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Hello, I have a question about my phones battery life at higher elevations. Last July I spent time out in the CO front range, my phone was working fine for listening to music and taking pictures. on several occasions when hiking above 12000 ft elevation my phone battery almost immediately drained and shut down. I am planning a two day hiking adventure through the Mummy Range this coming July and was thinking about buying a Ipod solely for listening to music with. I don't want to waste $200 on an Ipod if it is going to act the same way as my Iphone.

Has anyone else experienced this issue as well with their phones or is it just my phone is old and is acting crazy. Another option I have considered is buying a cheap MP3 player that runs on AA batteries I can change out. Any info will be helpful, thanks for any advice!

Are you sure your phone wasn't searching for a cell connection or had other activity going on? I use a Samsung and keep it in "Airplane mode", which stops most wireless functions. Also keep the GPS off unless I want a fix on my location. (pre-loading satellite photos has proved a great way to navigate -- on a difficult route I can pick out even individual trees and other landmarks, relative to my GPS spot.)

I was going to say the same thing... when searching for signal my iphone5 battery drops like a rock. If either in airplane mode, or have signal I don't notice a difference at higher elevations

I didn't even think about airplane mode, I wonder if that was the cause for my troubles! Thank you guys

LincolnB wrote:Are you sure your phone wasn't searching for a cell connection or had other activity going on? I use a Samsung and keep it in "Airplane mode", which stops most wireless functions. Also keep the GPS off unless I want a fix on my location. (pre-loading satellite photos has proved a great way to navigate -- on a difficult route I can pick out even individual trees and other landmarks, relative to my GPS spot.)

FYI, on the Iphone 5 you can manually turn off wifi and cellular data in the "Settings" menu. This way you can make your phone stop searching for wifi or cell signal without going into airplane mode, thus still being able to use GPS. Admittedly, I still always put it in airplane mode unless actively navigating, so I have yet to try this and see how much of a difference it makes.

Edited: PS if you ONLY keep your phone in airplane mode (for example, using it only to check the time, alarm clock, occasional photos, etc.), a fully-charged battery can last as much as a full week. I've done this on a trip to Patagonia. Of course, playing music would likely change this quite a bit, but if you're just talking about 2 days you can probably make it work.

Good info, thanks AlexeyD!

yeah i have played angry birds while hanging around at 26,000' on my iphone 4. No biggie. Managed to see a couple of cell signals but wasnt able to connect.

Seconding Radson-
Altitude doesn't affect battery life, but cold and searching for signals will.

** caveat - Cold doesn't necessarily kill batteries, but running a cold battery will run it down more quickly than running a warm battery.

Turning off cellular signal will add life, as will turning off Notification Services on all but the apps that you will be using (GPS?) on your trip. Also, shut down all apps you're not using, by doing the ol' double tap on the Home button and then swiping off the apps running in the background, as these suck power.

For longer trips or if you want to not worry about running out of power, there are some really slick, lightweight portable power options out there these days. I've been using one from Anker (14000mAh) and another from Snow Lizard (11000mAh) that weigh 6 ounces or less and will fully power my phone multiple times over. A quick Google search will tell you the mAh (milliamp hours) of capacity your battery has, and then just do the division to get an estimate of how many times a given power pack will charge your device.

Different apps will pull differing amounts of power, so a layman's test of how much power you might use could be to simply power your device to 100%, and then play videos until the battery is dead, timing how long that takes. This gives you a rough idea of how long your xxxxmAh battery will power your device. Then it's pretty simple math to get an idea of what size power pack to bring, based on your anticipated power needs.

If you're running a GPS app in the cold, try to keep that battery warm to extend your battery life. Keeping the device in a pocket works, but for extreme cold, I'll use a disposable toe warmer with a sticky backing attached to the back of my phone, over the battery. This works on cameras as well, so you get that long anticipated summit shot!

It may be a function of your particular phone or just a quirk. I say a quirk because I was hiking in the Southern Sierra last fall (the Needles) in late Nov./early Dec. Crisp temps but sunny. Elevation around 7,000'. I had location services and wifi disabled to preserve the battery. I was taking pictures, but when my battery got to a 50% charge, the battery suddenly drained and the phone died. Never happened before. I thought perhaps my battery just needed replacing, but I haven't had the problem since. Go figure. If the problem persists, you may want to consider having the battery replaced or buying an external battery as a back up.