How to extend your smartphone’s battery life ??

By Tecca | Today in Tech – Tue, Dec 20, 2011

 

Tips and tricks to make sure your most necessary gadget keeps going as long as you do

No matter what type of smartphone you have, the device can serve as your MP3 player, digital camera, gaming system, and even your TV while you're out and about — as long as you have battery power. If it seems like smarter phones are getting less life out of their batteries... you're absolutely right. Smartphones can help you get a lot done while traveling, but if you're doing a lot on one in a day, you're apt to see your screen go dark long before the sun goes down.

Watching out for a few small things during your day, however, can help extend battery life on your trusty device and make sure you've got enough juice to make it all day and well into the night.

Mixed signals
It takes extra juice for your smartphone to search for a data connection. If you're somewhere where you won't get a signal, like an airplane or subway, putting your phone in airplane mode or turning it off altogether will prevent it from draining your battery. Turning your phone on does require a bit of extra power, so it's best to save shutting it off for times when you plan to leave it off for a while, rather than something like a 20-minute subway ride to work in the morning. Thinking of it as car mode or subway mode instead of airplane mode might just be the mental trick you need!

Likewise, turn off wifi when you don't need it. When it's active, your phone scans for available wifi connections constantly, which kills battery life. If you're using the wifi in a coffee shop or bookstore, remember to disable that connection when you're done to avoid draining your battery while you're on the road.

Your battery bleeds faster when you're inattentive

Focus on the task at hand
Sure, you can have your email open, search for directions to a local restaurant, watch a video on YouTube, and play Angry Birds at the same time — but chances are you're really only focused on one of those tasks. Everything you have open on your phone is using some amount of battery power. Try to focus on doing just one thing at a time on your phone, and close unnecessary applications to keep them from draining your battery.

Things like your GPS and the bluetooth connection you use to connect to your hands-free device in the car gobble up a ton of battery power and are of no use to you unless you're doing a few specific tasks. 

Bright future
Bright screens look great but are a huge drain on your phone's battery. To stretch your phone's life, go into the controls or settings and dim the backlight or brightness of your screen. While the dimmest setting might be difficult to read (especially if you're somewhere brightly lit), something toward the middle will extend your battery life without putting too much strain on your eyes. If your phone has an auto-brightness option, using that can be a one-step solution to balancing battery life and ease of reading.

Along those same lines, try to avoid using animated backgrounds on your phone. Remember, the less you ask of your phone, the less it draws on your battery.

Bad vibrations
It takes more battery power for your phone to vibrate than it does to ring. While you absolutely want to have your phone on vibrate (or turned off) when you're at a movie or in a meeting, keeping your ringer on at other times can help extend battery life.

Mandatory nap time
Just as you would with a toddler, the easiest way to make sure your smartphone's battery lasts all night is to give it a nap at some point during the day. If you're headed into a meeting for a few hours, turn off your phone and leave it in your desk. Likewise, if you're out to dinner with close friends or on a date, turn off your phone and focus on your companions. Not only will you look like a better employee and friend for focusing on the people around you in real life, you'll also save that much more juice for later.

Still having trouble?
If you still find yourself running out of battery life before the end of the day, plug into a charging bag or use an external battery pack such as Morphie's JuicePack to strap on some extra power for the road.

Review: It's not an iPhone 5, but so what?

By RACHEL METZ - AP Technology Writer |

Related Content

• Enlarge PhotoIn this photo taken Monday Oct. 10, 2011, Siri, the new virtual assistant, is displayed …

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — To some people, Apple's new iPhone 4S isn't the overhaul they have been hoping for. Its model number, which doesn't include a "5," stinks of the status quo.
That's ridiculous.

Sure, the 4S doesn't render the iPhone 4 obsolete, and on the surface they're nearly identical. But with a faster processor, new software, a voice-activated personal assistant and a souped-up camera, it's a major improvement.

The 4S will be available Friday in black or white. It will cost $199 to $399, depending on storage space. It requires a two-year service contract with Verizon Wireless, Sprint or AT&T.
If you have an iPhone 4, you may want to hold on to it for now. But if you're sporting an older model such as the 3GS or considering making the leap to an iPhone from another type of handset, it's an excellent excuse to buy one.

The coolest new feature on the 4S is Siri, a software-based personal assistant who responds to your voice in a somewhat robotic, yet soothing female tone.

Siri can do all sorts of things, from setting your alarm clock to finding a good local sushi joint to playing DJ with your music. She can't bring up websites, but she can search the Web for pretty much anything.
Once you let her know who you are and where you live, she can even do complex tasks such as reminding you to call your boyfriend when you get home, helped by the phone's location technologies such as GPS. She can understand conversational English, which is great because I was able to speak as I normally would (though I did have to enunciate well). This means you can say things like, "what's happening today?" or "what's going on today?" and she'll let you know what's on your calendar.

She's also a dictation dynamo, transcribing emails and texts much better than a phone running Google Inc.'s Android software. It would be awesome if she could intelligently insert punctuation marks, but she does get them if you tell her "period" or "exclamation point."

