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Tom’s Tech Tips

Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, Extend Your Life!

What I’m talking about is the daily life of your smartphone’s battery. Every smartphone has a different anticipated, average and not entirely satisfactory daily life. What that means is how long it will go between charges.

As an iPhone® user, I have to charge the phone’s battery just about every day and a half, depending on whether or not I’ve done something radical like used the phone, headset or checked my email. If I do something totally wild and crazy like surf the Internet or use Yelp to find someplace to take Vickie to dinner, the battery life is even shorter.

Under normal use, I get about 36 hours off a full charge, but Apple® recommends that you run the battery down below 20% before fully recharging it. If Certified Legal Nurse Consultants follow that rule, they’ll get just under a year of life out of the battery before it starts to degrade and last increasingly shorter periods of time. Worst of all, the iPhone battery is built in so I can’t swap it out myself. If you use your iPhone for your legal nurse consulting business and are pretty hard on the battery life, you might buy an extended life battery, but it ruins the phone’s looks by sticking out the bottom. Maybe you could buy a combination fat case and battery, which adds lots of juice and also ruins its look. I don’t know about my CLNC® amigos, but I’d rather be cool than ruin the image of my iPhone (besides nobody really knows if your phone is working or not except in a movie theatre).

Being cool means being prepared and this means I have a 12V charger in my car, charging cables attached to my home and work docks and keep a full wall wart charging set in my Codi® MobileMax rolling computer bag when I travel. Wherever your legal nurse consulting business takes you, take a minute to be prepared.

There are so many Android® phones out there that battery life and swappable batteries are too varied to write about. Instead, let me offer legal nurse consulting Androids this advice – carry at least one fully-charged spare battery, keep a 12V charger in your car and pack a spare wall charger with your travel stuff. Do this and you’ll never find yourself looking for a payphone again.

In the meantime, if you want to maximize your TTBC (Tom’s Time Between Charges) for any smartphone, follow these simple steps:

  1. Turn off the GPS except for those apps that really need it. If your GPS is on, your phone is either constantly pinging the global positioning system to tell people where you are or pings it every time you use certain apps. Turn it off except for essential apps like Fandango, Yelp, Zagat or others that help you find restaurants, gas or movies. Forget Google, Shazam, Dictionary and other apps that don’t need to know where you are to function properly. You do need your GPS for Facebook (at least for iPhone) if you’re posting a mobile upload. Otherwise, if checking in with FourSquare and becoming “mayor” of the local “Shake ‘n Steak” is important to you, get used to short battery life.
  2. Turn off your Wi-Fi – at least when you’re not using it. Wi-Fi is a nice feature that can save considerable costs off your cellular bill if you use it in a Starbucks®, hotel lobby or anywhere else that offers free Wi-Fi. However, the whole time you’re driving around or walking through Wal-Mart®, your phone is searching for a Wi-Fi signal, possibly asking you to join any networks it discovers and, at the same time, draining your battery. Instead, keep the Wi-Fi off and turn it on while you’re waiting in line for that double decaf skinny soy latte (with two Splendas) before going to see your favorite attorney-client or CLNC® subcontractor.
  3. Always keep your phone where you can see it. When your phone is buried in your purse or on the backseat or floor of your car, it’s looking for a signal. In fact, it’s straining to find a signal that’s being blocked by a couple of thousand pounds of heavy Detroit metal. This, of course, strains your battery. Instead, keep your phone on the dashboard or in one of the cup holders (where you can safely reach it when it goes off). Turn it off when you’re at an attorney-client’s office and when you’re at work.
  4. If you can adjust how quickly your screen goes to auto-lock or your screensaver kicks in, adjust it to the shortest period you can stand.
  5. Finally, turn down the screen brightness and then set it to auto-brightness. The lower your screen brightness, the lower your battery draw. You don’t have to turn it down to where you need to step into a dark stairwell to use it, but at least drop it from the brightest to about midway and keep reducing it until you find a level you can live with.

Try these five simple steps and all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will get some extra life out of their smartphone batteries. I’m sure the day that important attorney-client returns your call and you have the battery bars to take it, you’ll appreciate this tip.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

P.S. Comment and share your own battery-saving tips.

One thought on “Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, Extend Your Life!

  1. I always look forward to “Tuesday’s email” because I honestly like to read your technical information. I learn something new almost every time!

    All cell batteries stink! I was told that my battery goes too quickly because I leave on the “Bluetooth” in the background, even though I may turn off the actual “Bluetooth” itself! I then had flashbacks of previous phones and recalled that there was not one that lasted an entire day, even when I did exactly what I was told to do and how to charge a cell phone battery. One would think that it is more difficult than raising a child, for cryin’ outloud! I then remembered an “honest” sales rep at a store say, “Well, actually ma’am, see… well… the phones made today (this was 5 years ago!) have so much technology in them, that a battery can’t possibly keep its charge for more than twelve hours. I told her she made sense and I appreciated her insight and honesty. She then pulled out the “extended version” of the double time battery that jetted out past the size of my hand and would give anyone carpal tunnel just holding it for more than 30 minutes at a time! I have found that batteries are “warranted” for a year, and the cell phone company stands by it if they determine (after you drive to their store, wait in line for a sales rep. approx. 30 mins. and they fiddle with it, scroll through your contacts, messages, emails and read whatever it is they read on that BIG COMPUTER screen only they can see, and explain your entire ordeal, show it to their manager and type it all up on a computer they now have to wait to open up “because the one they were just using, was grabbed by another sales rep.”, that your cell phone battery is JINXED! When you get so excited thinking you will walk out of the store, now 2 1/2 hours later, with a new battery… think again! They will have it shipped to your home in a “few business days”. And if you don’t happen to be home to answer the door for this “golden object” then you will have to wait another day for the delivery man to come back for your signature. (actually, I think raising both of my children is easier than this!)

    Trust me though, if your phone ever does what mine had been doing where the life bars suddenly drop if you decide to use anything on the phone, but when you finish using it… suddenly the bars go back up, it’s a “bad battery”. Just like if one were driving up hill with one gallon of gas in your tank and the keeps flickering that you are out of gas, but when you reach the top and suddenly go straight for a few miles, the light stays off.

    So, I have already been “given” two new batteries over the course of owning my Verizon LG 1 1/2 years (which I really do like, because it is a touch screen but also has the QWERTY keyboard when its opened up completely flat by a hinge, not a slide). I also can go up to the higher monthly price for the internet/data package with email if I want or keep it this way, unlike a “smart phone” where it is “mandatory to have the data package.

    I think when I finally decide to “start” my business (have been certified for two years now, but scared to make the leap) I will use a smart phone, and then need the GPS all the time, especially when I move to a warmer climate. This of course will be when my son moves out and goes to college in less than two years. I’m hoping that will give him the certain message that he better study hard, because he can’t move back home with me… I’ll be in Florida or maybe Texas and come out to work for all of you!!! As my parting gift to him, instead of the BASIC, BARE BONES PHONE he has now… maybe I’ll pass my current phone to him, with this “new battery”!!!

    Keep on techin’, Tom, because we nurses really do read and follow your “what to do’s” out here in CLNC® land!

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*The opinions and statements made by Vickie Milazzo, the founder of Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc. are based on her experiences and expertise, should not be applied beyond the specific context provided, and do not guaranty or project actual results. Vickie Milazzo is no longer involved in the operations or management of the business, but is involved as an independent education consultant.

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