LG Cell Phone Batteries

Choosing the right cell phone batteries is a great way to extend the usefulness of your phone. Cell phones are used for recreational purposes as well as important business matters – they are in constant use and because of this a cell phones batteries can wear out rather quickly.

There are many types of batteries depending on the manufacturer of your cell phone. The importance of choosing the right battery is to the prevent any leakage that can cause damage and to extend the lifespan. A cell phone has a lifespan of about two years and it is usually the battery that goes first.

When you are replacing a cellular phone battery it is best to choose the recommendations made by the manufacturer. The most common batteries are Lithium Polymer, Lithium Ion, Nickel Cadmium, and Nickel Metal Hydride.

Lithium Polymer (Li-Poly)
Lithium Polymer batteries are the newest on the market which are very lightweight and durable. This battery is devoid of memory defects and has 40% more capacity and twice the life of the Nickel Metal Hydride.

Lithium Ion (Li-Ion)
Lithium Ion batteries have the most advanced technology and are used with newest phone models. The long lasting Lithium Ion battery can charge your phone at 80% capacity quite fast. This memory efficient battery is very expensive but worth the price.

Nickel Cadmium (NiCd)
Nickel Cadmium batteries are the oldest model and the most familiar. It is a rechargeable battery and the least expensive. The problem with Nickel Cadmium batteries is that they have memory defects and need to be discharged first before you can recharge them otherwise you can cause damage.

Nickel Cadmium batteries contain the toxic chemical cadmium which is increasingly becoming a waste problem.

Nickel Metal Hydrid (NiMH)
What is unique about the Nickel Metal Hydrid battery is that it does not contain cadmium and is environmentally friendly. These batteries are memory efficient , have a high capacity, and can take under an hour to charge.

Tips on Extending the Life of a Battery

• Do not charge you battery everyday, instead charge it every other day. Charging the battery continually can lower its capacity.
• Avoid leaving your cell phone in severe temperatures such as a car dashboard or in a cold room.
• Turn your cell phone off when you are not using it. Leaving it on all of the time can overheat it.
• Avoid carrying your phone in your pocket for it can cause overheating from you own body.
• Use only chargers that are meant for your phone.
• Periodically clean your phone and battery with rubbing alcohol because dust can do damage.

Clip on cell phone antenna boosters are generally small pieces of a foil-like material that serves to pick up stray cell phone signal from the air and direct them to your phone. These boosters generally cost only a few dollars and serve to add approximately one bar to your cell phone’s reception. They are great for boosting weak signals, particularly if you have only one and sometimes two bars in certain parts of your city.

External cellular phone antenna boosters are intended for use in your home or your car. The home version of these antennas tends to be more popular, as it is becoming easier to get a strong cell phone signal while on the road. If you have a lot of problems with dropped calls and weak reception inside of your home, then an external booster may be perfect for you. These boosters work by using a very large antenna to pick up cell phone signal waves and then re-transmitting the signal throughout your house. They work extremely well, and are great for getting a consistent reception inside of your home twenty four hours out of the day.

Let’s take a look at the way that people use mobile phones. Prior to the Smartphone, the best mobile phones were the smallest ones. This meant that you could just slip them in to your pocket and you had a neat and most importantly compact way for people to get in touch with you. Smartphone’s need a larger processor, and screen for the very nature of them being miniature computers, so many people have just sacrificed having a small phone for these additional features. A lot of people complain that the iPhone has a screen that it too small. I think they are missing the point somewhat here, but perhaps the iPad could be the answer for this type of user.

There is no doubt that the larger the screen the better you photos will look and the easier it is to watch a movie and surf the web. For heavy web and gadget users, an iPad may be the perfect device as it offers a larger screen but it is still a very portable device. This means that if you are in a situation where you have the space to carry a larger item around with you, you’d probably rather have the iPad with you than the iPhone. However, if you are going on a night out and you don’t want the bulk in your pockets you might just revert back to carrying a suitably tiny mobile phone.

