Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Charging Myths About Improving Smart Phone Battery Life

Sometimes we get the very cool and shiny smart phone, whether it is iPhone, Galaxy or other phone of the latest edition. But still one problem is the battery life. Besides, the smart phone just eats more battery. We might just be tempted into trying out various advice to make our battery last longer by installing this or that. Let's face the facts. Our smart phone batteries need proper care. Though the technology for the smart phone advances at a fast speed, it is not so for the smart charging of the battery. As a critical part of our smart phones or other digital devices, what we could do is to pay attention to the proper use of our battery.

There is actually a lot of improper information about the batteries. Some of the wrong information just comes from the old battery technologies. For example, the nickel-based batteries we use in the past need to be fully charged. But, for the modern battery we use are lithium ones, which shall not to be fully charged. You may hear about some of the popular myths about the batteries of smart phones: never use your smart phone when it is in charge; just let the phone battery die completely, etc. Are they right? Here's the truth behind some phone charging myths.

Is it right to use the smart phone when it charges?

A lot of smart phone users may believe that the use of smart phone during the charging time may cause explosion of the battery or even electrocute the user. Is that so? There are some cases that the phone just explode while it is charging. The fact here is that, we can use the smart phone we want, as long as the charger is not a poor third-party one. As long as the battery charger we use are manufacturer approved one, it is fine.

Turn off Wi-Fi, GPS and that would prolong battery life?

That’s no reason that can best explain this. Wi-Fi, Bluebooth or GPS are things that just make our phones smart. If we use the phone without such things, we might be better off with the feature phones. Still, if we try to download a huge file without using the Wi-Fi, we will have to pay more for the phone. Unlike the use of apps, the use of Wi-Fi, GPS or Bluetooth actually will not drain any battery. If we want to make the battery last long, just try to install the apps that we really need.

Will off-brand chargers destroy batteries?

The fact is that the off brand chargers, as long as they are manufacturer approved, will just be fine for our smart phone battery. What we should avoid are those fake batteries or knockoffs. If we get those cheap brand poor chargers, our battery will easily get destroyed. But, if the off brand chargers are good enough, we can use them.

Let the battery discharge completely before recharging the smart phone?
Shall we charge the phone until it is completely dead? The fact is that we don’t need to do so. The battery memory is a thing of the past. We can charge our phones every day when we need to do so. The lithium-ion batteries we use for our smart phone are better when they are charged. If we just let the battery discharge completely, the battery will become unstable.

Charging our smart phone overnight will kill the battery?

If you believe so, you just underestimate your smart phone. The phones we use today are much smarter than we could think. When the phone is fully charged, its battery will automatically stop charging. In this case, the battery will not be in use. But still, we need to charge the phones in a given time period and it could be better to avoid charging it every night. Just think about it. When our cup is full of water, will you love to fill it with water still? Our battery can last longer if we keep it charged between 40% and 80%.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Why USB Gadgets Slow to Charge?

We are now using standard USB ports to charge most of our electronic gadgets such as smart phones, cameras, tablets. For most of our time, we have to use our electronics and this is why we expect them to be fully charged all the time. We need even more - we want to charge our USB devices as quickly as possible. But, sometimes, it is annoying to find that after we have plugged in the electronics hours ago, the battery has just been 10% full. Or situation goes like this. The USB gadget just charges very fast in the beginning, yet when it is almost fully charged, the speed is slow. Then what affect the charging rate of our tablet or other USB devices? How to speed them up?  

Charge the gadgets from laptop with USB cable

We get a charger for our smart phones or other gadgets when we buy them. The mobile gadgets usually are equipped with an inbuilt charger circuit and a battery by the manufacturer. The power source of our smart phones is usually the charger that we plug into the wall outlet, exactly, a cable and a power adapter. Then, the thing matter here for a fast charging is the fact that different power sources offer different amperage. For Apple devices, we can get 5 Watts of charge with an iPhone power source when we plug it into a wall socket, 12 Watts from iPad power source. That’s the difference. If we use our laptop to charge our devices via USB cable, the charge amperage available can be 1.5 Watts. For fast charge, choose the AC wall charger.

Use the wrong cable types

Have you ever realized that though most of our devices can be charged by USB ports, but the USB cables are not the same. The differences in the USB cables provided by different manufacturers may also cause the slow charging speed. We need to check out the wire gauge when we try to charge our devices via a USB cable. The normal size of data and power wires inside the USB cable is usually 28/28 AWG, yet which is notorious for slow charging. We need to use 28/24AWG USB cable instead. Besides, we need to keep our USB cables well protected, for it can be easily get damaged.

Charge the smart phone faster as well as safely

Now that we figure out the amperage counts a lot for the charging speed, does that mean we can get the faster charging speed by using a higher milliamp power adapter? Not exactly. Sometimes the powerful adapter can even ruin our battery life. We have to realize that the inbuilt charging circuit can only take the power it needs. When the voltage is compatible, the use of 2000mA is meaningless. volt), there is technically no issue sending 2000mA down the cable and charging faster. Besides, often, our devices can be hot if they are charged via high wattage. The more amps may pose more threat to our cell phone.


