Today you can get memory cards that will store more of your photos than you can take in a week or a month. So long as you transfer your photographs from your phone camera to your computer or tablet occasionally, you’re probably never going to run out of space to store your photos.
But batteries are a different consideration. There’s no battery that will provide you with power for as many photographs as you can take in a full day or on a trip of a couple days. Professional photographers load up on extra batteries so that they never run out of power when they go shooting, even for one day. In other words, an extra battery should be part of your standard equipment for using your smart phone as an all-around competent camera.
Buying an extra battery from manufacturer of your phone can be expensive. Yet you can find batteries manufactured by third-party parties that are not only inexpensive but easy to find on eBay and other such online places. While a pro photographer may need three or four extra batteries for his three-pound professional camera, you’ll probably need only one extra battery to ensure that you have enough power for almost any shooting you’ll do in one day.
You also have to figure out how to charge such an extra battery. Point-and-shoot cameras come with battery chargers, which make it easy to charge the batteries you aren’t using in your camera. But smart phones don’t come with such an accessory. The only way to charge your extra phone battery is to install the extra battery in the phone and charge it in the phone. This makes it awkward to charge the extra battery. But if you want to ensure you always have enough power to shoot with your phone camera, this is something you need to do.
Or, you can buy a phone battery charger, even though one doesn’t come with the phone—again available on eBay or such places. You can even buy a solar charger for phone batteries.
Note: iPhones don’t have batteries that you can easily remove or replace. Thus, you will need a portable battery charger for an iPhone.
Another way to get extra power is to get a device that is a separate battery and integrated charger (portable battery charger, portable power bank, power station, mini power bank, external backup battery). From such a device, you can recharge the battery in your phone. You simply carry this extra battery device with you, and when you run out of juice in your phone, you plug your phone into this battery just as if you were using the electricity at home.
The problem with this recharging technique is that it takes time to recharge the battery in your phone. If you’ve run out of juice and you need to take photos immediately, this is not a technique that will help. It will be useful in multi-day trip, however, as you can recharge your phone battery each evening.
Have I ever run out of battery power in a day of shooting with my phone camera? The answer to that is, no. The problem is, I’ve never gone out and shot all day with my phone camera. If I was going to go out and purposely shoot all day, I would opt for my three-pound professional camera. Going someplace and shooting all day is a real commitment, and you usually will want to have your most versatile camera with you.
Nonetheless, I’ve shot photographs for as much as a half-day with my phone camera. So far I haven’t run out of juice. But if I was going to go out and purposely shoot all day on a photo shoot with my phone camera, I would take my extra phone battery.
In any event, all this conversation about an extra battery leads you to remind yourself that you should fully charge your phone every night. That way when you leave in the morning, your phone will always have a fully charged battery ready to take plenty of photos.
The delightful thing about phone cameras is that you always have a camera with you, assuming you carry your phone at all times. The convenient thing about phone cameras is that you can use them for unanticipated shooting. That unanticipated shooting might be one shot or might be 100 shots—or it might be 1,000 shots. The question is, will your battery be up to the task? If you didn’t charge it the night before, it may not be.