What we are saying here is that the iPad perhaps bridges the gap between portability due to its relatively small size, but it still has the usability of the larger screen. For those who are concerned that it doesn’t have a hard-wired keyboard there is no need to fear. With the iPad keyboard doc you can hook up a full-sized keyboard and type away until your fingers bleed. For many people this will mean that the iPad could be the ultimate computing gadget. It is portable when it needs to be, yet you can still use it almost like a conventional computer and expand it’s capabilities with the number of iPad accessories that are out there for it.

You may have heard about the introduction of the iPad. If you haven’t then you’ve been living under a rock! The iPad is the name of the latest device from Apple which is a tablet PC that allows you to interact with the device via the large touchscreen. This means that browsing the web becomes much more intuitive and personal. However, it would be good to understand what exactly is the difference between the iPad and a normal smartphone for web surfing.

It is important to note that a battery of an iPad will last you for about 10 hours between charges and that better then most cellphones on the market today. The reason is that the iPad is much larger and thus, can fit a much larger battery. The Droid and Nexus One have been losing points because of their inefficient design and battery sucking behavior.

The pricing of this new device depends on the amount of space that you are looking for. The more space it has give you more space to store your files but also more space in your wallet. The most recommended version will be the 16GB because the price is a bit easier to stomach. This size of iPad will cost you either $500 or $630 (with or without 3G), however if you are looking for a cellphone, you can easily get a very good model (and a 2 year contract) for around $200.

Apple also made internet plans much easier to understand with the iPad then with normal cellphone plans. There are two versions available. A 250 MB per month plan for $15 or an umlimited plan for $30. There is no contract required and you can upgrade, cancel, or downgrade at any time on the iPad itself. Between convoluted cellphone contracts and the simple iPad plans the choice is clear; iPad wins this round!

As far as resolution is concerned, the screen of an iPad is much bigger than that of a cellphone. This means better visibility, better resolution, pictures are clearer, text is sharper, websites are larger, the list goes on and on. iPad wins this point too.

The iPad is definitely something that is worth exploring, and is really a game changer in the mobile web surfing space.

This post was brought to you by the fine folks at iPad Accessories who cover news and product reviews on iPad bags, covers, keyboards, and other accessories.

Sensors and megapixels

Digital photographs are captured by a sensor inside the camera, which sits behind the lens. This sensor is made up of millions of tiny pixels, which combine to form the final image that you capture. A megapixel is one million of these pixels, and a camera sensor is usually described by how many megapixels it has. More megapixels gives you an image with higher resolution, but that doesn’t always equate to higher quality. Camera phones with lots of megapixels are often a marketing gimmick only,. Having less pixels, but better quality ones, will often give you a better overall image and also work better in lower light. 5 or 6 megapixels should be plenty for normal camera phone use, and should be able to make good quality prints up to 8 x 10 size at least.

Optical Zoom vs Digital Zoom

Digital zoom is a more common option than optical zoom. Digital zoom is a process the camera uses to enlarge part of an image, giving the effect of ‘zooming in’. Unfortunately this process reduces image quality significantly, to the point that it is not a useful feature for any serious photos. Effectively, digital zoom crops out a small portion of the image and enlarges it. Optical zoom, on the other hand, uses a series of lenses inside the phone camera that are moved mechanically to actually enlarge the image before it is captured by the camera sensor. This means that the sensor captures a magnified image using all of it’s available resolution. Optical zoom is not a cheap option in a camera phone, because of the miniature parts required. However it is becoming more common, and is worth looking out for if you use your phone camera a lot.

LED flash vs Xenon

Many camera phones have no flash at all. More common is an LED flash, which is a small bright light that goes on when a picture is taken. More sophisticated cameras have a xenon flash, which works just like a real flash on your camera. These may use up your cell phones batteries more quickly, so charge up if you plan on taking lots of pictures!

• Quality and ease of use of voice calls and SMS
• Internet browsing and email
• Build quality
• Size
• Camera
• Other apps, games etc

If you have similar priorities in a phone, hopefully this review will be useful for you.
My first impulse was to buy an iphone. On paper, it looked like a great option for the internet browsing and email. I ended up borrowing one from a friend and giving it a good road test. I was glad that I did, as I found a few features which were a deal breaker for me at the time. I know criticizing the iphone is an easy way to get yourself flamed by apple fans so I will have to be careful here!

