PostPoints tip: Have your phone use WiFi, not mobile broadband

A good way to prolong your smartphone's battery life--if yours allows this option--may be to have it use an available WiFi wireless network instead of your wireless carrier's network connection. This may not seem logical, considering that you're running two radios at once, but WiFi uses enough less power than 3G to provide considerable power savings. Apple, for example, advertises 6 hours of browsing on 3G and 10 over WiFi in its new iPhone 4. In the bargain, you'll also usually get a much faster Internet connection. That should more than justify the discomfort involved in typing a WiFi network password on a phone's tiny keyboard... even if it's one of those annoying, alphanumeric 26-character WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) logins. As an added benefit, this lets users of Verizon and Sprint smartphones switch between a call and Web browsing without disconnecting either, something those carriers' wireless technology doesn't allow on its own.