H.I.T.S.
Ho, ho, ho and Merry Christmas everyone! I’ve been carrying around a little bell like the ones Santa’s reindeer wear all week and ringing it (much to the amusement of customers and students at Micarelli’s) and it’s put me in the Christmas spirit. We hope that everybody has a wonderful holiday this year and receives everything they deserve in their stockings.
Just over a week ago, I started having problems with the battery in my Android cell phone. About eight years ago, I didn’t even have a cell phone, but now I’m lost without it. I recently set off for a trip to the bank and found I’d left my phone at home, and it felt terrible.
Nowadays, I have a charger plugged into the cigarette lighter socket in my Scion, a USB charger cord plugged into my laptop at the store PLUS a home A/C charger as well. Along with modern smart phones and everything they can do, comes a bigger drain on the battery.
Most Android phones seem to come with the cheapest battery imaginable. I finally broke down and replaced my original LG battery, which was rated at 1,500 mAh, with a battery rated at 3,500 mAh.
Even if you’re not technically minded, I’m sure you can appreciate that the one I’m now using has (theoretically) more than twice the capacity of the old one. The new battery is thicker, but it came with a bigger rear door that clips on the phone.
Unfortunately, then, the protective case that I’d been using around the phone no longer fits! It’s a vicious circle. At the time of this writing, I’m still waiting for a replacement rubber case that I’m hoping I can “modify.” Supposedly, I can cut a section out of the back of it to allow for the bigger battery.
I also recently found a listing of things that drain the battery in the “settings” section of my phone. In my case, one of the biggest offenders was having Wi-Fi switched on all the time, so I switched that off when I’m not using it.
At present, the new bigger battery seems to last a lot longer. It even came with a small portable charger so that I can charge the original as a backup.
I’ve also ordered a $20 solar charger that got great reviews online. According to the ad, it comes with a bunch of adapters to charge just about every kind of phone, including iPhones.
Further online searching showed me all kinds of solar chargers for everything from phones to cars, although the 12-volt car kind seems to be of the “trickle charge” variety. If you have a car that you put away for winter, however, or say, a 12-volt riding mower and don’t want that disgusted feeling next spring when the battery is dead, then you might want to look into one of the many solar chargers online.
Attachments to the battery range from the two alligator clamp kind to the type that pushes into a cigarette lighter socket in a car. As long as you can put the solar cell part into a good source of sunlight, you can provide enough power to keep your battery topped off.
Obviously, the downside is that if you have an almost-dead battery, the solar thing will not put out enough power to miraculously charge it back up in a short time. They definitely have their uses, though. They’re great if you go camping and want to charge up small electrical devices.
I’m also still waiting for my book to arrive from England. It details (along with photos) the small town called Blackburn that I lived in while growing up there during the ’50s and ’60s. At this rate, it may beat the cell phone cover in arriving. Hopefully, the book will live up to my expectations.
Also this week, Mrs. Schulze excitedly announced that she’d read online that AT&T has finally given up their bid on buying our cell phone carrier, T-Mobile. I guess this means that we’ll have unlimited calls, texting and data for a while longer.
My wife had previously been on AT&T and said that their customer service was pretty bad, so she wasn’t too happy when she heard about the potential merger. We can look forward to again seeing T-Mobile make fun of AT&T and Verizon with their TV ads in the near future.
With that said, I’d like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas holiday from me, Mrs. Schulze, Basil the yorkie and Hamish the hamster. Happy Holidays, everyone!