battery life

Guess What I Got Yesterday

Fandango12 Comments

That’s right. I got my new iPhone 15 Pro Max phone…case. My actual new iPhone isn’t scheduled to be delivered until sometime between November 15th and November 22nd. So I should have it in time for Thanksgiving. Woo Hoo!

When we last discussed this topic I was trying to decide whether to keep my iPhone 12 Pro Max, which is working just fine, for another year until the iPhone 16 comes out, or to go ahead and upgrade to the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

This week I decided to go with the upgrade. Why? Two words: battery and camera.

I do use my iPhone a lot, and lately, by around 3:00 in the afternoon, my iPhone’s battery hits the red zone.

That tells me there’s only a 20% charge left. But the reviews of the iPhone 15 Pro Max suggest a 20-30% increase in battery life over prior models. Woo Hoo!

And then there are the cameras. On my 12 Pro Max, the maximum photo resolution is 12 megapixels. But on the 15 Pro Max, the main camera resolution is set to 24 MP by default, but can be switched between 12 MP, 24 MP, and 48 MP.

My current phone has up to 2x optical zoom and 12x digital zoom. But the 15 Pro Max that I ordered has up to 5x optical zoom and 25x digital zoom. The new iPhone adds a macro lens for extreme close-ups and a bunch of other photo enhancement features. Woo Hoo!

So between the significant increase in battery life coupled with the magnitude of the improvements to the camera capabilities, the decision to upgrade to the iPhone 15 Pro Max was a no-brainer.

TMP — Battery Life

Fandango12 Comments

Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off. My peeve today is: batteries that don’t last.

I have an August Home WiFi-enabled smart lock on my front door. It’s a pretty neat little device. Installing it on my front door was a piece of cake, taking less than 30 minutes from start to finish. Now I never need a key to lock or unlock my front door. I have an app on my iPhone that I can use to unlock and lock my front door at the touch of a finger. It even recognizes me if I’m outside and within 10 feet of the front door and it automatically unlocks as I approach it without my even having to use my iPhone. It’s like magic.

One of the reason I got the August Home smart lock is because my son has one at his place and he loves it. And I love mine as well. Except that its battery life sucks.

I received an email notification on Saturday that my August Home smart lock batteries at my front door “are almost completely drained. Please change them immediately.” I had gotten a similar email on September 5th and changed the batteries then, less than two months ago!

My son says the batteries on his August Home smart lock last for almost a year, so why were mine burning out after not even two months?

I found the answer when I Googled “August Home battery life.” It seems that since my son bought his smart lock, the engineers at August introduced a new model, which is the one I purchased. It’s the first August model with the CR123 battery. The team at August estimates the lock’s batteries should last three to six months, versus the longer lifespan of six months to a year promised for the older, AA battery models.

I wouldn’t even mind if the batteries lasted three to six months, especially since two CR123 batteries cost about the same as a dozen AA batteries. But two months? Seriously?

The first thought I had after finding out that the latest, “new and improved” model of the August Home smart lock’s performance, at least from a battery life perspective, was that the August Home engineers and WordPress happiness engineers have a lot in common when it comes to introducing new features and functionality.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — September 24th

Fandango23 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 24th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on September 24, 2017.

My Batteries Need Charging

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I do almost everything on my iPhone. I barely use my laptop anymore because it’s simply more convenient to use my smart, handheld device than it is to chain myself to my desk and use my laptop. And, honestly, there’s very little that I need to do on my laptop that I can’t do on my iPhone. I’m even writing this post on my iPhone.

I have an iPhone 6, which is about two-and-half years old. That’s about 75 in human years. So it’s old. But it works.

A few days ago I downloaded and installed iOS 11.0 for my iPhone. I did it not because there was anything wrong with iOS 10-dot-whatever that was previously running on my iPhone. It was working just fine.

iOS 11.0 seems to be working just fine, as well. And it does have a handful of new features, one or two of which might even be useful once I discover what they are.

