How to maximize phone and camera battery life | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Today, lithi­um-ion, lithi­um-poly­mer bat­ter­ies are installed in smart­phones and cam­eras. They have many advan­tages. For exam­ple, they work up to 3–4 times longer than alka­line coun­ter­parts. But their main draw­back is degra­da­tion. Grad­u­al­ly, the bat­tery los­es capac­i­ty. It is impos­si­ble to pre­vent this, but it is pos­si­ble to slow it down. Want to learn how to max­i­mize the life of your phone and cam­era or pow­er bank bat­tery? Gath­ered use­ful tips in this arti­cle.

There is no way to pre­vent bat­tery degra­da­tion. But prop­er use will help pro­long its life. Pho­to: taldom-gorod.ru

How to extend the bat­tery life of your smart­phone
recharge cycle
Using a smart­phone in high and low tem­per­a­tures
Long charge
Non-orig­i­nal charg­er (charg­er)
Bat­tery stor­age rules
How to extend cam­era bat­tery life
Dis­abling wire­less fea­tures
Viewfind­er
Pow­er sav­ing mode
Using flash
View­ing the pho­tos you have tak­en
Turn­ing the cam­era on and off
Bat­tery hypother­mia
Sev­er­al bat­ter­ies to replace a dead device

How to extend the battery life of your smartphone

recharge cycle

This des­ig­na­tion means a full charge of the bat­tery up to 100% and its full dis­charge to 0%. Phone bat­ter­ies are rat­ed for 400–500 cycles. After that, it is bet­ter to change the bat­tery for a new one.

An impor­tant para­me­ter is the depth of dis­charge. It is equal to the used charge lev­el. For exam­ple, if a smart­phone indi­cates a bat­tery lev­el of 45%, then the dis­charge lev­el is 55%.

If you reduce the depth of dis­charge, you can slight­ly extend the bat­tery life of your iPhone and oth­er phone. This also applies to a full charge up to 100%.

Con­clu­sion: you can extend the life of the bat­tery (bat­tery) with­out dis­charg­ing it to 0%, and with­out charg­ing it up to 100%. Lithi­um bat­ter­ies are opti­mal­ly main­tained at a charge lev­el of 40–80%.

If the phone is often com­plete­ly dis­charged and then charged to 100%, the bat­tery quick­ly fails. Pho­to: my-pk.ru

Using a smartphone in high and low temperatures

The oper­at­ing range for lithi­um bat­ter­ies is on aver­age from ‑20 to +50 C. But heat­ing to a max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture or strong cool­ing will adverse­ly affect the bat­tery:

• over­heat­ing may cause unpre­dictable con­se­quences up to fire. Using your smart­phone out­doors in hot weath­er will not reduce the bat­tery lev­el at that par­tic­u­lar moment. But this will accel­er­ate the degra­da­tion of the bat­tery;
• when cooled, the exchange of ions slows down, the capac­i­ty is halved. Fre­quent rep­e­ti­tion of the sit­u­a­tion leads to the rapid exhaus­tion of the bat­tery resource.

Work­ing at bor­der­line val­ues ​​is also unde­sir­able. The opti­mal per­for­mance is 10–15 degrees less than the max­i­mum (from ‑10–5 to + 35–40 ° C).

Con­clu­sion: You can extend the ser­vice life by fol­low­ing the rules of oper­a­tion. The phone should not be used out­doors in frost, extreme heat, in rooms where the tem­per­a­ture is above or below accept­able val­ues.

A smart­phone that turns off in the cold is no longer a rar­i­ty. Pho­to: ichip.ru

Long charge

Con­nect­ing your smart­phone all night to the net­work is con­ve­nient, but wrong. There are 3 rea­sons to give up this habit:

• unwant­ed 100% charge, which reduces the num­ber of avail­able recharge cycles — and there­fore reduces the life of the device;
• over­heat. This will accel­er­ate the degra­da­tion of the bat­tery, may lead to a fire haz­ard;
• the bat­tery is con­stant­ly “in good shape”. If the bat­tery los­es its charge a lit­tle, it is imme­di­ate­ly replen­ished (by con­nect­ing to the net­work). Because of this, the unde­sir­able lev­el of 100% charge is con­stant­ly reached.

Con­clu­sion: the smart­phone needs to be con­nect­ed to the net­work when it can be con­trolled. As soon as it is charged up to 80%, it can be dis­con­nect­ed from the net­work.

Leav­ing the phone con­nect­ed to the net­work for a long time is dan­ger­ous. This can lead to over­heat­ing and seri­ous dam­age. Pho­to: lokerex.com

Non-original charger (charger)

Mem­o­ry from oth­er smart­phones or Chi­nese ana­logues of orig­i­nal devices can also harm the phone:

• if the mem­o­ry from anoth­er smart­phone mod­el has less pow­er, the phone will take longer to charge. This can lead to over­heat­ing, swelling of the bat­tery or fur­ther dam­age;
• cheap coun­ter­parts are often made from low-qual­i­ty mate­ri­als. As a result, the device can­not pro­vide the nec­es­sary cur­rent strength or pro­tect against volt­age surges. Due to its surges, the cable with the charg­ing con­nec­tor, the bat­tery, the pow­er con­troller and the charge con­troller can be dam­aged.

