One of the things anyone considers before buying a smartphone is whether it has a long battery life. But, even a pretty good phone that ought to last 8-10 hours on battery power can quickly be drained if you are not strategic about how you use it. Especially when you are not certain of 24 hours power supply, or you have a really bad case of FOMO.
1. Lower the Screen Brightness
The display on your smartphone consumes a lot of battery life and it consumes even more if the screen is brighter. To prolong the battery life on your smartphone, dim the screen brightness as much as is comfortable. It is also helpful to shorten the screen timeout period too. This is the amount of time before the screen turns itself off after a period of inactivity.
2. AMOLED Display
If your smartphone has an AMOLED display, like many Samsung models, opt for a black wallpaper and dark themes too. This is because AMOLED screen technology is such that only illuminated pixels consume power and pure black pixels do not use any power.
3. Deactivate Features You’re Not Using
If you are not currently using any Bluetooth devices, like headsets and game controllers, it is worthwhile to turn Bluetooth off.
4. Minimize or Disable Background Activity
Just as you can save battery life by deactivating features you are not using, you can also save a lot of battery life by strategically minimizing or disabling the background activity being performed by the various apps on your smartphone.
5. Notifications
Many of these will need to be configured on an app-by-app basis and this will vary from app to app. A common example would be to reduce unnecessary app notifications. Retrieving notifications requires a connection to the Internet and the transferring of data, which consumes battery life. It is understandable to retain notifications for email and messaging apps, but perhaps you can disable notifications from mobile games and social media. These can be accessed through the settings menus in the individual apps.
6. Widgets
In the case of devices powered by Google Android, reducing the number of active home screen widgets can also save a lot of battery life. A common example would be a weather widget. If the widget is updating the weather conditions or forecast every few minutes, even when the phone is inactive, it is consuming battery life unnecessarily. Lengthen the update period or remove the widget altogether. Less active widgets, like a calendar widget, will generally use less battery.
7. Update your Phone OS and Apps Regularly
Keeping the software on your smartphone as up-to-date as possible is highly recommended, not only for patching security issues, but also for optimizing the battery and memory usage. This is true both for the operating systems as well as for the individual apps themselves.
8. Power Saving Modes
The newest versions of the software may introduce features to help prolong battery life. For example:
- Google Android 6.0 Marshmallow comes with what is called Doze Mode. This minimizes the number of background processes when the phone is detected as being inactive.
- A similar feature was introduced for the iPhone in iOS 9 with Low Power Mode.
9. Use Wi-Fi Whenever Possible
Weak, inconsistent or unreliable reception on your cellphone can wreak havoc on its battery life as your phone continues to search for a signal. This becomes even more problematic when it is trying to transfer large amounts of data over the Internet.
Connecting to a local Wi-Fi network (for example at the MMA II for Glo subscribers) for your Internet access is generally more efficient in terms of battery consumption, but only if the Wi-Fi network (and signal) is consistent, strong and reliable.
You should also clear out saved Wi-Fi networks you no longer use. This way, your phone isn’t constantly searching for networks to which you are unlikely to connect again.
10. Disable Vibration
There are certainly times when you should be turning your phone to silent mode. However, vibration alerts tend to use more power than ringtones and audible alerts (I didn’t know this!). It can be beneficial to disable vibration and to use low-volume alerts and ringtones instead.
