I find many people annoyed with the frequency with which their cellphones need to be recharged. I thought I’d mention a few settings I changed that greatly increased the battery life on my old, but apparently still expensive, Samsung VI660 flip phone.

As a general rule, the more work your phone has to do, the shorter your battery life will be. Work includes maintaining a connection to a cell tower, notifying you when you have an incoming call, and filling the speaker with the voice of someone speaking to you on your phone. Additionally, the microphone captures your voice and sends it out across the airwaves. Beyond these primary duties, your phone has more mundane tasks including powering the on screen display when the phone is open.

To maximize your battery life, therefore, it stands to reason that you should minimize the amount of work it has to do for items you can control, such as the volume at which it outputs sound and what it displays on screen. Therefore, I suggest that you

• Enable the phone’s power safer mode, if it has an option for it (the VI660 does)
• Reduce the volume of the speaker to the lowest comfortable level
• Reduce the ringer volume to the lowest level you can hear it at or switch to vibrate mode
• Disable any animated screen saver
• Minimize the length of time your phone’s LCD is backlit
• Prevent your phone from constantly updating your LCD when it’s flipped open
• Disable analog roaming; So expensive a minute you probably have it off anyway
• If there is no signal — you’re in the woods or something — turn off the phone as searching for a cell tower is power intensive!

After making the above changes on my VI660, my battery life greatly increased. I can now talk for four hours continuously (don’t ask) before the battery dies. It easily lasts 24 hours between charges, although I connect it for recharging before retiring each night.

If you have a VI660, the settings you want are accessible using this recipe (from screen saver each time):

[press] Menu 7 1 5 3 UP OK
[press] Menu 7 1 5 2 DOWN (8 seconds) OK
[press] Menu 7 1 5 1 DOWN (8 seconds) OK
[press] Menu 7 1 2 1 LEFT (Digital Clock) OK
[press] Menu 7 2 1 OK LEFT (Level 1) OK

You can play with some other settings, especially volume for other notifications, like for voice mail, but the display settings (first four) are the most potent. The ringer volume can also be adjusted while the phone is not in use with the up and down button on the left of the phone. When the phone is in use, use the same button to control speaker volume level. Lower is better.