My Experience Capturing Photos & Videos Under Extremely Low Battery Conditions At A Rock Concert

The other day I saw an old local metal band play down the street from my house. The band split a few years ago, so it was nice to see them get back together for a reunion show. About 600 heads showed up, keep in mind its a small venue so it was hot, muggy, and packed. I decided I wanted to take pictures of the band and try to capture some video, just to see how the Nokia N82 does in conditions like a hardcore and metal concert. I'll be writing another article soon about my results with some photo samples and maybe a video. In this article however, I will talk about my experience with an extremely low N82 battery, and give tips to get the most you possibly can out of it. Pretty much squeeze as much juice and as many photos and videos imaginable out of your Nokia N82.

When I arrived at the show, dummy me didn't have a fully charged battery. It was down to three bars. After calling and texting a few people to see where everyone was at, I was down to two bars. I started realizing I should save some battery life now, and fast - so that I can get all the media captured I wanted. First thing I did was drop the brightness down to the lowest setting and changed my backlight timeout to 5 seconds. I'm pretty sure that helped significantly. I started thinking of other things I can do. Double checked that I didn't have any unnecessary applications running in the background, turned off my auto retrieval of my email accounts and turned off WLAN search, and just stopped playing with the phone in general.

Once the band finally came on to the stage and startd playing it was time to start snappy away with my N82. I got some great shots with this trusty little camera - I mean phone - I'll show you more later. About 12 shots in I realized I was down to 1 bar and got a battery low alert. Crap! What else can I do to save battery life. Keep in mind I was taking shot after shot, back to back in low light conditions. Not just here and there, contstant. First thing I realized is I didn't need a signal or reception. I wasn't planning on making or taking any calls. So I went to my profiles and set it to Offline Mode. This is pretty much like pulling out your sim card. All other functions work on the phone, just no signal. I made sure to close down Location Tagger as well. If you haven't heard, Nokia has a beta release of Location Tagger that allows you to tag photos with GPS coordinates. This is just until the N82's next firmware update, in which Geo Tagging is supposed to be built in. Anyways, I did one more thing to make the battery life stretch. Went into my camera settings and switched the "show captured image" to off. Doesn't seem like much, but the time it takes for the image to process and then the preview to show is drastic when it comes to hanging onto that last bar. Instead it processes the image you shot and then goes back to the viewfinder, ready for the next capture.

So basically thats all I can think of to save battery life, and sure enough the phone didn't die. I got lots of shots and some great video (although the audio sucks). And no battery low warnings besides that first one. Amazing! After I got that first warning, I took about ten minutes of video and around 30 photos, and again - no more battery warnings. Phone never died on me, and the band's performance lasted about an hour.

Here's a simple rundown of what I did. Maybe some of these battery life tips will help you when you run into this situation on our N82, or any S60 phone for that matter.

• turn off email retrievals
• close any unnecessary applications running in the background
• set your screen brightness all the way down, as well has your light time-out
• don't use any gps
• turn off wlan searching
• don't text or call unless its absolutely necessary
• turn of the "show captured image", or image preview in your camera settings
• in drastic times, set your phone to offline mode under the profiles.

A few more things I could have done is turn off the automatic screen rotation and lowered the power saver timeout settings.

Thats about everything I can think of. Let me know if you guys have any other ideas, the more the better.

Stay tuned today or tomorrow for the concert images and maybe some video from the night.

Continue Reading...

Save More Battery Life On Your Nokia N82

It's no secret that the N82 already has a decent battery, especially for a smartphone and xenon flash. It's not quite as strong as the N73's (who knows why Nokia didn't put the same battery), but it still holds pretty good. Here is a little write-up I did at Symbian Addict last year that very much applies to the Nokia N82 and saving battery life. All of these tips are great to get overall longer battery life, but can be extremely crucial when your running low on the battery and don't have a charger near by.


1. Set your Network Mode to GSM Mode when not using 3g.
When your running low on battery life, or you don't get a 3g connection in your area, improve your battery life by changing your network mode to GSM only. 3g is best for internet use, and is the best way to go for voice as well, but GSM ain't that bad for voice. If I'm not planning on using the internet and I'm running low, I'd shut it off. This will stop your phone from searching constantly for a 3g signal that might not even exist in your area. This is one of the first things I did when I got my Nokia N73 since it doesn't even have US 3g capabilities. On the Nokia N82 you go to Tools, Settings, Phone, Network.

2. Change Your Screen Display Settings.
These Nokia handsets already have bright and beautiful screens. There's no need to keep the light set to the brightest possible setting. That will drain your battery fast! Then again, I don't like my screen dim and dull either. I set mine to the setting right below the highest. It keeps the screen bright and sharp, and does a lot to save on battery life.

Also, set your light time-out to something lower like 40 seconds. You'd be surprised at how much an extra 20 seconds at a time can drain your battery. Say you touch your phone 200 times throughout the day. Thats an extra 40 minutes your backlight is on if you keep at 60 seconds, as apposed to 40 seconds. Tools, Settings, General, Personalisation, Display.

And when your on that very last bar, just suck it up and turn your brightness all the way down. It should add a good deal of time to the small amound of life you have left.

3. Don't Leave Applications Running When Unused.
Keeping applications open in the background when your not using them can be costly to your battery. A lot of times, new S60 owners don't know that if you don't properly close out of the application, it will just get minimized to the background. Check out this post for information on a Task Manager, which allows you to see and close all your open applications, including some that might be hidden and not needed.

4. Turn Off WLAN Scanning if your not using it.
If you don't turn this off, your phone will always be searching for a hotspot and waste battery life. It's just not necessary unless your near a known hotspot browsing the web.

If you have any other ways you save battery life on your Nokia handset, share your thoughts.

Continue Reading...