If you’re going to be in an area with no cellphone service for more than a few hours, consider removing your cellphone battery during that time or it might go dead. It seems that turning your cellphone off isn’t enough; the cellphone may continually try to resync with the mothership grid, and the successive abortive attempts are very draining on the battery level.
We found this out over vacation and had occasion where the cellphone was fully charged before turning it off, only to have it be flashing eep eep help me I’m dyinnnnnng when we turned it on again.
(Photo: dyobmit)
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I have been selling cell phones for 6 years. They do not re-sync when completely powered off. You would only need to remove the battery if you are using a smart phone which you cannot really turn off unless the battery is removed. People should already know that they should turn their phones off in low signal areas as it drains the battery much quicker. Duh.
Btw, I’m sure everyone already knows that any battery will discharge over time whether or not it is used. I think for Ben’s phone to discharge so quickly, he either misjudged how much power was left on the battery, or the phone is liquid damaged (which everyone denies even when the water damage sticker is bright red!)
@philipbarrett: I agree that it must be a bad design — I never had problems with other older phones, but the razr dies every time I leave the country for 2 or so weeks. I guess it draws more power all even when it should be dormant.
ugh, -”all” from my last sentence.
@floofy: The sticker wasn’t red when I sent it in, I swear! F’n UPS.
@edmundo: I have the Sprint PPC-6800 (Mogul), and have no problems in actually turning it off.
Press “Power”: Standby (All buttons but “Power” locked, and screen off)
Hold “Power” for five seconds: “Power will be turned off, and you may lose data if you have not saved them. Do you want to continue?” (Pressing “Yes” shuts down the phone completely.)