Con­clu­sion: it is bet­ter to buy the orig­i­nal charg­er, and not ana­logues.

It is bet­ter to use the orig­i­nal smart­phone charg­er. Pho­to: itcrumbs.ru

Battery storage rules

Lithi­um-based bat­ter­ies wear out even when not in use. In order for them to degrade less, you need to fol­low the stor­age rules:

• must be stored in a dry, cool place (between 0 and 25°C). If the room is damp, the bat­tery should be placed in a sealed plas­tic bag;
• should keep the charge lev­el 40–50% (recharge from time to time).

Con­clu­sion: it is impor­tant to fol­low the rules for stor­ing bat­ter­ies. No need to pre-pur­chase addi­tion­al bat­ter­ies “in reserve”.

No need to stock up on bat­ter­ies for your phone. It is bet­ter to buy them when the need aris­es. Pho­to: droidnews.ru

How to extend camera battery life

These tips are rel­e­vant for all lithi­um bat­ter­ies. No mat­ter where they are: in a smart­phone, cam­era or oth­er device.

The first tip, which deals with the incom­plete recharge cycle, is espe­cial­ly impor­tant. The less often the bat­tery is com­plete­ly dis­charged to 0%, the longer it will last. But how can you make your cam­era bat­tery drain slow­er and last longer? Gath­ered some tips.

Com­pli­ance with the cor­rect stor­age and use of the bat­tery will extend its ser­vice life. Pho­to: ephotozine.com

Disabling wireless features

If the cam­era is equipped with Wi-Fi and GPS (and they are not need­ed dur­ing shoot­ing), then it is bet­ter to turn them off. Since they con­sume a lot of charge.

Viewfinder

If the bat­tery pow­er is low and the cam­era is equipped with an opti­cal viewfind­er, turn off the LCD screen using the “Menu”. The LCD screen is handy, but it con­sumes a lot of pow­er. And if you aban­don it in favor of an opti­cal viewfind­er, you can extend the bat­tery life by anoth­er 30–60 min­utes.

Power saving mode

Not every­one is com­fort­able using the viewfind­er. There­fore, instead of com­plete­ly turn­ing off the LCD screen, you can sim­ply reduce its bright­ness.

Using flash

Con­tin­ued use of the flash will drain the bat­tery quick­ly. Turn it off if there is no real need for a flash, and it is impor­tant to save the charge.

Viewing the photos you have taken

The longer the LCD screen is in play­back mode, the faster the bat­tery drains. If you’re low on bat­tery, don’t spend a lot of time brows­ing and delet­ing pho­tos.

If you need to save bat­tery pow­er, you do not need to spend a lot of time view­ing, sort­ing, delet­ing frames on the cam­era. Pho­to: 1zoom.ru

Turning the camera on and off

Each time you turn it on and off, there is an addi­tion­al loss of ener­gy. It is bet­ter to enable “Sleep Mode”. The device will auto­mat­i­cal­ly go into the max­i­mum ener­gy sav­ing mode (in case of inac­tiv­i­ty). The wait­ing peri­od (before turn­ing on the mode) can be spec­i­fied inde­pen­dent­ly; the fac­to­ry set­tings usu­al­ly spec­i­fy 1 minute.

Battery hypothermia

The low­er the out­side tem­per­a­ture, the faster the bat­tery will drain. At low tem­per­a­tures, the exchange of ions slows down, the capac­i­ty is halved. Fre­quent rep­e­ti­tion of the sit­u­a­tion leads to degra­da­tion of the bat­tery. No need to store the bat­tery on an unheat­ed bal­cony, keep it inside a cold cham­ber for a long time.

If you have to shoot out­doors in win­ter, and you have to get to the loca­tion in the cold, it is bet­ter to put the bat­tery in the inside pock­et. She will stay warm, and this will keep her work­ing. Or you can buy a good pho­to back­pack. In it, the equip­ment will be pro­tect­ed from cold and bad weath­er bet­ter than in a reg­u­lar case.

Several batteries to replace a dead device

If the bat­tery lev­el tends to zero, it is bet­ter to replace it with anoth­er one in time. It will take a few min­utes, but will extend the life of the bat­tery (after all, it will not be com­plete­ly dis­charged). There­fore, it is bet­ter to have 2–3 spare options always with you. Espe­cial­ly if it’s a long trip.

There are cam­eras designed for long shots. If the dura­tion of work from a sin­gle charge is impor­tant, you can imme­di­ate­ly pay atten­tion to such mod­els. They can take 1000 pho­tos on a sin­gle charge. For exam­ple: Canon 250D (1600) and Nikon D3500 (1550). By the way, Nikon D3500 is a good option for a begin­ner, and there is mate­r­i­al about it in our blog.