For a particularly difficult test, I read a random paragraph from a copy of "The New Yorker" to the 4S and to an Android smartphone. Siri didn't get all the words correct, but she overwhelmingly beat the competition.
Of course, after spending all this time together, I wanted to know all about Siri. I asked her a bunch of personal questions, with mixed results. Her favorite color is something she doesn't know how to say — "sort of greenish, but with more dimensions." She changed the subject when I asked if she was seeing anyone.
Note for foul-language fans: Siri understands profanities, but she may chastise you. She did this to me, so I asked whether she had a problem with my language. She told me to get back to work. I apologized.

Beyond Siri, I was happy to see a better camera on the 4S, which has an 8-megapixel lens compared with 5 megapixels on the iPhone 4. My shots had sharper details as a result. The new camera can also take pictures faster, and a new lens gathers more light so pictures shot in dim lighting look better.

The addition of a camera icon on the phone's lock screen makes it easier to start snapping. Just double tap on the "home" button when the phone is asleep to bring up the icon, and tap that to open up the camera. Also, there's finally a physical camera button on the iPhone as the 4S's volume-up button does double duty.
You can even record high-definition videos in 1080p on the 4S — the best resolution currently available on a consumer camera.

The iPhone 4S has the latest version of Apple's mobile software, iOS 5, which seems geared toward making the phone even easier to use.

One of the best additions to iOS 5 is iMessage, which lets you send texts, photos or videos to other Apple devices over Wi-Fi or your wireless carrier's data network. That makes it easier to send texts to iPads and other devices that aren't phones. It also saves you texts, if you're not on an unlimited text plan.

With the iOS 5 upgrade, swiping the top of the screen now brings up a handy notification page, which shows you things such as appointments, reminders, weather and stock quotes.

IOS 5 also gets points for allowing you to step away from your computer: You can set up your iPhone and receive software updates on the device itself, without plugging it in.

In addition, it includes Apple's new iCloud content-syncing software, which can store your content online and push it wirelessly to your devices. If you buy lots of digital content from Apple, you'll like how it can automatically add songs, apps and e-books from Apple's iBookstore to all your iCloud-connected devices. Unfortunately, it doesn't do this with TV shows or movies, so you'll have to go into iTunes on the device to download them or sync the content from a computer.

The iPhone 4S's performance is noticeably bumped up by a new dual-core A5 chip, which is the same processor in the latest iPad. With this chip, the phone can process graphics and complete other tasks much faster. Web pages, especially graphics-heavy ones, loaded faster than they do on the iPhone 4
Call quality was decent over Verizon Wireless' network, though it sounded a bit flat. Calls are supposed to be improved on the 4S with the inclusion of two antennas that the phone can use to receive or send data.

With location services on and using a combination of Wi-Fi and 3G cellular service, I got about six hours of copious texting, websurfing, video-watching and calling out of the 4S before the battery needed recharging. Given this, it should hold up fine during a day of normal use.

If you have an iPhone but don't want to trade up to the 4S, you're not entirely left out: iOS 5, which includes iCloud, will be available Wednesday as a free update for the iPhone 4 and 3GS, both iPad models and later versions of the iPod Touch.

If you don't have an iPhone, however, the 4S is a great one to get, even if its name doesn't include a "5."

iPhone 5 and iOS 5: What We Know So Far

By Daniel Ionescu, PCWorld   

Apple revs its next generation iPhone and iOS 5 mobile operating system next week. The details of Apple's announcement are unknown, but the veil of Apple silence is lifting - quickly. Earlier this week Apple sent out invitations to an October 4 event, tagged “Let’s talk about iPhone.” With the announcement date so tantalizingly close, it’s time to take a look at what we know so far about the next iPhone and iOS 5.

What We Know: iPhone 5

Design: Two theories prevail about what the next iPhone will look like. Theory one is an all-new design device (iPhone 5), which would feature a tear-shaped design with a metal back and a slimmer body, while theory two (iPhone 4S) is that it would look identical to the iPhone 4, but with bumped-up specs. A survey pointed that the iPhone 5 is the most anticipated of the two by consumers.
Features: Regardless of the design of the next iPhone, there are same sure-fire bets over the specs. It’s expected the A5 dual-core processor currently found on the iPad 2 to make its way to the new iPhone, as well as more RAM and a higher-resolution camera, possibly 8 megapixels.
Availability: October 4 is expected to be only the announcement date of the new iPhone, with Apple Insider tipping that the weekend starting Friday, October 14 is the one you’ll want to put aside for queuing outside your nearest Apple store. If Apple uses the iPad 2 model and releases the phone 10 days after the announcement, then October 14 or 15 could see the new iPhone reach the first consumers.
Carriers & Price: The new iPhone is expected to cost $199 with a two-year contract, just as with previous iterations of the device. The iPhone is now currently available on AT&T and Verizon, and Sprint is anticipated to be the next in line to get the new iPhone this year, says the Wall Street Journal, but not T-Mobile.

