The Bleak Midwinter: A Guide to Minimalist Phone Activity

I knew clouds would make things interesting (see last post). An abundance of sunshine allows for laziness - it's the deep darkness of winter where necessity becomes invention.

Currently battery levels are low - I have maybe 2 or 3 charges left, which is 2-3 days on normal summer use. It's Tuesday today, and the next predicted sunshine is for Friday. That's a bit too close for comfort.

So I can't skip to the Southern hemisphere quickly, or seed the air with magic cloud-dispersal beams. I can only change what's in my control - and that comes down to what my phone is doing.

As a guide to future me, and for anyone else interested in phone efficiency, here's a rundown of what I'm doing to help save battery life as much as possible. And judging by the battery chart for the last two days, it's having a good effect:

Two days is a lot better than one day. (The upwards blip three-quarters of the way through is when I plugged directly into the solar panel.)

So here are some current suggestions.

1. Uninstall non-essential software

Some people can live with only a few apps. I'm curious about what's out there, to get interesting ideas. And I have kids, and yes, sometimes a phone is the easiest way for a bit of peace and quiet. So there's a fair amount of 'gumph' on my phone.

Step one is to uninstall what you don't need. This has three aims: first, stop any unnecessary background tasks/data usage. Second, to avoid any extra load caused by installing updates (especially if you have them turned on automatically, via your usual app store). And third, to stop using your phone for distractions. Sorry kids! Here's a pack of cards instead.

2. Block network access

It seems annoyingly difficult to control how much apps check in to their home server - a lot of them let you turn off notifications but it's not clear whether they still request data or not. Assume that they do, because capitalist tech and it likes to know everything about you. But that all takes energy too - I often see a battery drop of a few % straight after connecting to wifi for the first time in a while - I assume a bunch of apps are making the most of the renewed connection.

On Android, a couple of apps can help here. I've started using these:

• NetGuard, available on F-Droid and Google Play - this runs as a VPN and gives you fine-grained control over which apps can connect under either WiFi or Mobile Data conditions.
• Net Monitor, also on F-Droid and Google Play -  this lets you see which of your apps are making connections in the background, which can be useful when trying to work out which ones might be taking up more energy than others.

Do a bit of detective work to see what's connecting, but ultimately, lock down network access for anything non-essential, and feel free to open it up later on, on a per-app, per-need basis.

3. Install a screen time/prevention app

This has been my favourite part so far - there are plenty of apps out there to help you monitor and cut down how much you use your device. I've been trying out:

• YourHour (Play Store) has been my favourite app so far - it's one of many that tracks device usage, and you can set it to only track certain apps, show you an ongoing timer for each, and set a daily limit (although it doesn't seem to lock me out after this limit). It's great getting to the end of the day, and realising you've only used for 10 minutes, without worry. I've also got a lot more reading done.
  
• Off The Grid, available on the Play Store - this locks your phone down for the time you set, allowing you whitelist one app for free, and allowing incoming calls. I whitelist my messaging app in case I need it. I'm not sure if I'll be paying 89p a month to whitelist further apps though, and will probably look for free alternatives. Still, it's a useful app to start with, and good for those bursts of time when you think you'll be tempted to fiddle with your phone.
  
• Peace of Mind+ (F-Droid, Play Store) originated from the Fairphone stable and is now available for free. It doesn't lock you out like Off The Grid, but does put you in the mindset of just not using your phone.

There are a whole bunch of these kinds of app these days, which is probably a good thing. I don't have the battery to install too many ;-) so let me know if there are any in particular that you think are good.

4. Turn on Battery Saver mode

I started doing this when I was on holiday and started running out of juice. Back then, I was also manually disabling background data, but I suspect battery saver mode and using NetGuard basically covers it.

On Android 6, it's fairly easy to access - I drop down the top menu, tap the battery icon, hit the three dots and go into "Battery saver". There are probably faster ways to turn it on and off, but it doesn't matter too much when you're only using your phone 10 minutes a day ;-)

The main issue with killing off background data is probably around instant messaging apps, such as Signal and WhatsApp. You may want to avoid battery saver mode if you're expecting urgent communication. Personally, I don't use WhatsApp, and the few other people on Signal generally don't require an urgent reply...

5. Figure out the energy-expensive apps

Over time, as I've got more sensitive to battery usage, I've noticed certain apps  and behaviours really drain the battery, so I've started avoiding these.

In general, I find the Camera app - with its live video view - fairly intensive. So back to good old analogue film there, whoop!

6. Lock everything down overnight

Finally, just get really paranoid about battery usage, and keep a close eye on what your phone battery is doing incessantly ;-) At night, stick everything into Airplane mode, try out Greenify to kill off unwanted processes, and remember to turn it all back on again in the morning! (Device automators such as IFTTT and Easer don't seem to have the ability to set Flight Mode under Android 6, but YMMV.)

In addition to all this, I've also started switching off Bluetooth when absolutely necessary (which means my watch no longer gets notifications - I do prefer the gentle buzz and otherwise silence, over udio prompts though, so will try to turn this back on soon). And I'm trying out locking the screen to Portrait Mode - I have no idea if this saves anything though.


Has it all helped? See for yourself...

Getting about 2.5 days on a single charge, which makes a big difference in this weather. I figure I can harvest about 5000-6000mAh on a sunnyish day, which is only maybe 2 or 3 charges, so the difference between 2 days and 9 days is huge.

