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By admin, March 12, 2010 9:26 pm

1. Battery Memory – When I first got my new cellphone, my friend recommended to fully drain the battery before recharging it. His reasoning was connected to the idea of battery memory. Allowing the battery to fully discharge then recharging to max, supposedly gives you the complete battery capacity. Otherwise, if you simply charged from the half way point to max battery capacity, the battery would treat the half way point as the empty point, thus cutting your battery capacity in half.

The good news is today’s lithium batteries have a safety circuit in place to insure the battery doesn’t reach the point of no return. The safety circuit isn’t fool proof though, if you leave your battery completely drained for a few days, even the circuit’s protective measures won’t save it.

2. Battery Calibration – There are some benefits to fully discharging your lithium battery periodically, for laptops this can be especially important. If you start to notice your battery meter becoming more and more inaccurate, it may be time for some battery calibration. Allow your lithium battery completely drain, then charge until the battery is full again. This will calibrate your battery  giving you more accurate readings. This should be done once every 30 charges or when you notice battery readings are off.

3. Consequences of Heat – Another enemy of lithium battery life is heat. If you were to leave your laptop plugged in and running for a year, you should expect the lithium battery capacity to be anywhere between 60% to 80% of it’s original max capacity. This is why people that use their laptops as desktop replacements will notice greatly reduced battery life performance after one year of use. This issue can be resolved by removing the battery while using a corded power source. Now you may want to check with your manufacturer ahead of time to check for safety concerns, some manufacturers have mentioned problems such as moisture and dust collecting in the battery casing.

4. Battery Storage – If you don’t plan on using your lithium battery for prolonged periods of time, then you’ll want to reduce the charge level to 40% and place the battery in the fridge (not freezer). Storing the battery at 100% charge level applies unnecessary stress and can cause internal corrosion. On the other hand, if the charge is too low, the battery can become permanently unusable, due to battery self discharge. This is why manufacturers recommend storing your lithium batteries at 40% charge, rather than either extreme.

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By admin, March 12, 2010 9:15 pm

How long have we been dealing with AA batteries that die out way too quickly? How long have standard sized notebooks been stuck with batteries that can’t last over 3 to 4 hours in heavy use scenarios? Far too long in our estimation, and we’re eager for a change. Of course, battery companies are in no hurry to make the items that they sell last longer; we suspect they’ll want you to replace your battery as often as possible. But scientists, thankfully, have a different viewpoint, and they seem entirely more interested in improving the process rather than continuing on as things are.

Researchers Ibrahim Abou Hamad from Mississippi State University and coauthors have engineered a new charging method that relies on new developments in molecular dynamics simulations. The actual study is highly technical in nature, but it really boils down to this: they have discovered a way to significantly reduce the charging time of Li-ion batteries, which are widely used in everything from laptops to electric cars. For a more techy perspective, we’re told that they have simulated the lithium-ion battery charging process by “simulating the intercalation of lithium ions into the battery’s graphite anode,” and in their testing, they found that “an additional oscillating electric field can lower this energy barrier, enabling lithium ions to intercalate more quickly into the anode.”

The team hopes to continue investigating the findings, and they’ll be altering the frequency of the oscillating field in order to judge the effect on charging time. In a best case scenario, this could also provide a boost in battery power densities.

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By admin, March 11, 2010 8:59 pm

10. Auto-Lock Sooner

You can set your iPhone to automatically go to sleep – also known as Auto-Lock – after a certain amount of time. The sooner it sleeps, the less power is used to run the screen or other services. Try setting Auto-Lock to 1 or 2 minutes.

Find it in Settings -> General -> Auto-Lock

11. Do Less Battery-Intensive Things

Not all ways to save battery life involve settings. Some of them involve the way you use the phone. Things that require the phone be on for long periods of time, or use a lot of system resources, suck the most battery. These things include movies, games, and browsing the web. If you need to conserve battery, limit your use of battery-intensive apps.

12. Sleep and Wake Less

Constantly putting your phone to sleep and waking it up will drain battery life. Of course these functions are common parts of using the phone, but you can also be judicious in your turning on and off of the phone and save battery life at the same time.