What We Know: iOS 5

Known Features: Developers had a chance to play with a beta version of iOS 5 for a few months now, and Apple showcased the major new features as well. The big changes in iOS 5 include several improvements to Mail and Safari, a notification center similar to Android’s, Twitter integration and iMessage, an instant messaging platform for iOS devices. iCloud, Apple’s cloud storage solution is also integrated in iOS 5, so you can re-download purchased music, apps or books to any of your devices or computer, while the master copy resides with Apple.
Surprise Features: Apple is believed to have kept back from the iOS 5 beta one surprise feature – the integration of voice assisted functions in the iPhone. Anecdotal evidence from the likes of 9 To 5 Mac surfaced over the past few weeks that you will be able to dictate texts and emails your iPhone, as well as have incoming messages read to you by the phone.
Availability: If Apple sticks to previous OS release schedules, then iOS 5 should be available a few days ahead of the next iPhone, in order to avoid Apple’s servers melting down. Apple Insider reports Apple has blacked out employee vacations October 9 through to 12 too, which indicates the possible arrival date of iOS 5 to current iPhone 3GS and 4 owners, as well as iPad owners and the 2009 and 2010 models of iPod Touch.

10 Things That Make Your Home a Target for Thieves

10 Things That Make Your Home a Target for Thieves

by Celia Kuperszmid Lehrman

A home is robbed every 14.6 seconds and the average dollar loss per burglary is $2,119, according to statistics just released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And that's the good news because burglaries were down slightly in 2010 compared to 2009. Sure you lock your doors and windows when you're not home (you'd be surprised how many people don't). But here are ten things that you're probably doing that make your home a target, and what you should do instead:

1. Leaving your garage door open or unlocked. Once inside the garage, a burglar can use any tools you haven't locked away to break into your home, out of sight of the neighbors. Interior doors between the garage and your home often aren't as strong as exterior doors and may not have deadbolt locks.

Instead: Always close and lock the garage door. Consider getting a garage-door opener with random codes that automatically reset.

2. Hiding spare keys. Burglars know about fake rocks and leprechaun statues and will check under doormats, in mailboxes, and over doorways.

Instead: Give a spare set to a neighbor or family member.

3. Storing ladders outdoors or in unlocked sheds. Burglars can use them to reach the roof and unprotected upper floor windows.

Instead: Keep ladders under lock and key.

4. Relying on silent alarm systems. Everyone hates noisy alarms, especially burglars. Smart thieves know that it can take as long as 10 to 20 minutes for the alarm company or cops to show up after an alarm has been tripped.

Instead: Have both silent and audible alarms.

5. Letting landscaping get overgrown. Tall hedges and shrubs near the house create hiding spots for burglars who may even use overhanging branches to climb onto your roof.

Instead: Trim any bushes and trees around your home.

6. Keeping your house in the dark. Like overgrown landscaping, poor exterior lighting creates shadows in which burglars can work unobserved.

Instead: Replace burned out bulbs promptly, add lighting where needed, and consider putting fixtures on motion sensors or light sensors so that they go on automatically.

7. Not securing sliding doors. These often make tempting targets.

Instead: When you're out, put a dowel down in the channel, so that the door can't be opened wide enough for a person to get through.

8. Relying on your dog to scare away burglars. While barking my deter amateurs, serious burglars know that dogs may back away from someone wielding a weapon, or get chummy if offered a treat laced with a tranquilizer.

Instead: Make your home look occupied by using timers to turn lights, radios, and TVs on and off in random patterns.

9. Leaving "goody" boxes by the curb. Nothing screams "I just got a brand new flat-screen, stereo, or other big-ticket item" better than boxes by the curb with your garbage cans.

Instead: Break down big boxes into small pieces and bundle them together so that you can't tell what was inside.

10. Posting vacation photos on Facebook. Burglars troll social media sites looking for targets.

Instead: Wait until you get back before sharing vacation details or make sure your security settings only allow trusted "friends" to see what you're up to.

Corprorate Lesson

The Benefit of Banana

This is interesting. After reading this, you'll never look at a banana in the same way again. Bananas contain three natural sugars - sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fiber. A banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy. Research has proven that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder the banana is the number one fruit with the world's leading athletes. But energy isn't the only way a banana can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet. Depression: According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier. PMS: Forget the pills - eat a banana. The vitamin B 6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood. Anemia: High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia. Blood Pressure: This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit's ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke. Brain Power: 200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert. Constipation: High in fiber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives. Hangovers: One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system . Heartburn: Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief. Morning Sickness: Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness. Mosquito bites: Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation. Nerves: Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system.   Overweight and at work? Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and crisps. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady. Ulcers: The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.   Temperature control: Many other cultures see bananas as a "cooling" fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand, for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Bananas can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer tryptophan.  Smoking &Tobacco Use: Bananas can also help people trying to give up smoking. The B 6, B 12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal. Stress: Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium banana snack.  Strokes: According to research in The New England Journal of Medicine, eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%! Warts: Those keen on natural alternatives swear that if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of banana skin and place it on the wart, with the yellow side out. Carefully hold the skin in place with a plaster or surgical tape! So, a banana really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrate, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say, "A banana a day keeps the doctor away!"