Portable batteries and power cases
If there’s one gadget no smartphone user should leave at home, it’s the portable battery.
Owners of the iPhone probably know this little piece of tech all too well, but it is a little battery encased in between layers of plastic or metal with at least two USB ports, one in the full-size and one in the micro form.
The microUSB port is pretty easy, as this lets you treat the power bank like another rechargeable gadget, plugging it into the wall or a computer like a phone and charging it up, but when that’s done, you’re good to carry the battery bank around with you and plug your regular phone charge cable into the battery, using that little bitty power source to charge up a phone.
If that’s an iPhone 6, it means you can plug in your Lightning cable to the USB port on the portable battery and get a recharge on your phone while it sits in your handbag or a backpack, or even your pocket.
The same applies with another phone, so if your Samsung Galaxy S6 is running out of juice, as can definitely happen, you plug it in via a microUSB cable in the USB port and charge up that phone.
Some phones have a different solution altogether, though.
If you’re lucky enough to own a phone that supports a specialised battery case, you can plug it in and get an extra battery for your smartphone inside an external case.
These battery cases don’t just boost the battery in your phone, and instead work in a similar fashion to those battery banks we just mentioned. Essentially, when you switch them on, they will recharge the battery in the phone, keeping it topped up and charged until the battery in the case runs out, at which point the phone relies on its own battery until it runs out.
While you can leave the battery case switched on, one way to use it is to keep it switched off until you run out of power and then switch it on for a recharge, letting it top up its power only when you need that life returned.
Mophie’s line of battery-based cases are the most known in this situation, providing extra charge for the Apple iPhone line-up, as well as select Samsung and HTC handsets, with anywhere between 1500mAh and 3950mAh of power, meaning you can get as much as twice the battery life of your phone.
You do end up with a heavier handset, that being said, and it ads a little bit of plastic to the style, so forget about the metal or glass your phone regularly exudes, but if battery if what you’re after, the battery cases certainly deliver.
Windows Phone as a battery battler
Need more battery life and none of these other measures are working for you?
Believe it or not, a change to a different operating system may just help, but you also might lose out on some of those beloved apps you hold so dearly.
For over two years, we’ve given Windows Phone devices the same battery of tests we apply to Google Android smartphones and the Apple iPhone, and throughout that length of time, many of these devices have come out on top with regards to battery.
Take the Lumia 640XL, the Lumia 735, and the Lumia 830: these are three phones that occupy the mid-range to upper mid-range, priced from $399 to $579, and all offer two days of battery life.
Try getting that on most Android phones and you’re out of luck. Again, iPhone can’t compete, with the massive 5.5 inch iPhone 6 Plus only hitting that mark barely, and that’s if you opt to not use the screen or camera very often.
Yes, that two day battery life is something Windows Phone-based devices can achieve without too much drama, and by “drama”, we’re generally referring to playing video games, which tends to eat up the battery immensely on a Windows Phone.
But if you can live without the minor mobile entertainment, a request that isn’t too hard given how few video games exist for Windows Phone 8, you’ll find two days of battery life on so many of the Windows Phone products, a feature we feel comes down to the way Windows Phone was developed, its small multi-tasking capabilities (it tend to stop apps you’re not using pretty quickly), and the few colours the OS relies on with a larger emphasis on black.
