Your phone’s radios are the major drain on battery life. When the power goes out, turn off all the radios on your phone you’re not using: WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.

Just plug your phone in when the phone gets low on charge and allow it to parasitically drain your laptop’s (much larger) battery.Ģ. To get the most out of this trick, restart your laptop to kill all running applications and processes, dim the screen to nothing, and don’t use it for any other purpose. This works even when your laptop is not connected to a power outlet. It’s easy to forget that our phones charge when they are plugged into our laptops via the USB port. Fully charge your laptop, and save that charge for your phone. Here’s an update of a post I wrote last year for Hurricane Irene on how to make sure you can stay connected through the one device that can summon emergency services and let you know when it’s safe to come out, even days after you’ve lost power.ġ. Fortunately, cell phone access is often available even when the power goes out–here’s an amazing example from 2011’s epic floods in Australia. Hurricane Sandy has been dumping rain on the US east coast for at least twelve hours, but high winds and days of rain are yet to come, so utilities are warning that tens of millions of people could be without power for days.

Does your phone charge when its off