Extremely low temperatures throughout the winter can make it hard to keep smartphones powered up.

The brutally cold temperatures in some parts of the country, this winter, have been wreaking havoc on smartphones, and have made the importance of an external battery more than clear.

The lithium-ion batteries in smartphones depend on the movement of atoms that are electrically charged.

For that reason, smartphones maintain the best charge when they are kept in a moderate climate. In exceptionally cold temperatures like some parts of the United States have been seeing, this winter, this has meant a shortened life for many smartphones and other mobile gadgets, between charges. This can help to explain why there are more external battery packs being sold this year than in any other year. It means that even if your gadgets are exposed to the coldest conditions, you will still have a way to get the charge back, regardless of how long you need to go before you can plug it into a wall socket.

External battery chargers are the perfect way to counteract the draining effects of the long and freezing winter months.

If you have an iPhone, you may be interested to know that those Apple devices work best when they are kept at a temperature of between 32 and 95 degrees. When the temperature drops below that point, the atoms in the batteries slow down. This means that the battery won’t be able to reach their full capacity.

What does that mean? Your battery may have been fully charged, but if you find yourself waiting at the bus stop or walking in the extreme cold on your way from the car into the nearest heated building, then you might notice that the battery will seem to be rapidly falling flat. Fortunately, the effects aren’t permanent and won’t harm your device. The main problem is that if you will be out in the cold for a while, you might run out of the juice that you need to keep texting, talking, or watching that video you can’t go ten minutes without seeing.

Once you head inside again and the device warms up, your smartphone will recover and you’ll be able to use your external battery to top things up again. Everything will go back to normal once the lithium ions start to flow at their normal rate, once again.