Here are a few ways that can help you preserve battery life of your smartphone
The common complaint that we have with our smartphone is that the battery these days doesn’t even survive through the day. With smartphones being loaded with apps and games, they tend to consume more battery than usual. It can at times become nightmarish when your smartphone’s battery suddenly goes off when you need it the most. As a result, consumers look for smartphones that provide longer battery life as one of the key factor when they purchase smartphones.
However, in spite of the advancements made in mobile phone technology with crisp, clear screens and faster chips, batteries have made only slow progress. The reason being that lithium ion, the technology that most mainstream batteries are based on, is low cost, easily reproducible and safe, as a result of which, it is used by most of the smartphone manufacturers.
So, what can one do to preserve or extend the phone’s battery life? We have picked up some tips to extend your smartphone’s battery life, which are provided below.
1. Use the screen less—or at least turn brightness down
The easiest way to cut down battery drain is to reduce your smartphone’s screen brightness, as it tends to suck more energy than any other component. As it is difficult to use a dim screen in bright environments, most of the phones provide an auto-brightness mode that automatically adjusts the screen’s brightness based on ambient light. Enabling auto-brightness option can save a good amount of battery life.
2. Turn off Wi-Fi when network is poor
Your phone’s battery tends to drain much faster, when you are in a place that does not have good Wi-Fi or cellular coverage. The reason is that your phone uses energy to search for a good signal, and if the signal is very weak, it tries to look for a better connection.
In order to preserve battery life, disable the phone’s wireless circuitry. Airplane Mode – an option that will turn off all wireless features – is a quick and simple solution in areas with poor reception.
3. Make changes to your email settings
If you are using multiple email accounts and receive lots of email, then these can have a major impact on your battery life. Using a technology called push, your smartphone can update your email automatically, which brings new messages to your phone the moment they are transferred.
Push can be a power hog because it needs your phone to continuously listen for new messages. So, there is a good chance your phone is using huge amount of battery, if you get a lot of emails.
4. Check the battery usage lists and stop the apps consuming most!
Consumers can get even better results with a bit of snooping on apps that are using a lot of battery power. You need to open the Settings app and in the Battery menu, there are sorted lists of apps that are using the most energy in your iPhones or Android phones.
5. Disable unwanted push notifications
To preserve battery life, both Apple and Google suggest shutting off push notifications, which are basically app alerts. Notifications need regular communication with notification servers, and each notification causes your phone to wake up for a few seconds, including turning on the screen, to show you a message and give you a chance to act on it.
On Android, disable notification in an app’s settings menu, or long-press the notification itself and choose the “i” icon. This will send you to that app’s App Notifications settings, where you can block all notifications. For iPhone, open the Settings app, tap Notifications, tap the app name and disable Allow Notifications.
6. Disable unwanted location tracking
You need to keep an eye on apps that track your location. Your phone’s GPS circuitry consumes a lot of battery power, which is used to find out your geographic location for mapping and fitness features. For example, a run-tracking program that observes your precise location for the duration of an hour-long run will lower your battery level.
If a location-based app is using a lot of power, especially in the background, there is a high possibility that the app is using GPS, Wi-Fi and the phone’s sensors very often. On an iPhone, you can disable the app’s ability to track your location by going to Privacy menu and Location Services.
To disable location tracking on Android, go to the Settings app, tap Apps, choose an app and select “Permissions,” then tap to disable Location permission.
7. Play downloaded music instead of streaming
While online streaming may be the most popular way to listen to music, but services like Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music ends up using lots of battery power. In the Wirecutter’s tests, streaming music over a Wi-Fi connection for two hours used 10% of an iPhone’s battery reserves; streaming the same music stored directly on a device over two hours consumed only 5%.
Fortunately, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music still let you listen to songs the old-school way: by storing the music right on your device.
Battery-saving myths
You have probably seen lists of things you should supposedly do to extend your phone’s use time. Some of them may be described above. But other tricks don’t really help your phone use less energy—infact, some may cause your phone to use battery energy more quickly. Here are some suggestions that you may hear about but (with a few noted exceptions) you shouldn’t bother doing.
Turn off Bluetooth
To get better battery life, many people suggest disabling Bluetooth on your phone. But, Bluetooth was designed from the start to minimize battery usage. However, Bluetooth does have an effect on the battery life, if you are actively using the Bluetooth connection, such as streaming audio to a Bluetooth speaker or headphones. In such cases, you shouldn’t stream audio over Bluetooth if your battery is running low. Instead, use wired headphones, if you have them.
Close (quit) unused apps
Another common myth is closing unused apps that you are currently not using for extending battery life. This may be true sometimes for a computer, but not for smartphones as they are designed differently. Once an app is no longer running in the foreground, it means that you are not actively using it—most or all of its processes are frozen. While an app may still be loaded in RAM (temporary memory), the app is unlikely to be doing things in the background to drain your battery. Your phone’s operating system also automatically closes apps in the background when it needs RAM for other tasks.
Use a task manager or battery-saving utility on Android
Several apps in Google’s Play Store for Android claim to better your phone’s performance by serving as an always-running “memory manager” or “task killer.” However, the fact is that Android automatically kills older processes, or big memory hogs, as performance start to hold-up. Starting the applications repeatedly will probably cost you more battery life than leaving them alone, and any automatic task manager will itself be demanding power continually from your phone.
Disable location services completely
Many apps that use your location do so only irregularly. Instead, keeping the phone’s screen constantly on is the main reason why navigation draws a lot of juice. So, check if any of the apps that guzzle the most battery life also track your location. If so, and if you don’t need that location tracking, contemplate disabling the function just for those apps.
Always choose Wi-Fi over cellular
Many people, and even smartphone vendors such as Apple, claim that using Wi-Fi for wireless data consumes less battery than using a cellular signal, so you should use Wi-Fi whenever you can. However, this is not true. As long as you have a good signal, you probably would not see a huge difference between Wi-Fi and cellular data.
But the difference is noticeable where LTE coverage is poor. For example, if you are in an area where the Wi-Fi signal is bad, but you have a good cellular signal, your phone is likely to switch between the two—disabling Wi-Fi and forcing your phone to use just cellular data that will likely conserve battery power.
Disable Hey Siri or Ok Google
Both iPhones and Android phones include a hands-free feature for accessing their respective virtual assistants, Hey Siri and Ok Google respectively. This feature requires your phone to continuously listen your request or command, which uses some power. On the contrary, if you have a phone that supports this feature, disabling it won’t conserve much battery life. However, if your phone’s battery is getting low, you should probably stop asking the phone question after question during your commute. But just having the feature enabled isn’t worth worrying about.
Adjust your battery to extend its life
Today’s smartphone batteries do gradually lose capacity over time as you use and recharge it, and the phone’s software isn’t always good at accounting for this capacity change.
Use only the charger that came with your phone
It is a common warning around the Internet to use only the charger that came with your phone, as using a different charger could damage your phone’s battery—either by being poorly made or by supplying too much power. However, current smartphones are designed to work with a wide range of charging currents. If you are using a well-made charger, it is fine to use one that charges your phone more quickly than the charger it came with, or one that can charge even faster than your phone allows.
Conclusion
Even after following these tips, you find that your phone still can’t survive through the day, the battery may be defective. You contact your Android phone’s vendor or should take your iPhone to an Apple Store, to rule that possibility out.