13. Buy an Extended Life Battery

If all else fails, just get more battery. A few accessory makers offer extended life batteries for the iPhone. If you need so much battery life that none of these tips help you enough, an extended life battery is your best bet. With one, you’ll get days more standby time and many hours more use.

14. Turn off Vibrate in Games

Playing a game with vibrate happening frequently is an unnecessary battery suck. If you can turn it off, turn it off.

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By admin, March 11, 2010 8:56 pm

The venture capital industry may be shrinking, but Battery Ventures is growing. Waltham-based Battery Ventures has finalized $750 million in commitments for its ninth venture fund. The firm casts a wide net for deals—it’s stage-agnostic, global (with most of its money going to North America, Israel and India) and almost sector agnostic (within technology). The firm says it wants to help companies focused on “Internet and Digital Media, financial and information services, clean tech, software, enterprise IT, communication services, semiconductors, and industrial technologies.”The new fund is the latest evidence that Silicon Valley, which was moving in slow motion last year, is feeling revived.

Battery has had a pretty good run recently, with two exits already in 2010. The firm’s investment in Healthvision paid off when the company sold to Lawson for $166M in January. Its portfolio company Nova Analytics, which Battery helped buyout in 2003, was bought by ITT in February for an undisclosed amount, though Battery says they did well on the exit.

Many venture firms have either gone out of business or taken in less money in the last two years, as the venture industry hits hard times. The fact that Battery’s new fund is the same size as its preceding one, BV VIII raised during the heyday of 2007, is impressive. Eighty-five percent of the limited partners in BV IX were repeat investors.

Battery’s recent investments include marketing technology startups BlueKai, LiveIntent and Pursway, and education platform eduFire, which pairs up teachers and students online.

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By admin, March 10, 2010 9:18 pm

6. Keep WiFi Off

The other kind of high-speed network that the iPhone can connect to is WiFi. WiFi is even faster than 3G, though it’s only available where there’s a hotspot, not virtually everywhere like 3G. Keeping WiFi turned on at all times in hopes that an open hotspot will appear is a sure way to drain your battery life. So, unless you’re using WiFi right this second, keep it turned off.

Find it in Settings -> WiFi

7. Turn Off Location Services

One of the coolest features of the iPhone 3G is its built-in GPS. This allows your phone to know where you are and give your exact driving directions, give that information to apps that help you find restaurants, and more. But, like any service that sends data over a network, it needs battery to work. If you’re not using Location Services, and don’t plan to right away, turn them off and save some power.

Find it in Settings -> General

8. Turn Data Push Off

The iPhone 3G can be set to automatically suck email and other data down to it or, for some kinds of accounts, have the data pushed out to it whenever new data becomes available. You’re probably realized by now that accessing wireless networks costs you battery life, so turning push off will extend your battery’s life. With push off, you’ll need to set your email to check periodically or do it manually

Find it in Settings -> Fetch New Data

9. Fetch Email Less Often

The less your phone needs to access a network, the less battery is used. So, set your phone to check your email accounts less often. Try checking every hour or, if you’re really serious about saving battery, manually. Manual checks means you’ll never just have email waiting for you on your phone, but you’ll also stave off the red battery icon.

Find it in Settings -> Fetch New Data

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By admin, March 10, 2010 9:17 pm

With devices getting increasingly power-hungry, the last thing one would expect are batteries going lite. However, Sanyo’s strategy of taking its eco-friendly but bacteria-combative Eneloop dry cell down a peg is to produce a version more suited to gadgets that sip energy. Enter Eneloop Lite which targets low energy guzzlers such as alarm clocks and remote controls.

The nickel-metal hydride rechargeable battery will sell in AA (780 yen or US$8.60 for pack of two) and AAA (640 yen for pack of two) sizes. This will yield up to 2,000 recharges and is ready to use out-of-the-box, even after three years in storage. Topups can be done anytime without worrying about memory effect. Sanyo plans a June 22 rollout in Japan, and says it’s aiming for a global release for the battery in the future. Exactly when that will be, however, we’re not yet sure.

