Improve Your Battery Life Tips
I’ve had battery drain issues on my last phones. I just figured it maybe was my fault, maybe I’m too addicted to apps, take too many photos, or just use my phone too much?
It was time to kick things up to the next level. Here’s how I finally beat the worst of my battery battles — and now you can do it for your phone.
1 Start with your own battery test
Sometimes an app prevents your phone from going into standby and wreaks havoc on your battery life. So let’s start with you own battery test.
How to test it:
On iOS, go into Settings, then Battery. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and you’ll find two numbers, one for Standby and one for Usage. Your Usage number should be way, way lower than your Standby number. If it’s not, you might have a problem, and you can confirm it by jotting down your Standby and Usage times and then clicking the lock button on your phone. On Android, you can get the same information under Settings-Device-Battery. The information on this menu is Essentially the same as it is on an phone.
If you find that your phone isn’t “resting” when you’re not using it, there’s likely a very clear reason.
2 Don’t push me
When an app is doing things even when you’re not using it, it could be malfunctioning, and stuck in an endless loop that’s draining all your power. That’s what happened to me, with, of all things, one of the email accounts I had connected to my phone.
3 When background apps are the killer
There are other times too when an app is running when you’re not using it and that’s called “Background App Refresh.” There are lots of reasons apps update in the background, like the Music app fetching new playlists, Facebook updating your social feeds. It’s all in the name of convenience, but it might also be leaving you with a dead battery halfway through the afternoon.
4 Multitasking is good!
Do you ever double-tap your home button and see all the apps your phone has suspended, waiting for you to go back to them? Whenever I do, I always close them out of instinct, thinking that they must be eating up battery life, right? No! In fact, closing apps from the multitasking menu can actually hurt the phone’s overall battery life, and for a totally logical reason.
5 Low-power mode can add hours to your battery life
Android and iOS both come with low-power features that let you turn off almost all of your phone’s extra features anytime and save tons of energy throughout the day. You can turn it on when the battery drops to 20% or much earlier by going to Settings-
Battery-Low Power Mode and switching it on. It can be a real life saver, and it has the bonus benefit of preventing even more battery stress by depleting a dying battery even further than it already is.