Using the iphone, the internet browsing is indeed fantastic. There is also a huge range of games and applications available to download, and some of them are pretty good! However my top use for a phone is still to make calls and send messages. For my tastes, the touch screen on the iphone was actually a bit fiddly to use. I like to be able to type on a phone without even looking at the keys at times, like when I’m in a meeting and need to send a sneaky message. Typing a message on the iphone for me required constant attention, and with no texture to the keys at all I found my fingers slipping on to other letters. The size was also a downside; it did not feel comfortable in my pocket.

Once I had decided the iphone wasn’t for me, I looked around for something with similar features. The Nokia E71 was a bit of an oddball choice as it is really targeted at business users. However browsing reviews online, this seemed to translate to good build quality and stable software, both definite pluses!

The E71 is a candy bar style phone, which I like for the added strength. I have had a clamshell design in the past and found that it broke easily at the hinge. It has a large screen, although less than half the size of the iphone. It also has a full QWERTY style keyboard. To be honest, I could take or leave the QWERTY keyboard. It does work quite well because the keys are raised in the middle, reducing slippage to other keys. However most regular cell phone users are very quick with the standard layout with 3 or 4 letters to a number. With practice, I am almost as fast with the QWERTY keyboard as with the 0-9 pad and it is less button presses. But there is still a bit of hunt and peck to find the right key sometimes. Using the shift or control keys is awkward as you have to hold 2 tiny keys at once. I have actually thought about getting a Bluetooth keyboard for those times that I want to do more typing on the go.

The E71 has dedicated buttons on the keypad for home, calendar, address book and email. You can customize the use of each button, and assign different functions for a long press of each button. I find the email button, and the whole integration of email into the E71 to be very useful. The phone comes with a wizard that configures your email the first time you run it – after that it is a matter of pressing the button, and the phone checks for any new email on the server and copies it to your phone. You can send emails from your phone as easily as writing a text.

Internet browsing is similarly easy. The included browser is quite good, but you can easily download a third party browser if you want a change. I have also tried opera mini and skyfire, and both worked well. I think skyfire is a little better with a range of media like embedded videos and some java based sites.

The biggest disappointment for me is the camera on the E71. It wasn’t terrible at first, but the design doesn’t include any kind of protective cover as in many other Nokia models. In fact, the camera actually protrudes from the back of the phone, making it very easy to scratch. Mine quickly became almost useless due to the wear on the cover. It still takes pictures, but has a lot of flare in bright light because of the scratches. I guess Nokia thinks business users don’t need to take many pictures.

In terms of size, the E71 is just a little thinner and shorter than the iphone. However it is almost half the thickness which makes a surprising difference to pocketability. I can comfortably carry mine in a pants pocket.
In summary, the E71 is a great little phone. It is more portable than its width suggests and feels well built and solid. The medium-large color screen makes web browsing fairly easy, and the integrated email is great. For me, there is a question mark over the QWERTY keyboard. Some might prefer the familiarity of a 0-9 style keypad, but even with fairly large fingers it is quite easy to press each key. The camera is a letdown but other multimedia features are good – the media player works well for mp3s and video, and the voice recorder is a plus for note taking. All things considered, this is a well thought phone that with a few design changes could be my dream phone.

Battery

Most cell phone batteries are removable, and can be replaced when they aren’t lasting as long any more.

Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a technology used by phones to connect wirelessly to other devices. Phones can connect to computers via Bluetooth, but more commonly it is used to connect to cell phone accessories like headsets or wireless keyboards.

CDMA
CDMA is a digital wireless communication protocol, used by phones to send and receive information.

Digital Zoom
Digital zoom is a feature used in camera phones. It zooms in on a section of an image by taking a smaller piece of the image and enlarging it This is a common feature in camera phones, but produces progressively lower quality images the more zoom is used.

