[Telecom] Extending cell phone battery charge?

Through experience I've found that my Verizon Motorola cell phone doesn't hard a charge that long, I get about 60-75 minutes talk time per charge. I found the Consumers Reports rating on my particular model and it confirmed it was poor.

I have the phone's settings as recommended to minimize power consumption. I always extend the antenna.

Is there anything else I can do to preserve a battery charge?

Could it be that the supplied battery was defective? Is there anything I could ask from Verizon to assist?

Also, in using the recharger, is it ok to use "dirty" power sources? By that I mean things like an outlet aboard a train or a car inverter. My car inverter puts out a 'noisy' signal, that is, when using it to play a radio or record a tape there is a humming sound. I have no idea how clean a train outlet is, often the lights subtly blink and the like. I don't want to damage the phone.

Thanks!

[public replies, please]
Reply to
hancock4
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wrote

Get a different phone; get an external battery.

Best guess: OK if the phone is turned off ....BUT....no way to know for sure so I don't think I would take the chance. Sounds more and more like you need an external battery.............or you need to wean yourself away from talking so much. ;-)

What DID we do 15 years ago WITHOUT a cell phone ????

Reply to
Ken Abrams

The problem with most rechargable batteries isn't so much the device, it's the charging setup.

Building an intelligent charger would probably add $10 to $20 to the cost of a phone. But it would extend the battery life significantly.

But look at it this way, by giving us cheap chargers they guarantee a revenue stream either for replacement batteries, or for new phones.

Reply to
T

Sure. Get a better phone. Some are a lot better than others.

Yes, batteries are wonderful voltage regulators.

R's, John

Reply to
John L

There were some Motorola cellphones with buggy firmware that burned battery charge too fast checking in with the cell site. Call your provider and see if they need to flash your phone with revised firmware to fix it.

Depends on the battery charger, or whatever you plug into the "dirty power". Most new equipment can easily handle the 'modified sine-wave' (MSW) output of better DC-AC inverters, but with old/cheap square-wave inverters or cheap import portable generators with poor voltage regulation and lots of harmonic distortion in the output power, all bets are off.

Given a choice of mystery dirty AC power or my own batteries, I'd use batteries. Even if it only blows the charger (and not the equipment) you still have to replace it before your phone runs down...

The only way to know for sure is to ask the cellphone charger maker about the incoming power spec, to see if it can handle MSW power.

Then contact a technical person from the railroad (or airline or bus company) and find out what power generation equipment they are using - if the power source is a MSW Inverter or a generator certified to be below 5% THD and operate electronic gear safely, I wouldn't worry.

Lights dimming on a train could be the pantograph arcing and going over 'dead spots' on an electrified line, or the engineer changing the throttle setting on a diesel prime mover. If they don't use a separate generator set to provide coach lighting power, minor AC voltage fluctuations are inevitable and highly visible on fluorescent lights.

If your only option is using inverter or badly regulated generator "dirty" power all day, every day (you're the Engineer or Conductor) you could carry a brute-force ferroresonant transformer power filter like the SOLA Hevi-Duty MCR 150 with you - but it's heavy (21 Lbs) and expensive (~$425) to only get 150 Watts of cleaned-up power.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

Unless I can document a defect, I am stuck with the phone for two years. One of the reasons for my inquiry was to get any ideas on a way to do so or some benchmarks. All I know now is that friend's phones go much longer between charges than mine, and they leave their phones on overnight and talk much more than I do between charges.

For the future, I would I know what batteries/phones last longer than others?

But isn't the power going through the cell phone circuitry? The cell phone determines when a full charge is achieved and to shut off charging.

Reply to
hancock4

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