Salman
Do you want to know how to increase battery life? Well, this guide is for you then! Make sure that you read through the whole article. Following the steps below will make your smartphone last much longer than it does now.
Why people want to enhance battery life?
Nowadays users want battery life that lasts more than a day. However, as the device gets older, its battery life starts to decrease. The performance of battery defines that how much longer can your smartphone operate without charging. The battery life of our smartphone depends on how we use our mobile phone on that particular day. Different factors are related to your smartphone battery life like your battery type, power etc.
No smartphone can last a full day in a single charge. It all depends on your use but if you want a device on which you can play games, watch videos, browse social media, chat with friends, pick up emails, manage appointments, navigate to destinations and still having battery left in it feels impossible. Due to higher resolutions and bigger screens, smartphone batteries run out quite quickly.
Most smartphone batteries are made of lithium-ion. This type of batteries contains lithium metal and lithium ions, which move in and out of individual electrodes. This moving in and out causes electrodes to physically expand and contract. We cannot reverse these processes so batteries will lose charge capacity and voltage with time because the number of charges and discharge cycles will grow. We cannot change the physical properties of a battery but can improve the life span of battery with optimal battery usage.
There are some improvements in smartphone batteries, but they still need improvement. Yes, there are some improvements in charging. It is faster and more convenient, but smartphone batteries themselves aren’t lasting any longer. However, you can do some changes the way you use your phone to achieve more battery life. We will talk about both iPhone and Android.
Tips on how to make your phone last longer:
Use Airplane mode
When you are not expecting any calls or you want to save your battery because your battery is running low then you should switch on Airplane mode. By switching on Airplane mode, your mobile cellular network, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will be disabled. You can turn on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in airplane mode but to use the cellular network you have to turn off airplane mode.
As many people use mobile data like 3G / 4G, which takes a lot of battery so try to use less mobile data for battery saving. When Wi-Fi is available then there is no need for you to use mobile data. Using airplane mode saves a lot of battery and your battery can last longer in one charge. Try using airplane mode when you are not using your phone. You can turn on airplane mode in the night when you are not expecting any call.
- For iPhone users: You can turn on airplane mode by swiping up from the bottom of your screen.
Turn Off Location Services
Many applications use location services. Apps like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp etc. use location services for various reasons. For example, Snapchat uses your location and tell your friends about your exact location. Take an example of Instagram, when you are posting your picture on it and you want to add the location where that picture has been taken then Instagram uses the location services. With the help of location service, you can add the exact location.
However, you don’t need to keep location services enabled all the time because keeping it on all the time will use a lot of battery. To keep your battery from running out quickly, you need to disable the location services. If you don’t want to turn off the location services, then you can change it to “use it while using the app”. It will allow the app to use the location service when you are using the app and will not use it when the app is closed. This feature will save a lot of battery.
- For iPhone users: it is quite simple for iPhone users,
- Just go to Settings.
- Tap on Privacy.
- Tap on Location Services. You can decide which apps can use your location always, only while in use, or never.
- For Android users: To disable location services you need to go to Settings.
- Tap on Security & location.
- Tap on Privacy subhead, where you’ll see Location.
- Tap on that. Find the “Use location” feature at the top and toggle it off. The android phone users can also change this setting by just going to quick setting tile and disabling location services from there.
If you want to do it for specific apps then you can do it by going into Settings.
- Tap on “Apps & notifications.”
- Tap on advanced and then tap on “App permissions.”
- Tap on Location. You will see the apps that are using your location and you can toggle off or on location for any that you want to.
- Turn Down the Brightness Level
Nowadays smartphone screens are big and most of the smartphones have AMOLED displays which drastically reduces battery life. The cheaper phones have LCD screens so they have much better battery life but you can increase the battery life of your smartphones that have AMOLED displays. As we don’t need full brightness all the time like in sunlight we need higher brightness but at other times it is overkill. The higher brightness drains the battery much faster.
