Why did my phone die while it was off?

Question

While hiking in the high peaks region of the Adirondacks yesterday (specifically the trail that covers bear den, dial, and nippletop mountains), both my boyfriend and i turned our phones off to conserve the batteries. When we got reached our car and turned our phones on, they both were completely drained of all power. It left me baffled because I can't think of any reason that would happen. We've hiked in other areas of the high peaks before, done the same exact thing, and the batteries were fine. I'm hoping someone might be able to offer some kind of explanation (many it had to do with a certain makeup of the rocks we were hiking on???)

Answer 1

I know what you're talking about.  Perhaps your batteries were of poor quality.  Some batteries don't retain as much power as others.  For example, sometimes when you buy a disposable  camera, they give you some crappy brand of batteries that don't last long.

Over time these crappy brands don't work well even if the device is on or off!

Answer 2

Did you turn the OFF, or did you just turn off the ringer?  If you just turn off the ringer, then the phone is still ON, its just silent.

Cells phone have an adjustable output in order to conserve battery power.  In other words, when thay are close to a tower they transmit their radio signals with less power than when they are far away from a tower.

But what happens if there is NO TOWER (like what might have happened while you were hiking)?  In that case, they SCREAM out as loud as they can with a special radio signal that says, "!!HEY!! I'M OUT HERE!!"  The phone expects one of the towers to answer back and say, "SHhh! I hear you. Not so loud!".  The phone then softens down as far as possible to conserve power.

[Using this method, the telephone company can find you using a system called "triangulation", so long as your phoen can be heard by at least two towers.  They don't need GPS in this case . . .]

But if no tower answers, th phone KEEPS SCREAMING, and that uses up battery power.

It sounds as if you only set the phone to SILENCE (no ringer) but did not actually turn them completely OFF.  The phones were screaming for attention, and ran down the batteries.

Otherwise, there is NO reason why your phones would run down.

Answer 3

maybe u just hit it hard and it somehow turned it on and then u hit it again and it turned off.??

i knw thats wrong but any way could of happened

Answer 4

did you somehow get wet that might have been the problem.or if u like hit it really hard that could be it too or maybe like your boyfriend and your cel touched and had a magnetic problem