Most of us would love to give our rugged tablet batteries greater charging capacity and longer battery lives; long enough to finish the job for the day or even extend a few extra days when possible. Perhaps, this could be the reason you opted to have a rugged device in the first place. In fact, time and again, having a longer battery life has been one of the key features associated with the popularity of rugged devices over consumer devices[i]. Nevertheless, even the rugged devices still do fail to stay as long as we could anticipate them to stay sometimes. So, what then causes batteries to perform poorly? How can one rectify or save the power of a device as much as possible when using it?
In this edition, we dug deep into researches and came up with the most appropriate acts to save a device’s power when in use. That said, let’s begin with…
Keeping good environmental & hardware considerations
Have you ever encountered sudden radical cringe in the duration of a battery to charge that is often followed by a radical cringe in the duration a battery can supply power? This change is often caused by environmental conditions. When talking about environmental and hardware considerations likely to hinder the power storage ability of your phone/device; we would consider two main factors: temperature and the style of charging your device [ii].
Style of charging and discharging
Often than not, our device’s batteries don’t die; they are murdered by poor charging methods that we often employ unknowingly. There are two main types of rechargeable batteries that are used in devices: Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) and Nickel-based (NiMH and NiCd) batteries.
Nickel-based batteries are often associated with the older brands of devices. These batteries’ charge capacity depreciates every time you recharge them. Of the two brands (NiCd and NiMH), NiCd has a longer battery life than NiMH. To make the Nickel-Based batteries stay for longer durations, it is crucial always to ensure they discharge almost wholly before recharging them [iii].
Li-Ion batteries have the longest battery life cycle. However, unlike the Nickel-based batteries, Li-Ion batteries always need to be recharged before they become completely depleted to retain a longer battery life. It is very important to avoid reading the 0% battery label. It is estimated that a typical Li-Ion battery is supposed to retain 80% of its charge ability after 300-500 charging/discharging cycles. However, it is estimated the batteries often depreciate to the 80% charging ability after just 100 cycles owing to inappropriate charging/discharging practices[iv].
Lastly, one should always avoid the current trend of “Fast Charging” ability that charges a battery that normally takes 2 hours to charge in just 5-10 minutes. This practice has been noted to reduce the charge storage capacity of a battery by about 20% [v].
Temperature
Temperature plays a big role in the operation of a battery [ii]. A typical Li-Ion battery, for instance, ought to be recharged/discharged within 00C and 450C [vi]. Then again, since most rugged devices are designed with outer coverings that can enable them to retain their internal temperatures (despite variations in the environment). It is important to carefully read through the features of the device to ascertain the appropriate temperature ranges that a battery can operate optimally.
Minding about software applications
Imagine this, you had a fully charged device battery placed into a device, and you switched off the device (a silly thing to do; I know). But, how long do you think the device battery would last? Well, I cannot tell your guess; but the truth is that we all prospect that the device’s power would certainly stay for a very long time (perhaps a lifetime) before finally getting completely used up. Now, imagine how long it would take if you powered on the fully-charged device (let’s say a phone), and ran all applications with the data switch on. The battery would often deplete within an insufficient duration; two days, at most. This simple analogy could illustrate the role played by software applications in depleting or conserving a device’s power. In this section, we will look into some of the practices that can be curtailed to save more power when using your rugged device.
Minimize the screen timeout: when using devices like phones, always minimize the screen-timeout duration as possible. Occasionally, we may forget to lock our phone screens after we finish interacting with them. Minimizing the screen timeout enables our phones to lock the phones on our behalf. This feature not only minimizes the risk of accidentally starting applications that would drain the battery, but it also ensures less power is consumed by the screen and the touch-screen [iii].
Turn off vibrations: Vibrations are great alerting features whenever we need our phones as reminders in a silent mode. However, vibrations often consume more power than audio ringtone alerts. Thus, it is good to always turn off unnecessary vibrations like vibrations for Messages and social media notifications or even for calls. We should only use them as our last resort (ibid).
Turn off unnecessary apps: Sometimes we start too many applications that we rarely turn off even when we do not need them. This eventually ends up consuming a lot of power. Thus, it is important to check the list of all running applications and switch off all applications that are not required. Also, trim all non-utilitarian applications like a live-wallpaper and let your phone have only the basic applications running.
Turn off data & background data: Data and applications that utilize data often take up most of the power in a device. Thus, unless it is very necessary, it could be advisable to turn off data. Also, it could be equally important to turn off data applications like the GPS unless it is required. In this way, you might notice a significant boost in a battery’s usage duration.
If the network of a device is poor; turn it off: network-requiring devices like phones often keep seeking to establish the strongest signal that can be used by a device. In areas where the signal is significantly low or unavailable, they use more power when trying to establish a stronger signal. Thus, unless you intend to use the device in an immediate context, it could be very advisable to turn off the device and save on the power.
That is it today , if you have you any further questions about batteries of the rugged device , feel free to discuss with us