To save the battery from draining you should reduce the screen brightness. You can reduce the brightness from quick settings in both android and apple devices. You just have to adjust the slider to a position where you feel comfortable.
- For iPhone users: In Apple devices, you will find brightness slider by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. You can set the brightness on auto as well. However, some tech people are against using this feature.
- For Android users: In Android devices, you will find the brightness slider in a phone’s pull-down notification bar. You can set the brightness on auto as well. However, some tech people are against using this feature.
Turn Off Background Running Apps
Some apps run in the background, which will drain your smartphone battery. Apps frequently check new information and fetch new data from the background. This fetching of new data by the apps like Mail, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram etc. will drain your smartphone battery. To turn off background running of the apps we have to change the settings. By changing the setting of mail from push to fetch can also save your smartphone battery.
- For iPhone users: To turn it off in the Apple mobile phones is easy.
- Go to Settings.
- Tap on General.
- Tap on Background Refresh. By turning off the background refresh, the apps will no longer fetch new data frequently.
- For Android users: To disable this in android is also easy. You can do it by going into settings of your android mobile phone.
- Just go to Settings
- Tap on Accounts and then uncheck Auto-sync data. By unchecking auto-sync, you will prevent your Android device from automatically syncing it with your Google accounts (and other accounts) in the background. By unchecking it, you will also force off the apps that work on the background.
Turn Off your Connectivity features after Usage
The main reason behind the draining of your smartphone battery is your connectivity feature. When your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are enabled, but your device is not connected to anything then it will waste your phone battery to find a new connection. You can save this usage of the battery by turning off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you are not connected to any device. This will keep your battery to last longer. You can easily turn them off in android devices but in apple devices, you have to go to settings to turn them off completely.
- For iPhone users: You have to go to settings and then turn them off. Yes, you can disconnect them from the control centre but to turn them off completely we have to go settings.
- Tap on Settings
- After that tap on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi whichever you want to turn off. By turning off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi can save battery life.
- For Android users: In android devices, you can turn them off from the quick settings menu. By swiping down from the top of the screen you will get a quick settings menu.
Reduce Screen Timeout
When you leave your smartphone display on, it uses a lot of battery and causes the battery to drain. So to leave your smartphone display on is quite pointless. To save you battery usage try to change the amount of time it will take to go into sleep mode.
- For iPhone users: In iPhone, you can set auto lock and you can set the time for it as well. The minimum time for auto lock in iPhone is 30 seconds.
- Go into Settings.
- Tap on Display and Brightness.
- After that Tap on Auto-lock and select the time for the Auto-lock.
- For Android users: To change the screen timeout in android you need to follow a few steps.
- Tap on “Settings”.
- After that tap on Display.
- Now scroll down and tap on screen timeout. The shorter screen time will save battery power. So you should keep the screen timeout shorter. The minimum screen timeout is 15 seconds. So by selecting shorter the screen timeout, you will get more battery life.
Use Dark Wallpaper
Most people set different wallpapers in their smartphones like the animated type of wallpapers which uses a lot of battery. These kinds of wallpapers look good to the eye but it comes at the expense of your battery. As most android devices have AMOLED displays and bright wallpapers use a lot of battery to illuminate the coloured pixels. So by using black or a dark wallpaper will improve the battery timing.
As most of the displays of the smartphones are AMOLED and it takes less power for a black pixel to illuminate in AMOLED displays. This less usage of energy in black or dark wallpaper will conserve battery life. The black wallpaper will require less power to maintain the image. So you should use a dark or black wallpaper for increasing the battery life of your smartphone.
Black wallpapers also look good and they are pleasing to the eyes as well. Live wallpapers are not that lethal but they surely use more battery power as compared to the static wallpapers. If you want to conserve your battery, then you should go for the static dark wallpapers.
- For iPhone users: You can change the wallpaper by going into settings
- First go into settings.
- Tap on wallpaper.
