As anyone who has dabbled in smart phone technology can attest, the battery can be the subject of much ire from the users. It’s a story old as time, we upgrade to a new phone and things are running great, the battery lasts all day under your typical usage load.
However, as time goes on, you start noticing that the percentage in the upper corner is beginning to drop much faster than usual and the next thing you know, your phone is constantly plugged in being charged and you have to start carrying portable chargers just to get through the day. We will look at a few ways to fight off mass battery drainage with our smartphones.
What are the biggest battery eaters?
There are several easy ways to reduce battery usage for your smartphone, whether it is an iPhone, Android, Pixel or a Windows Phone. One of the bigger battery eaters are the location or GPS features of certain apps (Google Maps, Find My Friends, WhatsApp, etc). These apps are constantly updating the whereabouts of the user. However, this can be a quick fix by going into your phone’s settings and adjust the privileges of those apps. You can turn off the location services all together or set it for them to be active only when the app is in use.
A close cousin to location services being on are apps that are continually refreshing in the background while they are not being actively used. Social media apps are typically the biggest culprits for this battery drain. The multitasking feature of smartphones are great, but it comes with a cost of depleting your battery at a higher rate. Just be sure to close apps when you are done using them.
By turning off the auto-sync feature of your phone, apps will no longer drain the battery by unnecessarily refreshing its content. Instead of auto-sync, you can go into your email or Twitter and update the data yourself when you are ready. This can go a long way to keeping the battery fresh.
Some more cosmetic adjustments can go a long way to prolonging the battery. For instance, adjusting the screen brightness is a tremendous way to save on battery. Most smartphones these days have an auto-brightness feature that adjusts the screen brightness in accordance with the light levels it detects around you. If you are in dark room, the screen dims, standing outside on a sunny day the screen will brighten more. However, if you manually adjust the brightness to its lowest setting that is still functional to you, your battery would thank you.
The auto-lock feature is also a quick and easy way to get more life out of your battery. You can go to your settings and change the screen timeout to the shortest time. The shorter it takes for your phone to turn off the less it uses the battery to keep the screen powered.
Another easy adjustment would be being mindful of your Bluetooth usage. The use of devices like a Bluetooth speaker, headphones or hands-free features while driving can drastically eat into your battery’s power supply. Using these features sparingly can help to extend your battery performance.
It is also recommended that your turn off the vibrate features of your phone, including haptics (which are the tiny vibrations your phone makes when typing or refreshing an app). It takes more power to vibrate the entire phone than it does to play a chime or ring from its speaker.
I know stifling some of these features runs contrary to great piece of technology that a smartphone is supposed to be, but since each phone has a finite of charges in its life, it does take some discipline to get the most of your phone without having to upgrade to a new one.
