There have been several circumstances where I’ve left home with a half charged phone and overestimated its ability to hold a charge. It’s not always a huge deal. If I have 10 minutes before leaving for dinner or catching a movie, I can accept my phone dying.
Other times, even charging my phone a few minutes before leaving could have saved me a huge hassle. Getting lost while driving an unfamiliar detour and not having a car charger. Getting a mobile boarding pass pulled up, then my phone dies before I even make it through airport security.
In a rush, I feel the logic is often, “I have to leave in 10 minutes, how much of a difference will this really make?”
But here’s the truth: those 10 minutes can make an impact – especially if you take advantage of a few tricks to charge your cell phone faster.
Let’s say you’re about to leave. Your phone has 20% battery and you have about 10 minutes to spare before you leave. Here are four tips to charge your cell phone faster and make the most of that brief period of time.
1. Close out of Unnecessary Apps While It Charges
Apps can be helpful and fun, but they can also be major distractions. Turns out, your phone can get pretty distracted by them, too.
When you want to get the most out of a short time period to charge, make sure you’re closed out of any apps that don’t need to be running.
Heads up: be wary of apps like Netflix, Snapchat, and Whatsapp. All are big battery drainers, even while charging.
2. Put Airplane Mode on When It Charges
You may have heard this next tip before, but it seriously works: put your phone on airplane mode. Doing this means that your phone won’t be bothered by services like WiFi and cellular that it usually automatically connects to. Like apps, these services can really drain your battery and hinder charging when your device is plugged-in.
Turning airplane mode on means your phone will spend less energy on these services while charging, receiving more power. On top of activating airplane mode, you can also turn your phone off while it charges to speed up charging, too.
3. Don’t Use Your Laptop to Charge, Use Wall Chargers
Time for a question: do you go for the trusty wall USB or a laptop for a fast charge?
Answer: For a faster battery boost, you should use a wall outlet instead of a laptop to charge.
This is because the voltage and amperage (more power) provided by a laptop is much lower than a normal wall charger.
4. Use a Charging Adapter With a Higher Amperage
Building off the last tip, let’s compare two chargers: the one that comes in-box with the iPad and iPhone.
Although it may look the same, the charger that comes with the iPad provides more than twice the power that the iPhone’s charger offers.
Knowing this, it’s always worth bringing the amperage of the charger itself into consideration. In addition, there’s an entire market of personal use chargers with higher amperage to quickly charge your device. A recommendation for personal use would be HGD USB Chargers. If you’re curious on how other USB chargers compare, be sure to take a look at this list of the
Top 5 Best USB Chargers in 2019.
If you’re in the market for these, be aware that there are a lot of knock-off phone chargers as well. Pay close attention to the box and check that it uses the correct abbreviations, such as “mA” for milliamps of power instead of “MA”. Make sure there’s a manufacturing label on the box, too.
In Conclusion
Ten minutes isn’t a lot of time, but it can be enough to get your phone to last you a bit longer once you leave home.
Once you head out, you can additionally conserve your phone battery by keeping your screen dimmed, those power-eating apps closed, and airplane mode on (at the loss of being able to text or call). Besides those tricks, it’s always a nice fallback having a cord that you keep in your car for charging on the drive.
Hope those tricks helped out; a lot of them may be common knowledge, but it’s always interesting learning about the “why” behind them. The best part is, even if you’re not pressed for time, these tips can work in helping you charge your cell phone faster every time. Shout out to charging up during crunch time – sometimes you gotta let your phone take a power nap, too.