How to make your phone or tablet charge as quickly as possible

Enjoy today's featured easy-to-follow tech tip.

Rick Rouse

Aug 20, 2024

[Standard Edition]

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Today’s featured tech tip…

How to make your phone or tablet charge as quickly as possible

Do you often find that your phone's battery is running low but you don't have much time to charge it up?

If so, there's an easy way to ensure that you'll get as much charge in the short time available as possible. All you have to do is put your phone in airplane mode.

You probably know that putting any device into airplane prevents it from ringing or making other sounds, but this handy setting actually goes much further than that...

Enabling airplane mode also shuts down all the device's built-in radios (cellular, GPS, Bluetooth, etc.), and that's a big deal when the battery is being charged.

Disabling all those radios makes the device more energy efficient than it is when it's fully operational.

And the less "juice" the device needs to operate, the faster the battery will charge because more of the incoming current is flowing into the battery instead of into the device itself.

What's more, the difference in charging time can be substantial. In fact, some devices will charge almost twice as fast after they have been placed in airplane mode.

For others, the difference can be minimal. In other word's your mileage may vary as the old saying goes.

Of course simply turning your phone or tablet off while it's charging will make it charge faster still, but you'll also have to wait for it to boot up when you turn it back on.

In my opinion, enabling airplane mode is a lot more practical than a power down / power up cycle since it will only take a few seconds and a couple of taps to re-enable it.

Bottom line: Charging your device in airplane mode will give you much of the benefit you'd get by turning it off without the hassle of having to wait for it to boot back up.

That's why the next time your phone's battery is running low and you only have a few minutes to charge it, placing it in airplane mode will allow you to get the most charge possible in that short period of time.

Important: Your phone won't be able to receive calls or texts and its GPS feature won't work while it's in airplane mode. Be sure to take that into account before you enable it.

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Picture of the Day...

“Life in the Woods”

Today’s POTD demonstrates how most every living thing on planet Earth will somehow find a way to survive. I hope you like it.

Bonus tips from some the web’s best Tech sites...

Every day I hand-pick five of the best tips I found on my favorite tech sites and share them with you, my wonderful subscribers. Here is today’s selection:

• How to turn any appliance into a smart device with a smart plug

• How to remove Bing from Chrome and reset the default search engine

• How to enable Steam Family Sharing (and what it does)

• The back of your iPhone has a secret button. Here's everything it can do

• How to download movies from Netflix for offline viewing

Today's post from 'Living (and loving) Life'...

Tires are expensive. Here are 4 tips for making yours last as long as possible

Rick's daily gadget pick...

Every day I feature a tech item that I’ve hand-picked to be among the best of the best.

Click here to see what I’m loving today.

Today’s tech news headlines...

• Chrome will redact credit cards, passwords when you share Android screen

• U.S. road safety plan will let cars 'talk' to each other

• Starlink's direct-to-cell plans hit with opposition by AT&T and Verizon

• Your TV has become a digital billboard (and it’s only getting worse)

• Microsoft is enabling device encryption by default on Windows

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Your tech buddy,