and back home.
Unfortunately, buying extra charges can
become an expensive exercise for Apple lovers. Apple doesn’t license the
MacBook MagSafe connector to third-party accessory makers and at the launch of
the Phone 5 there were no third-party Lightning accessories, so you’ve no
choice but to buy them all from Apple.
The MacBook power bricks and MagSafe
connectors are all one unit, but Apple does sell standalone iGadget USB charger
– so you could buy a second USB charger to leave on your desk and then throw
your 30-pin/ Lightning cable in your bag.
Surprisingly, Apple seems to have abandoned
making desktop docks for the iPhone 5 – docks designed to keep the phone
upright while charging so it doesn’t get scratched or knocked over.
“Most people who use docks use them with
speaker or clock systems,” says Apple senior vice president of marketing Philip
Schiller, so apparently that means no-one gets one.
The new Lightning connector seems strong
enough to hold up the iPhone 5 and, unlike earlier iPhones, you don’t need to
worry about bending pins inside the phone’s connector. As such you might be
able to build your own dock around a Lightning cable. As this story went to
print we hadn’t seen any third-party speaker docks/ chargers emerge to support
the iPhone 5, but the push is towards wireless-enable docks which stream audio
via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth (which of course doesn’t help with charging).
