You need something that will drive you to travel anxiety quicker than seeing a red battery symbol on your smartphone at 2 pm in the afternoon while you're 100 miles from your hotel room. On a typical day at work or home your phone makes it through without a boost in the middle of the day. But as soon as you reach into a new city, the same battery appears to go down twice as fast. Whether you are using it to find out the latest train timetables or just to ave189 login to play a game at the quiet cafe, your device has become the camera, boarding pass holder, tour guide and portable entertainment system. With so much of modern travel requiring maintaining connectivity, being out of power is more than just a nuisance — it can leave you lost and unable to pay with a digital currency. The good news is that knowing why travel is so hard on your battery means you can get through the day from your early morning flight right through an evening flight.

Why Traveling Drains Your Battery Twice as Fast

To make room for tweaking, it helps to first understand the invisible work loads that occur in your mobile while you're on the go. A traveling smartphone is a lot harder working than a stationary phone, even if it's locked in your pocket.

Constant Cellular Tower Handshakes

At home, your phone measures a low level of energy to connect to a known Wi-Fi router and nearby cell tower. When you're on a train, bus or walking through a crowded city area, your cellular modem is constantly dropping its connection to a dying tower and looking for a stronger one. When you enter a dead zone or underground metro station, your phone's internal antenna boosts its power in an attempt to receive a signal, which depletes a lot of battery.

Relentless GPS and Brightness Demands

When you are exploring a new location, you're often outdoors in bright daylight and viewing something on your screen. Your screen turns itself up to its highest display of lumens per square inch, or nits, in order to be legible, the largest power consumer on any mobile device. Add that shiny screen to accurate GPS navigation and regular use of the camera, and your battery is under constant strain.

Pre-Trip Preparation That Saves Power Later

Download Maps, Tickets, and Media Offline

One of the brightest travel habits for any traveler is to get vital information to his/her phone's internal storage prior to departing the resort Wi-Fi. Pre-cached city maps, direct downloads of digital boarding passes to your phone wallet, or local playlists and videos means that your cellular modem doesn't need to download data dynamically. Offline map navigation relies on your passive GPS receiver, not an active data connection, which means that you can save power.

Pause Cloud Photo Syncing Until Nighttime

It's only natural to take dozens of high resolution photos and videos during any trip. But if your cloud backup application uploads media to your cloud immediately after each shot, your processor and antenna will be overworked and running hot all afternoon. Set up your photo gallery so that it only backs up if the device is connected to a charger on the stable in-hotel Wi-Fi.

Smart Settings to Adjust While on the Move

Turn Off Automatic Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Scanning

Your phone constantly scans the air for open Wi-Fi hotspots and nearby Bluetooth beacons even if you're not connected to one of them, to help it get better location information. There are hundreds of cafes, shops and airport gates that cause background handshakes as one walks past them. You can prevent this silent battery drain by simply switching off the Wi-Fi when you're out for a walk and turning off “background scanning” in your location settings.

Activate Low Power Mode Early in the Day

Many people wait until the battery level reaches 20% full before using Battery Saver or Low Power Mode. By that time you have lost most of your body storage. If you turn on Low Power Mode just as you're leaving your accommodation in the morning, it will gently throttle your processor's maximum clock speed, reduce the screen refresh rate from 120Hz to a more conservative 60Hz, and reduce background fetches of information, without getting in the way of taking photos, looking at maps, or playing a casual game online.

Tame Your Screen Brightness and Timeout

Don't rely completely on auto-brightness (which can over-correct in daylight), instead pull down your control center and manually set your brightness slider to a comfortable setting in between whenever you move inside or into a shade. Plus, if you set your screen auto-lock timer to 30 seconds, your screen won't remain lit in your pocket or purse after you take a quick look at a street sign.

Physical Habits and Charging Etiquette on the Go

Keep Your Phone Out of the Sun and Heat

Lithium-ion batteries hate the heat and cold. Internal temperatures of phones can rise when they're left on the sunny table of a café or parked on a car's hot dashboard while GPS navigation software is in use. Batteries drain faster in heat and the systems have to run for longer and/or harder to cool down. When the phone isn't being used, store it in a breathable phone bag or in a pocket in the shade, and remove bulky phone cases if the phone becomes warm while you are using it for heavy navigation or gaming.

Use Airplane Mode in Low-Signal Areas

Turn on Airplane Mode every time you get on a train through the mountains, board a ferry or go to a thick-walled museum with poor reception. It can save 15-20% battery life over a two-hour period by not constantly searching for a weak or nonexistent cellular signal. Photos can be taken and downloaded maps can be viewed offline, until you reach a reliable coverage area.

Carry a Compact Power Bank for Peace of Mind

With the best software practices though, the sixteen hour day of sightseeing with all the associated photography, navigation, and downtime entertainment will tax the best of batteries. Take the pocket-sized power bank with a pocket-sized fast-charging cable and no range anxiety remains. If you're able to spend 20 minutes sitting down for lunch, your phone will appreciate a quick charge at the midpoint of the battery's operating curve and you won't be forced to curtail your screen time in the evening.

Enjoying the Journey Without Battery Anxiety

You want your smartphone to make traveling easier and more enjoyable, not have to search for wall plugs in coffee shops on vacation. But when you put a stop to wasted energy spent on background mobile signal searching, cloud uploading, and having your screen on 24-hours a day, your battery goes the distance! Just a few minutes each morning and some conscious switches during the day and you'll capture every moment, explore every street and enjoy all your online pursuits with plenty of power to spare.

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