Ensuring Your Phone Battery Charge Ahead of a Power Outage
Storm season is upon us! Around this time of year we all start thinking about "what if we have a storm and the power goes out". I've been through just three storms here that resulted in more than a few hours' power outage - one left us without power for a little over a day, and two knocked out the power for close to three days.
In these situations, I was okay with power-sleeping my way through the outage. I had food and essentials covered in the pantry.
But I didn't want to be without phone access, particularly my cell phone. I do still have a landline, and a simple old-style plug-in phone will run off the phone jack power. But I wanted to be reachable for family members, and there were weather and emergency apps on my mobile phone that I didn't want to be without. So the priority was to make sure I could keep it charged for a few days of light to moderate use.
Here are a few tips for safeguarding your mobile phone charge during an outage.
1) Disable apps that you don't need during an outage. (See Apps area in your Settings.)
2) Disable notifications from apps that you don't need. (See Notifications area in your Settings.)
3) Fully charge your mobile phone a few hours in advance of a predicted storm hit.
4) Get a portable charger - essentially a small battery pack - that you can use to give your phone at least a few recharges while the power is out. A small portable charger with a USB-MicroUSB cable, and a USB wall charger will do the trick. There are many models of charger available. One popular model series currently is the PowerCore 5000 which is very lightweight and economical
There are lots of other options people consider for keeping power during an outage, from using pricier UPS devices to installing generators. But if you're in a position to "weather the outage" and just want to keep your mobile communications line powered, the several tips above are at least some minimum steps to consider.
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