But I’m not writing this post to brag about iOS 11.0. I’m writing this post to warn you about it. If you have an iPhone, and it’s not the latest, greatest iPhone, don’t download and install the new operating system. It consumes your battery life at an astonishing rate.

You know that little battery icon in the upper right corner of your screen? With iOS 11.0, I can literally see the battery draining. Since installing the latest OS, my iPhone’s battery is usually down to about 20% within just a few hours. Previously, the battery lasted most of the day before I had to set it aside for a little while to recharge it.

And, by the way, recharging the battery back to 100% takes longer with iOS 11.0. A lot longer.

I think the problem is that the new OS is designed to run most efficiently on the newest hardware. So I guess there’s only one viable solution to this iOS 11.0 problem.

I am going to pamper myself and purchase a new iPhone X in November when it becomes available. I’m sure that will solve my battery life problems and all will once again be right with the world.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “pamper.”

Post script September 24, 2012

I was fascinated when I found this post that I wrote exactly four years ago. Shortly after I wrote it, I noticed that my iPhone 6 was running much slower than it had before I upgraded to iOS 11.0. Apparently Apple had decided to intentionally (and without informing anyone) slow down the performance of its older iPhones in order to attempt to extend the batter life after iOS 11.0 started sucking the life out of the iPhones’ batteries.

I did buy a new iPhone in November, but it was an iPhone 8 Plus, not an iPhone X, and that saved me a couple of hundred dollars. I traded in my sluggish iPhone 6 for an iPhone 8 Plus because it was a larger device than my iPhone 6 and I figured that, as a newer device — albeit not the newest device — the battery would last longer, which it did. And, best of all, it was much faster than my older iPhone. Last year, I upgraded to the iPhone 12 Pro Max, an even larger device than my iPhone 8 Plus.

But what is most interesting to me, exactly four years later, is that Apple just introduced iOS 15.0 and I’ve been debating with myself about whether to install the new iOS or to wait for a while. If I learned anything from my experience from four years ago, it’s probably that I should wait. Unfortunately, I tend toward instant gratification, so the idea that this sexy new update to Apple iOS is available is gnawing at my desire to have the latest and greatest of whatever is available. I have a feeling that I’ll be installing iOS 15.0 sooner, rather than later.

My Battery Needs Recharging

Fandango10 Comments

F8833675-FB57-4019-8A0D-6BCCC74DB0EB

I do almost everything on my iPhone. I barely use my laptop anymore because it’s simply more convenient to use my smart, handheld device than it is to chain myself to my desk and use my laptop. And, honestly, there’s very little that I need to do on my laptop that I can’t do on my iPhone. I’m even writing this post on my iPhone.

I have an iPhone 6, which is about two-and-half years old. That’s about 75 in human years. So it’s old. But it works.

A few days ago I downloaded and installed iOS 11.0 for my iPhone. I did it not because there was anything wrong with iOS 10-dot-whatever that was previously running on my iPhone. It was working just fine.

iOS 11.0 seems to be working just fine, as well. And it does have a handful of new features, one or two of which might even be useful once I discover what they are.

But I’m not writing this post to brag about iOS 11.0. I’m writing this post to warn you about it. If you have an iPhone, and it’s not the latest, greatest iPhone, don’t download and install the new operating system. It consumes your battery life at an astonishing rate.

You know that little battery icon in the upper right corner of your screen? With iOS 11.0, I can literally see the battery draining. Since installing the latest OS, my iPhone’s battery is usually down to about 20% within just a few hours. Previously, the battery lasted most of the day before I had to set it aside for a little while to recharge it.

And, by the way, recharging the battery back to 100% takes longer with iOS 11.0. A lot longer.

I think the problem is that the new OS is designed to run most efficiently on the newest hardware. So I guess there’s only one viable solution to this iOS 11.0 problem.

I am going to pamper myself and purchase a new iPhone X in November when it becomes available. I’m sure that will solve my battery life problems and all will once again be right with the world.

Wriiten for today’s one-word prompt, “pamper.”