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By admin, March 9, 2010 9:10 pm

1. Turn on Auto-Brightness

The iPhone has an ambient light sensor that adjusts the brightness of the screen based on the light around it. Turn this feature on and you’ll save battery because your screen will need to use less power in bright places.

Find it in Settings -> Brightness

2. Use programs with 3D less often.

Not surprisingly, I’ve noticed that when I play games rendering 3D, battery life drops. Using the graphics chips more intensely will crank up power usage, but maybe the drain is also because of the nature of gaming

3. Reduce Screen Brightness

Users can control the default brightness of the screen. Needless to say, the brighter the default setting for the screen, the more battery it requires. Keep the screen dimmer to conserve more of your battery.

Find it in Settings -> Brightness

4. Turn Bluetooth Off

Bluetooth wireless networking is especially useful for cell phone users with wireless headsets or earpieces. But transmitting data wireless takes battery and leaving Bluetooth on to accept incoming data at all times requires even more juice. Turn off Bluetooth except when you’re using it to squeeze more juice from your battery.

Find it in Settings -> General

5. Turn Off 3G

The iPhone 3G and later models operate on two cellular networks, EDGE and the faster 3G. Not surprisingly, using 3G requires more battery life to get the quicker speeds and higher-quality calls. It’s tough to go slower, but if you need more battery, turn off 3G and just use EDGE. Your battery will last longer (though you’ll need it when you’re downloading websites more slowly!).

Find it in Settings -> General -> Network

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By admin, March 9, 2010 9:08 pm

A123 Systems announced that they are developing lithium ion battery systems for a joint venture project between Navistar and Modec to develop commercial electric vehicles. The batteries for the Navistar EV will be manufactured in Michigan with the vehicles being assembled in Indiana for a launch sometime this year.

These commercial EV’s will be designed for frequent stops, have a carrying capacity of two tons and feature a range of about 100 miles on a single charge. Navistar received nearly $40 million in stimulus funds last summer to help build the vehicles and the company hopes to build 400 of them this year, ramping up to a few thousand per year in the years to come.

A123 Systems VP Jason Forcier commented: “A123 is proud to partner with Navistar on an electric vehicle that will reduce operating emissions in urban areas.  Our ability to achieve impressive range with a battery that is safe, durable and reliable is a natural fit for Navistar’s electric vehicle program, and we are thrilled to showcase the U.S. advancements in the electrification of commercial transportation in Navistar’s vehicles.”

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By admin, March 8, 2010 9:09 pm

6. Network Connections

Turn off unused connections when not in use, i.e. GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Use Auto On/Off
Use single mode only (1XEV, 2G only, 3G only)

7. Shortcuts

Use shortcuts instead of activating Java menus (Browser – Options – Browser Configuration)

8. Camera

Turn off flash (Camera – Options)
Set picture size to Small (Camera – Options)
Set Color Effect to Normal (Camera – Options)
Set Picture Quality to Normal (Camera – Options)

9. Applications

When exiting, be sure to close the app, not leave it running in the background (close with ESC key, not red End key)
Log out of third-party applications when they are not needed (Instant Messaging, etc.)

10. Indicators

Set Audible notification to Off (Profiles)
Turn off coverage LED (Profiles)

11. GPS

Use the zoom out function to get the largest viewable area that you can still use usefully

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By admin, March 8, 2010 9:08 pm

A trojan which grants secret backdoor access to infected computers was found in software accompanying the Energizer Duo USB battery charger, which has been on sale since 2007. Energizer has now discontinued the product.

The safety warning went up recently over at the website for US-CERT (the United States Computer Emergency Response Team).

For folks with no firewall program, the software bundled with this device would install the “arucer.dll”, which would then initialize upon every Windows start up thereafter. This little program would listen for communication from port 7777, opening your computer up to outside access. From this open port, any files on your computer could be stolen.

Energizer has not released a comment on the matter. Having a trojan in your software isn’t good for business, so we are guessing that whoever wrote the Energizer installation software did not realize that their computer was infected, so the trojan was spread accidentally.

If you have this Duo charger, you should run virus removal software, or uninstall the software.