Firmware
Firmware is the internal operating system that makes a phone work. Firmware can be upgraded to give the benefits of improvements made by the manufacturer. Some phones can be upgraded at home, when connected to a computer. Others must be upgraded by the manufacturer or a repairer.

Flight mode
Phones in flight mode have all communications features switched off, but can still be used to run applications or games on the phone without disrupting aircraft systems.

GPS
GPS is a system that lets a phone know exactly where it is geographically. This can be used in mapping software, just like a car navigation device.

Infrared
Infrared is used in some phones to communicate wirelessly. Phones must have line of sight to the other infrared device to work, so this feature is not used very much in modern phones.

Java
Java is a programming language used to create games and applications that can run on phones.

Key Guard
Most phones have a method of avoiding inadvertent key presses while the phone is in a pocket or bag. These work by requiring specific keys to be pressed together or in sequence to unlock the keypad.

MMS
Multi Media Messaging is a way of sending media such as short videos, pictures, or sound files to other phones as a text message.

Megapixel
A megapixel is a measurement of resolution used in digital cameras. One megapixel is made up of one thousand pixels. Most modern cameras offer well over 1 megapixel of resolution, but be wary of ultra high resolution phone cameras. Often the picture quality is better in a phone with a moderate resolution but better quality sensor.

Optical zoom
Optical zoom uses movable lenses to narrow the field of view, and enlarge an image. Optical zoom produces far superior results compared to digital zoom.

Predictive text
Predictive text is a system that the phone uses to guess what word you are typing, and complete it for you. If it gets the word wrong it is usually easy to continue typing over with what you want, or toggling through different options to find the correct word. This uses an internal dictionary, which learns new words you use over time.

Ring tone
Modern cell phones support a wide range of ring tones. It’s easy to get your favorite tune, either downloaded straight to your phone or copied from a computer.

SMS
An SMS is a short text message, sent to another mobile phone.

Touch Screen
Touch screens allow users to press on icons on the screen directly, rather than using physical buttons to navigate. The iphone is the market leading example of this, but many companies are launching competing products.

Unlocked
Unlocked phones are able to be used with any network that you have an account with. If your phone is locked, you will only be able to use it on a single network. Phones can be unlocked online or by your carrier – or may even be sold unlocked.

Video call
A video call is like a voice call, but front mounted cameras are used to transmit a real time video image of you speaking – or doing whatever else you are doing.

Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi is a wireless networking standard used by many new phones to access the internet or other networks through a wireless access point or hot spot.

Xenon flash
Most phones have LED flashes, but some have the much better quality xenon flash tube. This is a good option if you want to take photos in dark places, like parties or clubs.

The appeal of certain cell phone accessories can be different when it comes to different age and interest groups. For teenagers and fashionistas, it is usually a prerequisite to have a cool cell phone cover in a pattern or theme that is trendy, popular or unique. You will find cell phone covers in popular themes like Hello Kitty, music band name logos, name brand clothing logos, and sports team logos. Cell phone covers like this often have a chain with a charm attached for extra decoration. Cell phone covers can also be used to protect cell phones from environmental damage, theft, and collision. These cell phone accessories are usually made from tough and durable leather and have a metal clip that swivels while at the same time locking in place. The metal clip attaches to belt buckles, pockets, lapels and purses. It is hard to simply grab the phone or snatch it in the hopes of stealing.

Other popular cell phone accessories include accessories that music lovers use to listen to music. Many newer cell phones are equipped with music players. Music can be downloaded and even stored on many of these cell phones. Phones like this usually come with accessories for listening to music like head phones and ear sets. There are some people that use head phones and ear sets to talk on the phone while driving. You can do this with a simple headset, or you can buy a more expensive Bluetooth phone accessory.

A Bluetooth keyboard is available for newer models of phone that support editing software like office mobile, or even just for those who are serious texting fiends. These are compact and may be foldable for better storage. Most modern phones make it easy to connect your keyboard via Bluetooth and you can get typing straight away. I have even heard of students using a smart phone with a Bluetooth keyboard to take notes in lectures, instead of lugging around a laptop!