Smartphone Portible Charger

[katiesue]

Madz and I both have HTC Thunderbolts and the battery life is horrible. I got the extended battery which helps a lot but it makes it a massive brick. Madz is resistant to the extended. But her phone often runs out.

So I was looking into the portable chargers but all the ones I can find have pretty mixed reviews. Anyone have one they can recommend?

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Have you tried battery-saving apps? I've got Juice Defender and Advanced Task Killer and they seem to help a lot.

[Morrigoon]

Do you use bluetooth? If you don't, go into your phone's utilities and shut it off. You'll save HOURS of power on that alone. (Thanks to whichever LoTer taught me that one - I think BtD?)

[katiesue]

There's some weird thing with the Thunderbolt and task killers. They don't work. You turn something off and in a minute it all turns back on. She does have the bluetooth off.

If you text your little buddies and check your facebook every 45 seconds it sucks battery.

[BarTopDancer]

Thunderbolt has notoriously bad battery life. I shot a text to S asking about the portable chargers.

The task killers do work on them, the OS is the same as every other Android. Try "TaskKiller" (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tni.TasKiller&feature=search_result) (you can push it to your phone from that link). But that won't help the battery life much on the Bolt. Did you check for the firmware upgrade? It's supposed to improve battery life.

[Stan4dSteph]

If you're in the car a fair amount, you can get a USB charger that fits into the lighter socket. That allows you to plug in anything with a USB cable, like iPods and other phones.

[katiesue]

The problem is mostly on Friday's where she's at school from 7:30 AM to 10 PM. The battery just won't make it that long with all the facebooking/texting and she usually ends up using someone elses phone to tell me when she's done.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I keep hoping the company Mophie expands beyond Apple products. My brother in law loves his.

[Moonliner]

The problem is mostly on Friday's where she's at school from 7:30 AM to 10 PM. The battery just won't make it that long with all the facebooking/texting and she usually ends up using someone elses phone to tell me when she's done.

Shouldn't the phone be off from 7:30am until around 2:00 or 3:00pm?

[katiesue]

Shouldn't the phone be off from 7:30am until around 2:00 or 3:00pm?

They are allowed to use their phones at school just not in the classroom. So no it's on, just on silent.

[Kevy Baby]

The problem is mostly on Friday's where she's at school from 7:30 AM to 10 PM. The battery just won't make it that long with all the facebooking/texting and she usually ends up using someone else's phone to tell me when she's done.Tell her to stop Facebooking/texting so much. I'm sure, as a teenager, she won't have any problem making this adjustment

[Alex]

They are allowed to use their phones at school just not in the classroom. So no it's on, just on silent.

Well, assuming that the texting time in the 10 minutes between classes is absolutely vital to her continued breathing, she could still turn it off for classes. Or put it on airplane mode if the phone has one.

[BarTopDancer]

Tell her to stop Facebooking/texting so much. I'm sure, as a teenager, she won't have any problem making this adjustment

We survived just fine without texting and Facebooking. I'm sure she can too. ;)

[Alex]

Though having had a texting machine would have made it much easier for me to know if, during her free period (I had several unsupervised hours a day) I was supposed to go down to the otherwise empty choir room to make out with my girlfriend for 50 minutes or if someone was down there so she'd come up to the chem lab I had access to for those purposes.

This and the homecoming post now have me reflecting and wondering how much more fun college would have been if I hadn't stupidly got married and could have instead continued the success with the ladies (well, a certain subset of them) I had in high school.