Low Battery
20% of battery remaining
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For the love of God, it's only 8:30am. You gaze down at your good for nothing, cracked screened iPhone 6s - let's be honest, it's always an iPhone - as the turtleneck-wearing ghost of Steve Jobs takes a bite out of an Apple and nonchalantly turns the egg timer counting down to you and your phone's imminent death.
You knew Jobs was a bit of a knob, you've seen Fassbender in the movie, but it turns out his ghost is a bit of a twat too.
Yet, in that one moment of panic-stricken frustration, your attention does not direct itself to the pittance of his corporation's batteries.
Oh no.
What you're thinking about is the iPhone XR. You know your time for an upgrade is on the horizon and you've seen the tweets about it having 'the best battery yet'. You forget that's like saying Theresa May's latest Brexit plan was her 'best yet' - a bit better but, ultimately, still completely shit.
Oh no.
What you're thinking about is the iPhone XR. You know your time for an upgrade is on the horizon and you've seen the tweets about it having 'the best battery yet'. You forget that's like saying Theresa May's latest Brexit plan was her 'best yet' - a bit better but, ultimately, still completely shit.
18% |||
Right. So we're skipping percentages already are we? What happened to 19%? Sure, it's one of the uglier numbers, along with 17, but to skip it out altogether is a bit of a dick move. But there's no time to start feeling sympathy for numbers: it's time to enter fight or flight mode.
*Double taps Home button*
Battery saving mode: ON. Your battery icon has now gone from a perilous red to a more reassuring yellow. You know it literally does nothing to help your plight but it's yellow: yellow would never hurt you.
17% |||
Ugh, seventeen. It's worse than you remembered. You wish it'd been tossed aside like 19%. It's the worst of bad numbers. Also, how does it work that you've just closed every app on your phone - except Spotify - AND put your phone into 'Battery Saving Mode' and the result is a loss of a percentage? The exact percentage that you spent its whole existence doing things to save it.
16% |||
Well that's the angry percentage out of the way. That whole 30 seconds was spent furious at: a) the ugliness of the number 17 and b) the fact you're being punished for your heroic humanitarian efforts. This must have been how Mandela felt, imprisoned by impermeable powers.
Well, 16 will not be the same. The sixteenth percentage is going to be spent enjoying yourself. Come on boys, out you come. You slam the shot glasses on the table and pour out a dose of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook into each. You consume each glass like a raging alcoholic, instantly realising you get nothing out of that experience bar the mindless numbing of an incessant anxiety.
Feeling charged by the rebellion of re-opening applications on 16% battery, you decide to push your luck, opening a retweeted video. The video is the Jabba the Hutt of smartphones. Not only does it guzzle on battery, but devours 4G data like a sirloin steak. But you don't care. You're watching Lionel Messi's top ten goals - that you've seen a top ten times before - and you're loving every moment of it.
You're in full screen mode, the battery icon hidden out of sight. You reach the end of Messi's mazing run at the Bernabeu, number one, and know that D-Day has approached. This is Russian Roulette.
You tap out of the video.
11% ||
Sweat drop bead down your head. Five whole percent has disappeared into the abyss. You didn't see it come, you didn't see it go. You nervously re-shut the apps that you had arrogantly bathed in just moments before. Jobs' egg-timer suddenly grows in size. You hear every billion pound pixel drop through the gap. Your sentences are suddenly very short. You still have twenty minutes of your commute left to survive. Panic.
Low Battery
10% of battery remaining
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You've finished your final, permitted meal, and death row looms over you like HBO to MJ. It's time to go full kamikaze and activate your last form of protection.
Airplane mode: ON.
You feel a sense of relief. You once spent a whole flight from Luton to Malaga on 8% thanks to airplane mode. And that was with music. Sure, airplane mode is like placing yourself in solitary confinement, but it's the only way you're making it out of this alive.
Your thumbs twitch, desperate for a hit of light scrolling. They get clammy at the thought of missing out on another picture of Australia, another Piers Morgan bait, or another video of Lionel Messi's top ten goals - if you don't think you're watching that again you have another thing coming. They're deep into cold turkey and they can't handle it. Your other fingers throw jibes but they don't know, man, they weren't there.
9% |
You're in the radioactive zone. Better men than you have died going further than this point. It's battery Chernobyl, and nobody knows when it'll all be over. You hear crackling and begin to say your prayers, before you realise that it's just a tunnel interfering with your Bluetoo-
FUCKING BLUETOOTH.
You absolute moron. Not only have you continued listening to music throughout this crisis, but you've done so on Bluetooth headphones. You're an embarrassment to battery conservationists It's well-known that Bluetooth is a battery leech. And you just let the leech such those precious percentages away. Do you chuck plastic in the sea as well? The Bluetooth leech is fat, full, and laughing at your demise.
You're weak.
8% |
...
7% |
...
6% |
...
5% |
As the percentages drop, the world flies by past your fading corpse. Remember 16%? Those were the good times. Those minutes are long gone now. The only thing keeping you going is the gravitational pull of an electrical plug. Your patheticness is purely trivial at this point. It's a miracle that you're still alive.
4% |
You squint once more at the screen, desperate to see life in the pixels illuminated with the minimum level of brightness, before preparing to take your final breath. Then everything changes.
You've made it.
The familiar environment of your office charges your world with light and hope. After months in the desert, you've finally reached the water hole. You spot a colleague drinking from the plug and approach to ask the most weighted, passive aggressive, suggestive question that a human could ever ask...
"What percent are you on?"
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