Tech Table Tuesday, November 5, 2013
November 5, 2013
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.
Diana: And I’m Diana.
Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.
Diana: We promise it’ll be easy to digest. Tech Tuesday!
Justin: Yes, it’s Tuesday here at the Tech Table and, Diana, what are we talking about today?
Diana: Well, smartphones.
Justin: One of your favorite things.
Diana: Yes. An we’re talking about saving and conserving the battery power on them.
Justin: Right, and I think that’s an interesting thing. I just let mine do what it does, and then I complain when the battery dies.
Diana: Right.
Justin: And I always get mad at you because I’m like, could you get a picture of this! And you’re like, oh, let me turn it back on.
Diana: Should we talk about your BlackBerry?
Justin: Moving forward, I have an iPhone, too, which speaking of that, I hold in my hands my new gold iPhone. I’ve very excited. Yes, it’s an exciting thing. It’s very cool, and it’s not shiny, it’s not shiny gold.
Diana: It’s kind of a brushed gold look.
Justin: Yeah, it’s kind of a matte gold look.
Diana: It’s really nice.
Justin: I think it’s nice. They say it’s a statement, and yes, I had to wait extra weeks because, you know, they’re sold out and everything, but it’s great. I really like it, I really like the new operating system, I like everything’s flat, it’s very easy. I think there are too many apps on it already, but I’m going to blame David at MPA for that because he probably already put a lot of apps on it for me.
Diana: He programmed it? Yeah.
Justin: He doesn’t, well, he kind of knows how simple I am. But I like simple things.
Diana: Like a BlackBerry.
Justin: Yes, which I still have one of those, too. I just upgraded to a new one of the same one I had. Anyway, back to saving battery power.
Diana: Yeah, so there are lots of things you can do, lots of steps you can take to save and conserve the battery life on your smartphone because if you have a smartphone, you know that it definitely dies a lot faster than a standard cellular phone. So, you know, if you made the switch recently, you’re noticing it now, you may be frustrated. I made the switch a few years ago and I noticed it right away, where I’d have to be plugging device in at least once during the day, and then, of course, at night. Whereas previously, with a regular cell phone, you could just charge it at night and you’re good. So, anyway, some things you could do.
Justin: That’s really interesting because basically, what’s happening is your smartphone is working all the time.
Diana: Right.
Justin: So, you basically have to turn off some of those functions.
Diana: Exactly, and we can go through a list of some of those functions now.
Justin: And why don’t you do that. You know all of these things. I don’t even know what half of this stuff is because, like I said, I just leave mine on all the time.
Diana: Yeah, well, if you get into your settings, you’ll see some of the services, like Bluetooth and Wireless, they’re on by default on most smartphones. So, just get in there, temporarily disable those, and then, you may have to do that every time you turn on your phone. It kind of depends on your device, but get in there. If you don’t need your Bluetooth and you don’t need the wireless, just turn them off until you need them again.
Justin: Well, because it will continuously search for a wireless signal.
Diana: That’s right, yeah. Turn off that Wi-Fi.
Justin: And that’s one I do understand and I do do because it will just continuously search for a Wi-Fi signal, and if you’re out and about somewhere and you can’t find one, it’s just going to keep searching.
Diana: Consider the auto-brightness, just adjusting the brightness of your screen. Auto-brightness will automatically adjust that brightness, but if you just go in, even, to your settings and adjust it yourself to a lower brightness level, that will take less energy. If you have background motion on your iPhone, running in iOS 7, you can disable the dynamic backgrounds on that, too. Those are just settings on there, services they have. Turn off the 3G and the 4G LTE stuff, there.
Justin: Right, you can disable the location services, which is the built-in GPS, which a lot of people don’t like, anyway.
Diana: Yeah.
Justin: My iPhone asks all the time, do you want to tell this application where you are?
Diana: Oh, no.
Justin: No, I don’t. Some people do, though. Disable the location services.
Diana: Right, so lots of things you can do, and just get in there and try to turn off things that you’re not using, basically.
Justin: Absolutely, yep. Well, until next time.
Diana: Take care.
Justin: Tech Table is brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa, and God’s Country Radio. You can visit us online at AskMPA.com.
Diana: If you have questions or comments, please send them to questions@askmpa.com. That’s questions@askmpa.com.
Justin: And thanks for listening.
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