As hurricane brews, how to stay connected
Anyone living off the grid develops much better-than-average skills at surviving during power outages and natural disasters. Here are a few words of advice on battery maintenance and staying connected that may be useful to those in Tampa or New Orleans over the next few hours or days –
After Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on safety and security initiatives to ensure cell service is available as long as the cell towers are still standing, so an empty battery will likely be the first challenge to keeping in touch and keeping informed.
Battery tech and capacity has failed to improve or even kept pace with modern electronic technology and the problem is particularly acute with the latest smart devices . And everyone is carrying more of these devices, which means more batteries. Smart devices do 20 times more than cellphones used to, but they also draw 20 times more power.
The result is a much shorter overall battery life per charge due largely to all of the extra stuff that smartphones and iPhones have built into them. Regardless of which smartphone you have, when the power is out, you are going to want to make its charge last as long as you can. There are a number of ways that you can accomplish this with a little care and planning.…