Charge Your Phone Faster

Podcast - Charge Your Phone Faster . . .

Such agony! You're forced to stop playing your favorite online video game and plug your phone in to recharge its battery. And face it, some phones can take hours to charge.

Are you a heavy-duty smartphone user? I think this includes just about everybody these days.

According to Patrick Kiger in an article on How Stuff Works, the average American spends 4.7 hours a day staring at and tapping that tiny screen.

However, there is good news. You can reduce your phone anxiety by following this tip.

While charging, switch your phone to airplane mode. This way, the phone won't slow down the charging process by continually burning energy, trying to connect with cell phone towers, and plot your location with its GPS function.

This trick works. So dependably, that mobile provider Verizon recommends it.

The reason why is this, while your phone is in its regular mode, it's continually trying to signal the cell tower and pinpoint your location. Your phone has assisted GPS, which calculates your location coordinates using the cellphone network rather than satellites. This function burns up a lot of power.

How you ask? Because location-finding prevents your phone from going into energy-saving sleep mode.

When you switch to airplane mode, you turn off the reception of those radio transmissions, and as a result, your phone charges more quickly.

But don't get too excited. Because it turns out you don't really save that much time. When CNET tested this concept a few years ago, airplane mode only shaved four minutes off a phone's charging time in one test run and 11 minutes in another.

Try it, what have you got to lose? Well, then again, you might just miss a phone call. Or worse, a text message. No worries, you have voicemail, right? Or is your voicemail full? Well, that's another story.

There's always something. My suggestion, get back to your game.

"Won't you be my neighbor?" If you enjoy our weekly visits, please share them with a friend.

This is Patrick Ball; as always, thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

Comments

Mom Was Right

In this episode: Mom Was Right (Again!) . . . Remember that old saying, "Mom knows best?" Well, this week, it resonated profoundly. I vividly recall my mother's steadfast remedy for the common cold, which was ingrained in my 1960s childhood: "Rest in bed, drink plenty of fluids, and take aspirin to reduce pain and fever." . . . Or now that I think about it, this may have been a Bayer aspirin commercial–Simple . . . Fast-forward to the age of AI and endless medical information at our fingertips, and guess what? Not much has changed. Yet, somehow, this week, Lori and I were blindsided by a cold—the first in over five years. My incredulous "How could this be?" quickly morphed into a dawning realization. Our company's annual meeting, a melting pot of colleagues from Illinois, Texas, Vietnam, Colorado, Northern California, and the Central Valley, was a veritable petri dish of germs. And, oh, the germs found me! Getting sick, especially after a long str...

Whispers of Spring

In this episode, Whispers of Spring . . . Spring has a way of sneaking in when you’re not looking. One day, you’re shaking off the last chill of winter, and the next, you realize the light has shifted, stretching shadows just a little longer. It didn’t make a big fuss about it—no dramatic entrance, no trumpets—just a quiet unfolding, like an old dog settling into a sunny spot on the porch. Last week, Daylight Saving Time kicked in, which meant we all fumbled with our clocks, grumbled a bit, and then, like frogs taken aback by a warm rain, leapt forward into longer evenings. The sun now lingers, in no rush to set, hanging in the sky like a tossed coin that refuses to fall. With the extra daylight, we find ourselves drawn outside once again, migrating to the back patio like folks are drawn to a warm campfire. The lawn chairs are right where we left them, waiting like old friends. The air hums with wind chimes, their tuned cylinders catching the breeze and weaving together something that...

Special April Fools' Edition: Did You Fall For It?

In this episode: Special April Fools' Edition: Did You Fall For It? (And a Little Baseball Nonsense) Welcome, fellow baseball aficionados and purveyors of the peculiar, to a very special, dare we say unpredictable, issue of On the Fly! Today, the air is thick with . . . well, probably just regular air, but a specific mischievous something is buzzing around. Can you feel it? Does that tingling sensation make you double-check your shoelaces and suspiciously eye any unusual packages? Yes, dear readers, it’s April 1st! A day steeped in mystery, shrouded in playful deception, and frankly, a day where you shouldn't believe anything you read (except maybe this . . .maybe). But before we descend into a whirlwind of whimsical falsehoods (don’t worry, we’ll mostly keep it light!), let’s take a quick, slightly wobbly, historical flight through the origins of this most unreliable of holidays. Whispers from the annals suggest a few intriguing possibilities for why we dedicate this particula...

At 92–Don's Digital Daydream

Listen to the audio here. In a world of his own–lives, ole' Doctor Don, Not one world, but three, 'til the setting of the sun! There’s his Blog-World , so bright, with words all a-whirl, And Book-World , with stories of boy and girl! Then, Day-World , where legs didn't leap, didn't run, Just shuffled and creaked 'til each day is done. But his brain, oh, his mind, it’s zippy and keen, A most curious fellow that ever was seen! At ninety and two, with a twinkle so bright, He met Chatty and said, "What a strange delight!" This box with the answers, so quick and so bold, Of theology and stories, new truths to unfold!" "Integrity, relationships, where do they fit? This thing makes me wonder, bit by bit!" He ponders and pokes with laughter and a grin, "Til POOF! he has gone to a world from within! A world made of words, a fantastical place, Where limits of the body, left not a trace! He Soares, and he zooms, with a thought and a rhyme, Trans...

On The Fly

Search This Blog