Hands Off My Batteries

 It has become crystal clear that "they" are now sticking to the one method of disrupting my writing they feel is most effective. For the past month, they have been discharging my phone batteries in record time, either because they are using new technology, or a better technique. Whereas previously they merely shortened battery life by a percentage point, now they are suddenly capable of depleting entire bars in minutes. Checking the voltage of the battery after a few minutes out of the phone reveals that it is just 1.5 volts, meaning it has continued discharging even when it was outside the phone.

Previously, they combined shortening the phone's battery life with crashes at crucial moments, for instance when I was using the qwerty to write or browsing sites I know they do not want me to visit, especially those where I can satisfy my gigantic appetite for knowledge. Also, there were abnormally high phone radio emissions as evidenced by various RF sniffer detections. Browser hijacks were also common, especially those that caused the screen to hang while "phantom" data was downloading in the background, eventually causing a huge disparity between actual data downloaded and total data usage, depleting my data allowance.

All of that, except the browser hijacks, is no longer happening. It has come down to the batteries. Now, a fully laden battery takes a mere 10 minutes to discharge completely when the phone is under constant use. This is happening to batteries that can still hold a full charge. I know this because, 1) the two batteries I am using right now are new, 2) the power saving mode interval (integrated into all phones) activated when battery power is low is no longer stable. It can last from a mere minute, to a  whole day, depending on how sensitive what I am doing on the phone is (to them). The discharging has nothing to do with a fault of the batteries because, under normal circumstances, the battery saving mode is almost always the same in duration and should last at most a whole day if the phone is not used because a) apps that demand much battery power are prevented from running, b) the backlight switches off within a minute, c) my phone cannot run programs in the background.

The fact of the matter is that they do not want me to write, and this need has risen to fever pitch the last month. They do not want me to communicate at all. Isolation should be total.

Type of Phone I Owned in 1996

I have been using mobile phones since the mid-nineties and cannot possibly get it all wrong today. Plus, this rapid discharge phenomenon is in fact a pattern that only repeats with phones I own, never when I get to temporarily use other people's phones.

Coincidentally, after making many complaints on online social networking sites regarding the issue of my batteries not lasting a small fraction of the time they are designed to,  a BBC program aired last week over a new kind of mobile phone battery in the works that the scientists involved in the developmental process say will last longer and be much safer than current ones. Strangely, maybe to make the program more interesting, the presenter appeared to suggest a rapid discharge phenomenon is common to us all, that current batteries are useless.

In the west, mobile phones have a longer history than any other place on the planet and are used quite differently compared to, for example, the third world where most people still consider a Smartphone to be a status symbol, otherwise good for nothing. The trend in the west has been towards Smartphone ownership. They are currently the most used phones in the west. They need more power compared to simple, java based phones. Their power consumption has tended to rise as technology marches forward, as they get more powerful, while the capacity of the battery has remained the same. This new battery will be a long awaited improvement, but, it is an exaggeration to say current batteries are useless. They do quite well thanks to a lot of technological breakthroughs and battery saving techniques. The standby time of the newer, large display Smartphone models is amazing, to say the least.

Bendy Bus in London

When I lived in London, I always carried a Smartphone, a pocket pc, and would always need to take an extra battery for each one of what almost always was a large display gadget in order to be able to use it throughout the day. On the busses, I did what a good number of people did, which is fidget with the phone. On the long trips back home aboard a bendy, I watched movies on either one or other gadget, and could usually watch the whole film without needing to change the battery. I definitely used smart phones much more than I do here in the third world but, nonetheless, got performance that is far much better than the ridiculous show I am getting in the third world on non-Smartphone mobiles. Never in the UK did I get the issues I am currently having.

While it is true that there are a lot of imitation batteries on sale in the third world, and I have owned a number, their reliability is not bad, and they last much longer than the laughable periods the fools are forcing on my phones. Another thing is that, in this multipronged war they wage, they sometimes get distracted and will not attack for a period that ranges from some minutes to a few hours. Then, revealingly, the batteries suddenly acquire the capacity to keep a charge. Expecting lights-out anytime soon, I find myself exiting or minimizing the app I am using to check the bars and find the status has not moved at all or changed very little in the last hour. Then ... I get to experience, once again, what it is like to use a phone without an entity's filthy intrusion. It actually comes as quite a shock that the small batteries can last as long.