You can different wallpapers from there. In your iPhone, there are 3 options which you can choose. There are live wallpapers, dynamic and static wallpapers. You can choose wallpapers from your photos as well. You can set it as your Home screen, Lock screen or both Home and lock screen. This is for the latest version of the IOS and it can vary for previous versions of the IOS.
- For Android users: To change wallpaper in android you have to tap and hold the home screen. After that, you need to tap the wallpapers icon on the bottom left of your screen.
- Choose from the collections of wallpapers which are included with your phone, or you can choose from your photos.
- Tap the wallpaper you want to use.
- Adjust the positioning and size and then tap “Set as wallpaper” on the upper left corner of your screen. You can set it as your Home screen, Lock screen or both Home and lock screen. This is for the stock android users and it can vary for Samsung, Huawei, Oneplus, Oppo and other android smartphones.
Disabling Push Notifications
Sometimes we think that turning off such a feature will not save battery life however both Apple and Google recommend users to disable push notifications. By turning off push notification you will conserve battery life. As we get a lot of notifications from different apps. Apps notifications require consistent communication with notification servers.
Every time you get a notification from any app, it causes your phone screen to wake up for a few seconds. A message will be displayed on your screen and it gives you a chance to act on it. Let’s say you get a dozen of notifications from a single app each day, then it will affect your battery because every time a particular app is constantly producing notifications, it connects with the servers causing battery usage. Try to disable notifications for that specific app.
- For iPhone users: To turn off push notifications in iPhone you have to follow some steps.
- Open the Settings app of your phone.
- Tap on Notifications.
- After tapping on notifications select that app from the list for which you want to disable notifications.
- Toggle off or on “Allow Notifications” for that specific app.
- For Android users: To turn off this push notification in android is easy.
- Open Settings app of your phone.
- Tap on Apps & notifications.
- Tap on App notifications to see a list of the notifications you’ve been getting and you turning them off once and for all.
- You can also turn off the notifications by long-pressing the notification itself and selecting the “i” icon from there you can block all notifications.
Change your Charging practices
Nowadays all latest smartphones use lithium-ion batteries which are supposed to retain 80% of their charge capacity after 300-500 charge/discharge cycles. Though, batteries do not produce this level of performance as charge storage capacity sometimes reduces to 80% levels within only 100 cycles. It is due to your phone charging practices. There are some things you probably do in your charging practices daily that are damaging your smartphone battery and reducing its overall lifespan.
Some people say that we should drain our smartphone battery all the way and then charging it back to 100 per cent. This way we can get batteries to last longer. However, this is a bad idea. It is better to charge your smartphone for a smaller time like for a few minutes off and on throughout the day.
Using Power Saving or Low Power Mode
Latest Android and IOS devices have power saving or low power mode in them. By enabling this mode, it automatically sets your mobile device to use less amount of battery to operate. In IOS it is known as low power mode and in android devices, it is known as a power-saving mode. The working of both modes is the same.
For iPhone users: In iPhone low power mode is automatically activated when your battery is 20 per cent or less than that. It is automatically deactivated when your battery is 80 per cent or more than that. However, you can turn on low power mode manually in your device. To do that you have to go to Settings.
- After going into settings tap on Battery.
- Select Low Power Mode. You can toggle it off or on it’s your choice but it saves a lot of battery.
- For Android users: To use battery saving mode in android, you need to go to settings. By using battery saver you can conserve battery. This mode limits your phone’s processor and reduces the screen’s brightness display, thereby using only the bare minimum power to keep its critical functions running. To Turn on or off battery saver by yourself you need to follow a few steps
- Swipe down from the top of your phone’s screen.
- After that tap on Battery Saver.
If you want battery saver to turn on automatically you need to go to settings.
- Open your phone’s Settings.
- Tap on Battery
- After that tap on Battery saver
- Now tap on Set a schedule. Select the schedule for the battery saver to turn on. You can set it according to the percentage of the battery like when your battery reaches a certain percentage charge let’s say 5%, battery saver will turn on automatically.