Monday, September 15, 2014

How to Choose Hard Drive Docking Station for Laptops

A docking station is such a device for connecting all the ports of a portable electronics to a set of peripheral devices via a simple connection. Some of the docking stations are used for charging a digital and some others function as a desktop computer, complete with a more comfortable layout and set of accessories.

Docking stations are convenient devices for office or home use since its easy integration of a portable device without having to bother with multiple cables. Via the docking stations, we can add new types of connectors to a device that did't originally exist so as to add ports available.

More and more digital gadget users tend to use laptop than desktop when they decide to get a new computer. Then the use of laptop docking station gets popular. Docking stations for laptops help us to do multiple tasks in much easier way. Via the hard drive docking, we can connect it to other electronics or even charge the other digital devices. We can use the docking stations for convenient connections with peripheral devices like printers or other external hard drives.

Besides laptop docking station, there are docking stations for other devices, such as hard drive. HDD docking stations, unlike laptop docking stations is that a hard drive is plugged into an existing computer in an HDD docking station. HDD docking stations can help transfer data between two HDDs, or for quick swapping HDDs without any external drive enclosure. When we need a docking station for hard drive, we still need to check out what type of hard drive interface it supports, SATA or IDE interfaces. Besides, some HDD docking stations can function as a USB hub or multi-card reader.

Then let's come to the docks for iPad or other Apple products. There are many docking stations for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and they range from simple charging stations to audio-video docks and full desktop computer docking stations.

For laptop docking stations online, we can start from category of Computers / Tablets & Networking followed by Laptop & Desktop Accessories and then Laptop Docking Stations. We need to consider what docking station our laptop needs.

Purchase of HDD Docking Stations: It is better to start from the computer, tablets and networking categories when we try to search for hard drive docking stations. Sometimes, such docking stations may fall under the category laptop & desktop Accessories or drives, storage. For a specific interface, such as IDE or SATA , we need to add such terms in our search.

Docking Stations for Smart Phone or iPod: Usually, for the docking station used for smart phones or iPad, we can find them under categories of consumer electronics or computers. Just narrow down our search results based on the functionality of docking station we want.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Top Practical Gadgets Women Will Be Obsessed With

Unlike men who much tend to invest easily on any cool digital gadgets released lately, women love useful gadgets every time they have to purchase a gadget. Besides, the style, practicality and even convenience are usually the priority things they will take into consideration. Here are a few more useful gadgets that women will love.

Smart Charging Kit
This is a simple little mat designed for two digital devices, charging the devices at home, in the office or even when you are on the go. Just place the mobile device on the charging station to charge the device. There is no need to worry about the loose charging ports or cables. Get the smallest mat for charging one device or even three devices simultaneously. Girls will love to put the mat in the car, using the DC power outlet to charge the devices during a trip. That’s really cool.

iDsonix USB 3.0 10 Port Hub

Women love the USB hub with more ports. This is mainly due to the lack of ports from the laptop or computer yet now we have so many electronics. It is really upset when we have several digital devices out of power and have to be charged at the same time. It is very easy to use this USB 3.0 hub. Just add the super speed hub to the computer and it will transfer data at a speed of 5Gbps. The USB hub can connect up to 10 USB 3.0, 2.0, or 1.1 devices to a single port. The USB hub is practical and each port has an LED light to let you know it is active.

Intelligent Water Bottle

The water bottle is really an innovative concept. We can enter in our weight, the time, date, and desired water intake per day and then use it to track our progress towards the goal we set. It is a really fashionable bottle with bluetooth function, USB charging port and a small speaker. Each time we sip water, the data will be stored on an app to Apple or Android users. Its goal is to help notify us when we need to hydrate. So if you need such a device to motivate you to stay properly hydrated, this is really a great gadget.

Floor Scrubbing Robot
Scrubbing the floor is sometimes tedious housework, especially if you have to do it every day. Yet this floor cleaner is a really great gadget for household ladies for thoroughly cleaning floors every day in an very easy way. It can automatically sweep, scrub and squeegee the floors, clearing away up to 99% of bacteria. Unlike a mop, the gadget never puts dirty water back down on your floors. What we need to do is just to fill up the reservoir with clean water and cleaning solution and hit the clean button. After it finishes cleaning, empty the dirty water and place it back on the charging dock to dry.

