Our smartphones have become our essential companions through the day. We couldn’t imagine using our phones for anything else other than call and text in the past. However, the rapid development of technology has changed that, and we can use it for a great variety of things – enjoy the internet, check location with ease, consume a great variety of apps, and even book a room in a hotel. Unfortunately, all those things result in our phone running out of juice faster, eventually shutting down when we need it the most. In this article, we compiled a list of tips that will improve your phone’s battery life. Read on!
#1 Dim your phone’s brightness
This one sounds easy, and it’s quite easy if you want to improve your phone’s battery life. Brightness was the main cause of battery draining off even with older phones. Ideally, you can save your battery some juice by lowering your shining, colorful display to zero, or somewhere close to it. It’s worth noting, however, that many newer smartphones are equipped with “auto-brightness” feature that helps generate the brightness of the phone based on your surroundings and saves a lot of power in the process.
Additionally, changing your screen timeout to darken in short time will vastly improve your phone’s battery life. For Android phones, ideal screen timeout is from 15 to 30 seconds while for iPhone, that time varies to up to one minute. If your phone’s screen timeout is set to more than two minutes, better reduce that time quickly.
#2 Disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS
Three out of four riders of the apocalypse is definitely the mentioned built-in features every newer smartphone has.
If you are not using your hands-free headset, speaker, or a smartwatch, you do not have to keep your Bluetooth services open. Disabling this when you are driving in the car and not using your wireless speaker can vastly improve your phone’s battery life. It is believed that doing so saves up to one hour of battery, one hour can be extremely precious when it’s emergency.
Similarly to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi contributes to the vast loss of battery. Most of the times, we will rather use Wi-Fi than our cellular, 3G or 4G network so that we can save our megabytes. However, you’d be surprised to know that Wi-Fi drains a lot of juice. When you don’t need internet, ensure to toggle it off.
GPS is really mean to your battery life. Although it is of critical importance to know your location in place you’re not familiar with, using it drains your battery faster than the two mentioned features.
Furthermore, if you have to choose between GPS and Wi-Fi, it would be wiser to opt for Wi-Fi, as the strong connection can even help you find the location you’re looking for. If you use Android, you can revoke the access to the location via different apps, by going to Settings > Location, and choose battery saving mode when you don’t urgently need it.
#3 Close your apps
One of the best commodities for using smartphones nowadays is multitasking. Unfortunately, that same ability to run multiple apps at the same time, check your Messenger, notifications on Instagram, and who retweeted your most recent tweet could be the mortal enemy for your battery life.
To improve your phone’s battery life, it would be the wisest to avoid this practice. Facebook even admitted that it is investigating several reports that iOS app is responsible for the noticeable battery drain and at that time told TechCrunch: “We have heard reports of some people experiencing battery issues with our iOS app. We’re looking into this and hope to have a fix in place soon.”
Turning off apps that are running in the background can not only improve your phone’s battery life but also give your CPU some space to breathe. To kill the apps in the background, do the following:
Android: Tap the multitasking button, which is the right icon located at the bottom of most phone’s screen. To kill them, swipe them away.
iOS: Double-tap the Home button and find the multitasking screen. By swiping upwards, you’re killing the task.
#4 Use power-saving modes
Different phone manufacturers, with exception to iPhone, house power-saving modes that will disable most of your phone’s features to save some battery juice. This feature comes in handy when you only need calls and messaging and can’t recharge your phone. Unfortunately, Apple’s iOS doesn’t come with this feature.
Some phones consume the battery off screen more than some other phones, which is why such feature is necessary. Also, some phones will enable this feature once battery went as low as 20%, but the user can turn this feature off if it doesn’t suit him/her.
Other tips that will improve your phone’s battery life
From time to time, it could be useful to restart your phone to give it a refreshment. Often, these small tips can save a lot of the battery, if the phone was overcrowded with cache and RAM memory.
Another issue with your phone’s battery could be because your battery is dying. Sadly, a lot of phones have integrated battery, so it’s hard to determine the state of battery’s health. However, if your phone has a removable battery, you can check it by pulling it out and seeing if it has started to bulge. Another test you can conduct is by placing your phone’s battery on a flat surface and spinning it. If the battery spins smoothly, that means that it needs a replacement.
Got any tip that can improve your phone’s battery life? Please leave a comment. Also, if you are dealing with dust entering your phone’s charging port, make sure to visit PortPlug’s Amazon store and solve your charging problems for good!