Gadgetory

how can you make your batteries in your tablets and smartphones last longer no not that kind of longer we'll get into that in today's episode of the Android guy weekly all right so last week we talked about batteries specifically we talked about how batteries are holding us back our processors our screens our GPUs our radios everything that we're doing inside of our phones and tablets is using more and more power and that little battery right there is kind of holding us back because oh this guy is where does it say it's like 1750 milliamp hours yep right there 1750 milliamp hours that's not that much and the more powerful devices we get the more power we need to have in our batteries to be able to use them like we'd expect it was a good topic and then we went to the discussions the discussions we got into a lot more detail thank you guys for doing that and then the people who didn't have a lot of battery knowledge and expertise we're able to ask a lot of questions that a lot of the the people we had some guys in there with like electrical engineering degrees Wow they were able to help out a lot so if you haven't looked at the comments please after the video look at the comments add your own if you've got something you can add to the conversation please do if you've got a question that wasn't answered please ask that's what the Android guy weekly is all about interestingly one of the biggest topics from that whole discussion was how can I make my battery last longer okay everybody wants more battery life right exactly but that wasn't the question the question was how can I expand the lifespan you see batteries have a shelf life just like the gallon of milk that's in your fridge they don't last forever eventually they go sour batteries don't go sour like milk does they just kind of lose their ability to hold the charge you can still charge them in discharging but they lose the ability to hold it or the ability to hold it gets shorter and shorter and shorter so that you might not be able to get through an entire day so how can we make our batteries last longer and why is it such a big deal let's answer that second part first it's a big deal because take a look at your tablet I don't care if it's an Android or an iOS device take a look at it open it up tell me what size your batteries you can't open it up you say yeah your battery's stuck in there isn't it not easy to get out sure with the right tools and the right people you can do it but generally speaking that's not something an end-user is supposed to do so essentially you have a non replaceable battery in your tablet not cool sorry but it's not let's go over to smart phones the smart phones that I have are all end-user battery replaceable I can swap out a new battery no problem that's an advantage if I want to go on an extended trip and have a couple batteries in my pocket when I run out of juice I can turn it off pop the battery pop a new one in turn it back on I'm good to go or if I have a battery that dies I can pop a new it in I'm good to go or I can get an extended battery and have an extended amount of time that I can use my phone it's great I love it and it's fabulous but a lot of phones these days are coming out with non user replaceable batteries there are some advantages to that I'm not gonna go into that in this video but there are advantages and I don't I'm not gonna knock manufacturers for doing that but it does make our topic today even more poignant that's your vocabulary word for the day by the way the problem that most of us has is we don't know how to charge your phones I didn't know how to charge a battery did you know that I'm a ham radio guy go ahead and get your snickering over with okay great I was providing emergency communications out on antelope island you can look that up on Google Maps there's no power out there by the way well to a couple places where I was there was not so didn't have the power that we needed to run the radios the laptops the repeaters you know all of that stuff we had to bring in our own and a lot of it was battery based so we had a discussion about batteries me and an Elmer if you don't know what an Elmer is it's ham radio lingo you can look that up too he took some time to teach me about batteries he had a laptop there with a little digital sticky note on the screen that said charging disabled I didn't know why so he told me said you see I'm running this laptop off the power but I'm not charging the battery so I'm not discharging the battery either when I need the battery I have a battery when I don't need the battery I'm using the power it's great okay but why turn your battery charging off said that's the fastest way that you can kill a battery is by keeping it always charged blew me away I thought that that was completely ironic and it probably still is but you see batteries have an optimal run rate so this battery for example generally speaking I don't know this one specifically works best between 20% and 80% charged that's kind of the sweet spot for most batteries so you drop below 20% you're shortening how much life you can get out of your battery you go above 80% you're shortening the life that you get out of your battery now that's another problem see our smart phones aren't really reporting the true state of charge of our battery they're reporting something else and I don't really know what it is but it's to help you you know they want you to see hey you've got a hundred percent to you'll stay up really high percentages longer than you should and you'll stay above lower percentages longer than you should so it's not a straight line like one would imagine that it should be I don't know why they do that I don't know the whole ins and outs of that if you do let us know but by keeping your battery between 20 and 80 percent you are going to be able to use it for a lot longer three or four times longer than you normally would so how long should you use them well about two years is about the average length of time that you should expect to be able to use efficiently use a lithium ion or lithium polymer battery just so you know if you keep that thing charged all the time expect that to be cut in half if you discharged it or deep discharged that's where you run it below 20% specifically down to where your phone has to power off because it doesn't have enough juice that's also going to cut down the lifespan of your battery probably more than in half okay that's when you might get six to eight months if you continually deep discharge it it's not designed for deep discharge again and again and again okay it is but it has side effects okay don't do it so that's the tip keep your batteries somewhere between 20 and 80 percent that might mean that you just leave it on your desk throughout the day not plugged in until an hour before you go home by doing that you're going to be able to extend the lifespan of your battery which if you've got a device that you can't take the battery out of and replace that means you're going to expand or extend the life of your device if you do have a user replaceable battery like I do in my devices that just means you're not going to have to spend as much money on replacement batteries which is always a good thing and last thing to mention whenever you do have a battery that goes out make sure you take that back to your battery store for proper recycling do not just throw them away lithium is toxic you don't want that ending up in your groundwater okay so there's the environmentally friendly okay screw that I'm not environmentally friendly today I just don't want my kids to be poisoned tip of the day it's that fun enough all right so for another episode of Android guy weekly and how to get more life out of your batteries i'm joe levi and now it's your turn go down to the comments add your comments down there participate in the conversation give the video a big thumbs up make sure that you share it with your friends and head on over to pocketnow.com so that you can read all about this and our last article on batteries thanks for watching