People have been sharing ideas about how to conserve battery life on our mailing list. Here’s a suggestion that I had never thought to try, but I plan to on my next long trek.
I found it very useful to remove the SIM card from the phone, in addition to disabling all the possible radios and notifications. When you do that, the phone knows it doesn’t have a way of communicating with cell towers and stops trying to find service. The GPS works just fine without the SIM card.
A couple weeks ago, I did a snowshoeing backpack trek – about 10 miles
between the 88 and the 50, just south of Lake Tahoe – and by the end of
the 3 days, the phone still had about 50% of the battery. I wasn’t using it for actually logging my trip, but for navigation and orientation only, so I was turning it on every so often each day.
Just remember to keep the SIM tool handy (I always keep it on a
keychain or something else attached to the backpack).
