1. Battery Conservation Tips
UMMARY: Four ways to keep your cell phone's battery running as long as possible.
Is your cell phone battery losing power constantly? Have you ever had to stop using your cell phone in the middle of a call because the battery died? Here are a few tips you can use to conserve your cell phone battery's power:
* Turn off the backlight. While this may make it harder to use your cell phone at nighttime or in pitch-black situations, most of the time you can easily use your cell phone without it being brightly lit. If you must, change your cell phone's backlight settings so the light goes off after 5 or 10 seconds of inactivity. This way your phone should still be usable at nighttime.
* If you know you're traveling to an area without coverage or with only roaming coverage, consider turning off your cell phone. It can use up a lot of power trying to find a suitable network.
* The less you talk, the less battery power your cell phone will use. Try to limit your conversations until you can get to your home phone.
* Limit your usage of non-voice features such as web browsing and playing cell-phone games. If you have a picture cell phone, realize that taking pictures can eat up battery power, especially if you have flash turned on.
2. Recycle Your Old Cell Phone
SUMMARY: Organizations and resources that can help you recycle cell phones for charity.
Purchasing a new cell phone? Don't just toss your old cell phone away! For one thing, it may be illegal to dump the battery inside your cell phone depending on your jurisdiction. And secondly, dumping cell phones creates more trash in our landfills that has a hard time degrading.
The following websites claim to help you recycle your old cell phone. Some let you donate cell phones to a charity and you may even be able to get a tax credit (refer to a legal professional for more details). Note the following websites, including mentioned charities, are listed for informational purposes only and may change.
* Charitable Recycling Program
* CollectiveGood
* WirelessRecycling.com
3. Set up Voicemail
SUMMARY: Set up your cell phone's voicemail and let others contact you whenever your cell phone cannot connect to the network.
Most cell phones come built-in with a voicemail feature. Think of it as an answering machine, but you don't have to hook it up or rewind tapes. If you can't take a phone call, instead of the caller just getting endless ringing, they will be able to leave you a message you can pick up at a later time. There are many ways voicemail can be useful:
1. If you travel out of your cell phone network, friends and family can still call and leave you messages.
2. If you get a call from an unknown number, you might consider screening the call. If someone leaves you a message, more than likely they are really trying to get a hold of you and are not just a wrong number or telemarketer.
3. If your cell phone battery loses its power, you can still get messages from people. Some cell phone companies even let you access your voicemail from a landline phone.
Talk to your cell phone provider about setting up and accessing voicemail.
4. Keep Batteries Charged So You Don't Miss Calls
SUMMARY: Don't let your camera phone's power usage prevent you from using your cell phone for other tasks.
Just as a digital camera can easily run down a battery, so can a camera phone. Taking photos and looking at your pictures with friends and family can use up quite a bit of your power.
If you plan on taking lots of pictures, make sure you fully charge your cell phone first. You wouldn't want to take a lot of pictures on your camera phone then find out that the phone doesn't have enough power to accept or make calls, would you
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