Keeping Your Cell Phone Charged After Sandy Hits

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

October 29, 2012 | 1:41 PM

Forbes provides tips on how to keep your cell phone charged for longer periods of time, if Sandy knocks out power at your home:

Text messages can be quicker and take up less energy than calls but if you’re keeping your phone on, turn off notifications (like the notices that pop up when you get email) and any unnecessary apps as well as WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth to preserve energy.
If you have a smartphone, dim the screen to its lowest possible level. And, as tempting as it may be to surf the web or access Facebook and Twitter, turn off data unless you need it because that, too, uses lots of energy. Also turn off vibrate mode — that too uses extra energy. If you must leave data on, use the slowest (and most energy efficient) network possible. 3G is more efficient than 4G and 2G or Edge uses less power than 3G.