@GaryandShannon - #TechTalk

Tech Talk w/ Marc Salzman: Optimizing your phone battery with these tips and upcoming October Prime deals.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's eleven o'clock, eleven thirty. Sorry on a Thursday's time
for tech Talk. The machines are getting smarter.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is tech Talk, brought to you by Skynet.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Well, one of the things that is a constant struggle,
although it doesn't need to be. I mean, we've got
a five hundred million chargers everywhere. Maybe it's just me,
but battery life on our iPhones or whatever phone you
happen to use, even though you seem to have it down,
sometimes you're struggling to maintain that battery life throughout the day.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
And Mark's got a tip on how to do just that.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, good afternoon. How are you almost afternoon? I'm well. Thanks,
good to chat with you again. How about yourself? Great?

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I fell for the well. I don't know if this
is a trick or not. Is there any science to
back this up? Charge your phone not to one hundred percent?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's exactly it.

Speaker 5 (00:53):
That's what we're going to chat about, at least for
the first half of tech Talk today.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
So that is a common thing that most of us do.

Speaker 5 (00:58):
We plug it in before we go to sleep, for example,
and you've got one hundred percent on your phone, and
it may bother some of your listeners hinting at a
little OCD here where they look at their phone and
if it's anything less than high ninety percent, that it
bothers them and they want to charge up their phone
in their car, at their desk at work, or with

(01:19):
a portable power bank in their purser pocket. But that
is doing long term damage to your phone. Well damage
is maybe a strong word. It is reducing the lifespan
of the battery prematurely, so experts are saying too because
it's lithium ion.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Is really what's going on here.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
When you charge up your device to one hundred percent
and overcharge it for long periods of time without doing
this little trick which we're going to get to, it's
putting stress on lithium ion batteries and that accelerates chemical aging.
That's just how lithium ion batteries are constructed. So instead
of charging your phone up to one hundred and keeping

(02:01):
it topped up all day, which will hurt the life
of the phone because the battery, if you can then
crack the screen, the battery is usually the first to go,
which forces you to buy a new smartphone. Here's what
you do, so on iPhone, there's a feature called optimized
battery charging.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Pretty easy.

Speaker 5 (02:19):
You just go to Settings and then you go to
the battery area and then look at charging and there
you can select eighty percent instead of one hundred percent,
which will give you again, if you're okay with four
fifths of your battery throughout the day, which is what
experts are saying is better. If you can wrap your
head around that, then that will in theory extend the

(02:40):
life of your smartphone considerably, so instead of having to
upgrade it before you want to, this should do the trick,
and you can tweak it a little bit in there,
but eighty is the number that some experts are suggesting.
You can go to eighty five, try to drop it
down from from one hundred percent to a lower number,
and then if you're on Android phone, it's a very

(03:01):
similar thing. The steps may vary a little bit in
the name of the section, but basically you go to
the settings area, look for battery or power or Device
care and you're gonna see charging optimization or battery health
something like that, and also enable that feature that limits
it from hitting one hundred percent and staying at one
hundred percent all night. While you're sleeping, because that's again

(03:24):
causing heat, which is not good on lithium ion batteries.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
It's all about the heat. I'm basically it. I'm cure.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
I noticed it on my settings it says that my
battery health is normal, but it's at about ninety percent
of what the capacity was when I first got it
a couple of years ago.

Speaker 5 (03:44):
Yeah, so it is natural for devices like smartphones to
not carry its full charge over a few years. But
there are things you can do, like what we just
chatted about, to better your odds of it of staying
healthy the battery staying healthy over time. Pretty easy to
do it, there's no excuse. It's a feature that Apple
added even for older devices.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
You can do it. And then, of course there's some
other things you can do as well.

Speaker 5 (04:07):
Try to avoid keeping your phone in the car or
in sunlight if you hit the beach. I don't think
a lot of people live in La hit the beach.
Maybe it's more of a tourist thing, but yeah, try
to keep your phone out of the direct sunlight, or
conversely keep it out of a freezing car in the winter,
because that's going to permanently damage the battery. And the
internal components, get a good case, keep it clean. Just

(04:31):
things that you can do to help with the battery
life and the heat.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Mark onto the October Prime Day Apple Deals. I see
Apple air tags are on the menu here, so I
can track more people who I want to stock in
my life.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Like Gary.

Speaker 5 (04:50):
Yeah, yeah, well he'll be in line for the Taylor
Swift movie.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
We know that, right.

Speaker 5 (04:55):
So yeah, So Prime Big Deal Days is next week,
the seventh of October. But you need not wait until
then if you have had your eye on a couple
of Apple devices, because there's some sales you can take
advantage of now at Amazon dot com. So yeah, AirPods
Pro two just because the new AirPods Pro three were
just unveiled, you can get them for fifty bucks off.

(05:16):
There's still great earbuds with active noise cancelation. So one
hundred and ninety nine instead of two forty nine. That's
a that's a decent discount. Air tags that you touched
on are also down about twenty four percent, so one
hundred and eight dollars instead of one twenty nine for
a four pack. And that's not to be used to
stalk humans, even Apple says don't use it to track

(05:41):
your pets either, like they just want to know.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
They don't want to be liable for anything, right, so.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Your pets privacy concerns.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yes, you need, you need mutual consent from your doc.

Speaker 5 (05:51):
Put it on your suitcase and your purse, on the
back of your you know, your passport when you travel.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
There's some neat things you can do there.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
I'll put it on my husband and he'll like it
all right.

Speaker 5 (06:01):
Better, Well, he's going to hear the noise even if
he's not on iPhone, he's going to hear this noise
that tells people that you have a tracking device on you.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Because I put one in my car before.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
I let my teenage son John say yeah, yeah, so
I can see where he is. You know, Apple iPad Air,
the eleven inch model with the M three chip. That's
Apple's own silicon one hundred and twenty eight gig version,
twenty five percent off, so just over four hundred bucks
when it's normally five. And then finally, Apple Watch se,

(06:32):
which isn't the highest end Apple Watch. It's more of
a modest one, but still with lots of great features.
It's less than one hundred and ninety Right now, you
don't have to wait till the seventh. It's twenty four
percent off the Apple Watch SE at Amazon instead of
waiting for October seventh for prime big deal days, you
can take advantage of that.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Now, do you have an idea what the SE stands for?
Special Edition? Oh?

Speaker 5 (06:56):
Which is funny because it's not. It's more of an
entry level watch. But it's still a decent smart watch.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
I was just going to say, because I think there
are phones they used to do SE which was sort
of the Also, yeah, teared down version, like two years
ago version with increased memory or something like that.

Speaker 5 (07:12):
Yeah, again, it's I don't know, I think it's special edition. Okay,
I'll go with it, but but just say it with confidence.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
I'll believe. Yeah, I just googled it perfectly.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Awesome, Mark, great stuff, as always be on that you
read on the internet.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Thank you very much, have a good afternoon. You've bet
Mark Saltzman. They are a tech guy and host of
the tech it Out podcast. You can find all of
his stuff when you follow him on x M A
r C. Underscore Saltsman with z