There are a lot of gadgets that can facilitate our life. But for women, digital gadgets are still not fashion items that can bring them beauty. The gadgets that attract them are usually the most practical ones.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Top 5 Awesome & Useful Tech Gear for College Students

It's time to go back to college this fall. These days, back to school sales offer a lot of discounted tablets and other awesome gadgets that will make life and study easy and fun. That’s good for college students particularly who will love to fill the new backpacks with more high tech cool gadgets instead of books. It makes sense to prepare more tech gadgets because a large number of teachers also agree upon the tech requirement in the classroom or at home that better assist students study and research, especially for those independent learners. So are you left behind by those high tech students? Still, it is necessary to make a list for smart decisions. 

Portable Laser Keyboard
To get a portable keyboard is really a great convenience. For its small size, we can put it in our pant pockets and bring it home, to college or to the library as we like. The cube laser virtual keyboard can be connected to computer wirelessly. It seems much awesome than traditional roll up keyboard and still better than those pricey iPad keyboard. It just costs about $99. 

iDsonix 5 Port USB AC Wall Charger
In the dorm room, there is always lack of socket and still our laptop will not offer us enough ports for charging phones or tablets. Then this 5 port wall charger seems much necessary. We can charge iPhone, iPad air mini or other USB powered gadgets at the same time. The compact design allows the wall charger to be a portable gadget for our trip. It saves us a lot and we do not need to spend extra dollars on adapters. We also do not need to waste all of our USB ports from the computer. We can share it with roommates to charge or power devices easily and quickly.

Cool Headphone That Cancels Noise
Most often, the college dorm rooms are noisy, whether it is the TV noise from neighboring rooms, or chat talk among roommates or just constant traffic in and out. The noise sometimes just distracts our attention from the schoolwork. Then the chic noise canceling headphone may be useful. Besides the quality sound effect, the headphone even offers more. It has some selective Apple products, enabling calls to be answered on an iPhone. Moreover, we can use the remote to control music functions on other Apple products. It is really cool and useful for college students. 

Kindle eReader
With the development of technology, college students have more choice in the ways of reading. We can choose to read books in digital format for it is more flexible to search the information we love or make some emphasis on the information we think important. Besides, the digital reader can be useful when we are on a trip. The new Kindle eReader is popular and awesome digital gadget in that it is saving space, time and even money. It is worth buying such eReader for we cna download a lot of free classic books for free, without spending more on books. The newest Kindle eReader can even hold up to 3,500 books. 

External Hard Drive

For college life, we have too many researches and sometimes, we may overlook he importance of data backup. Sometimes our computer may just fail to work or even crash for whatever reason. When that happens, all of the papers and efforts are lost. The external hard drive seems very useful gadget for students, for they have enough space for backing up the photos, phone, laptop or other electronic devices. This ultra portable hard drive with unique backup software that can back up the data itself. With hardware encryption, our data will stay there just safely. 

Got the gadgets on the list? Good. Let the study easier!"

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Cool Tech Gadgets for Back-to-School College Students in Dorm Room


It's already back to school season and also time for updating the gadgets in your dorm room. As for dorm supplies, there are many gadgets that seem necessary. But since the room space is limited, sometimes, it's very wise for students to pick up some of those space saving gadgets that are high tech yet functional or essential. Then what are those popular gadgets for back to school season、

Cable Clips: We know that in college dorm room, we often have to share place with others and our dorm desk is sometimes a nest of cables for various electronic gadgets, such as the cable of smart phones, headphones, USB plugs, laptop cables, power cords, etc. It's really a mess. For well arranging the cables in place, maybe the cable clips are what we need to keep the dorm desk clean and tidy.

USB 3.0 10 Port Hub Smart Charging Port
For study as well as entertainment, we college students may have so many digital devices and sometimes in the dorm rooms, there are limited sockets or hubs for us to charge the devices. Luckily most of our devices are connectable via standardized USB 2, and now USB 3.0. The shortage of USB ports on laptops can be easily solved by having one USB hub with 10 ports. Awesome! It can charge MBox, an iPod, a WD My Passport, Kindle, and other USB devices. Get one USB hub with multiple ports and share it with your roommates.

Rugged Speaker: You love music and sometimes want to rock out. Yet you may be faced with the problem that you have no idea about being clumsy partygoers. Then what can be changed. Check out this rugged portable speaker. It is not only excellent in quality audio, but can take a serious beating because of its sturdy design. This speaker is water resistant and if you happen to drop it into water. Still no more worry! Besides, it can even power the smart phone. Cool.

Multi-Device USB Charging Station
Too many digital gadgets, such as iPhone, iPad, Galaxy, tablet, Kindle, etc, yet so few outlets for charging them in the dorm room? Just prepare a USB charging station with four or even more ports to power multiple electronic devices from smart phones, MP4, cameras, tablets or other USB supported devices. It can really save much space and only take up one outlet.

Pickup Robot for Cleaning Room
You may be busy with study and have no time to tidy the room or you are just lazy. But dorm room still has to be clean. Then this remote controlled robot seems to be made for you. It can pick up tiny objects such as cup of noodles or your sockets as long as you direct it. Just ask the robot to pick them up and carry them to another place. It is really a bit fun gadget.