Preemptive Low Battery Alerts

Most cell phones will warn you when the battery is low. This can range from beeps and chirps to blinking lights. However, what happens if your battery does not reach the low state until you need it. These warnings are a lot less useful than they could be because they do not give you any warning until the battery is already low.

This ends up being a problem in numerous different ways. Perhaps when you head to bed your battery is 'charged,' and thus your phone does not provide any warning. But that charge may not be enough to last the eight hours until you wake up. By the time you get up, the battery may all ready be dead (thus your phone won't be able to give any low battery warnings). You then might not realize the state of your battery until you grab your phone to head to work. By that point it is too late to charge your phone before your commute.

What would be far more useful is a low battery alert that lets you know that your battery will be low before it is actually low. This way you have time to charge it.

For those on a regular schedule, there could be the options to enter in when they go to bed and when they wake up into the phone settings. If when you go to sleep the phone predicts that the battery will be low by the time you wake up, it could give you a warning so that you can let your phone charge overnight.

Phone software could allow users to enter in periods of time in which they would be unable to charge the phone. If it thinks its battery will run low during these time periods (based on idle power usage), it can preemptively warn you.

If people wanted to avoid their phone constantly beeping the early warning system could be based only on a warning light. The light could shift between yellow, orange, and red.

The really nice thing about this idea is the ease of implementation. In most modern cellphones all it would take is a simple software update to add in this feature.

As it is, low battery warnings are frequently of little use. If you are not at home, or soon will not be at home, such that there is no time to charge the phone, then all the warning does it let you know you will not have the use of your phone. The roll battery indicators should play is to allow you to preemptively charge your phone before its a problem. They don't yet do this, but they easily could.