The grey days and rainclouds are persisting as I near the 7-month milestone. Will I make it much further though?

Grey days...

Well, this doesn't look great.



Not with 2 out of 3 batteries mostly drained. This might be it, end of the line for an unbroken run. Or I can try to eke out what power I can, depending on how thick the cloud layer is. I'm already monitoring my phone usage with an eye on keeping it down, and starting to uninstall unnecessary apps.

Crunch time.

6 months milestone, finding winter space

This post marks the 6 month milestone of going solar-powered, which is about twice as my as my previous effort. The phone I'm writing this on and the watch it's connected to haven't seen mains electricity since the end of April.

Even better, we're now into the start of November, a month and a half after the equinox, and my three little batteries are still pretty full.



(The grey battery was on 4 lights, but dropped to 3 in the five minutes it took to get the photo...)

(I'm thinking of naming the batteries. Maybe Huey, Dewey and Louie after Silent Running's little helpers?)

The extended summer, probably thanks to climate change, has seen fairly dry weather with a decent amount of light recently, and I've been able to keep things topped up despite often having to start off in shade, and unplugging batteries in the 6pm dark. The grey battery seems to charge up whatever, but Big Red may possibly prefer to start with some voltage - I'm not convinced it charges if it starts out in the dark, with sunlight showing up later on. A simple experiment with some shade and a USB power meter should tell me though.

More generally, I've been mostly occupied with issues of space, and the idea of land ownership that goes with it. In built up areas, the big challenge of winter is in battling the long, pendulous shadows which are much more pervasive and unpredictable than in summer. My old charging spot is no longer viable. And while we're lucky to have a decent sized garden on a south facing slope (despite the effort to mow grass up it), I'm aware people in flats or smaller plots might struggle to find a decent spot as the sun gets lower. I can think of a few places I've lived where this experiment just wouldn't be viable past September.

But this is turning into a different, socio-political question, which I'll return to one day. For now, I'm concentrating on the basics - such as being ready to come up with a suitable tilting mechanism to hold your panels. Or "appropriating" whatever you can find lying around that fits the bill...



As I try out different places, I'm becoming more aware that being able to either fasten your panels and batteries, or get them at the right angle, is a key part of 'nomadic efficiency'; portability is one thing, but effective portability is another thing entirely. I can imagine an accompanying set of travel utilities, such as carabiners, bits of string and wire, and lightweight angled blocks to get everything just so. And that's assuming you don't plan to track the sun as the earth spins on, soundlessly and endlessly.

Anyway, time to sign off to save on battery. Keep your leads short, your screens clean, and your software lean.

Oh, poop

Most days I get home and rush to check how much power has been transferred into my batteries. Yesterday something else got "transferred".



The dangers of outside harvesting ;) Still, at least it wasn't on the panels themselves.

September is hitting - feels like autumn is trying to approach, but the warmer summer is still keeping it at bay a little. Sunny day today, and I'm pretty much at full charge capacity. Ambient light is keeping me topped up well still.

17 weeks - on shadows and cables

17 week update. Weather-wise, we've started to see some signs of Autumn approaching - people have talked of _putting the heating on_, and backpacks tend to contain a mix of sun cream, and waterproofs.

That said, it's still mostly warm, if cloudy, and the sky is having a blue period this weekend, so should be good to get a full charge up. Saturday has been very warm indeed.

However, warmth for us doesn't necessarily make for good charging. The main difference in noticing now is in shadows - it takes longer in the morning for the sun to reach my standard charging slope, and it leaves it faster in the evening. There are also extra shadows passing over during the day - the long fingers of chimneys now reach further than in the summer. And the solar panels seem to perform best when they are completely free of shade - a small patch can drag the power down quite a bit.

The importance of cables

A few weeks ago, I ended up reading about USB charging cables for an evening, which descended rapidly into the basics of electricity and resistance. This was kicked off by seeing some claims of "fast charging ports" on USB power meters (more on these below) - these turn out to remove 2 of the 4 connections within a USB connection, namely the 2 which transfer _data_ instead of _power_.

In cable terms, removing these 2 data wires generally means that there is more physical space for the power lines. Bigger power lines means less resistance from the walls of the cable, which means more _current_ and faster electricity transfer.

This rate of transfer is really important as charging gets harder, as above - we need a faster flow rate to fill the same battery in less time. Not only are there fewer sunny days, each day gives us less charging hours. (And, I assume, the Sun is weaker than in the height of summer?)

Generally, wires are about "28 gauge", but fast-charge cables (usually supplied with tablets with larger batteries) are "24 gauge" - see this blog post for a good explanation. I was about to order some new cables, but checked quickly, and the Syncwire cables I have already seem to do the job. (The Amazon page explicitly says they do full transfer speeds up to 2.4A.) So woo.

Length matters

Today I also realised I have a really short USB cable that came with one of the batteries - as in, 10cm rather than my 1m Syncwire ones. In theory, this should improve the amps too, as less length means less resistance as well.

So I plugged it in and measured it - wow! What a difference! No clouds to affect measurements - the 1m cable was giving me about 0.8A, while the tiny wire pushed that up to about 1.05A, so an extra 25% or more power.

The disadvantage, of course, is that it's harder to arrange your battery so that it's out of the sun, but I find it's usually OK to tuck it behind the panels anyway. I'm going to have to rethink my cables very soon - it really feels like maximum efficiency is the only way to go, with the days getting shorter so quickly.

Bring on the equinox!