We had the benefit of a day without power here yesterday. It was a planned outage to replace some underground powerlines. I was able to get most work done early and since I knew this was coming, batteries/cellphone were topped off. Power goes off and my laptop continued running as always, but without connectivity I shut it down; I turned off the iPad too. I really prefer having IT stuff that can handle a power outage without negative results -- no data loss.

When the power dropped off, I lost ethernet to the laptop, WiFi to the iPad and the network extender for the iPhone (from 5 dots (bars) to 1). I was limited to using the cellphone for internet with a 1 dot signal, something to be avoided. I could still make calls but the battery seemed to drain faster than usual. By the time power was restored 7 hrs later, the phone went from 100% power to 57%. Cellular data is normally turned off; does having cellular data activated add to battery drain even if you aren't surfing? Or does the phone need to work harder maintaining a connection when the signal is weak?

Web pages these days are graphic intensive; over WiFi some pages are slow, it takes an abnormal amount of time to open those pages over a 3G connection. Normal surfing is out of the question, so I stopped surfing and only used one of the apps to download specific data. That may have helped save the battery for incoming calls.

If this had been an unplanned outage of unknown duration, I'd have looked for a better signal. To save battery I would have disabled cellular data (as it is now while I'm getting good WiFi). During a real outage, finding a Starbucks or other hotspot out of the area is an option. If I did that I'd take the iPad for data, email, et al, and not use the tiny display on the phone.

Are there any other strategies to consider when staying home is not required?

BTW, despite all those iDevices mentioned above I am not getting an iWatch (it's a bridge too far imo). The iWatch is advertised as being incredibly accurate (50 milliseconds), but as I understand that's because it is constantly updating itself to your iPhone which is constantly updating to the web. To me that is not a timepiece, it's just a remote display.

I'm currently wearing a CountyComm Maratac SR-3. It's waterproof to 10 atmospheres (300'?) which isn't much for a diving watch but should be good enough for a short swim. Since it relies on body movement to wind itself, I wore it for 30 minutes before setting the time and so far it's within a second of my timing source (WWV). A 3 hour trial is not a great test for accuracy, but it seems to work; I'll check it again in a couple days. (no CountyComm affiliation other than as a customer).

When the big one hits all those iWatch wearers had better hope the cellular system keeps humming and their iPhone has a signal, because the remote time display on their wrist relies on that chain of connectivity to give you accurate time. Once the signal dies, that 50mS accuracy will start to degrade. How accurate is an iWatch without a cell connection?