Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you had to rely on your phone but knew you had to go for a long time between charges? A road trip in an older car or a long flight can have you singing the battery life blues- especially if you rely on your phone for entertainment or directions.
In situations like these, knowing how to conserve your battery life is essential to keeping your phone alive. Whether its Android or iOS, there are a handful of key features you can turn off in order to spare battery life. Remember, you don’t necessarily need to turn every feature off- just find which features you can do without.
Turn off auto-brightness
There’s a reason you can read your phone outside on a sunny day as well as in the darkness without blinding yourself. Most smart phones can detect light levels around you and adjust your screen brightness accordingly. While this is certainly convenient, it uses up precious battery life. Turn this feature off to save yourself some juice. You can also manually turn the brightness down to the lowest setting in order to conserve as much power as possible.
Turn off Automated Updates
While having your apps up to date is important for functionality, allowing your phone to update every app whenever it can is a waste of battery life. Instead, choose to manually update the apps you use the most when you want to. This will prevent any battery draining updates from happening when you need your charge to last.
Keep WiFi off
As much as it hurts to hear (especially when a hotspot or free WiFi is available), keeping your WiFi constantly turned on is a big battery drain. Make sure to turn WiFi and any personal hotspots off when not in use. If you want to take it a step further, you can disable 3G or 4G LTE to conserve even more power.
Disable Location Services
Location services are incredibly important, especially if you are traveling. Apps can suggest restaurants and hotels, give you real-time traffic updates, and even point out any inclement weather using the built GPS. While these can be lifesavers, location services tend to drain your battery. Make sure to only have your location services turned on when you absolutely need to.
Change the Frequency of Data Push
Important apps such as email, weather, and even sports and financial apps manually fetch data in the background to keep you informed and up to date. This means that they are constantly connecting via WiFi or cellular data in order to fetch data, which in turn uses battery life. Turn this feature off or set data fetching to manual. This way, your selected apps only fetch data when you actually use the app. But beware- this means you have to manually check your email and messages in order to receive any new incoming info.
Find the Battery Culprits
Apps such as Battery Doctor and Juice Defender as well as the built in feature in iOS break down battery usage for each app. This can help you determine which apps to disable or delete in order to maximize your battery potential.
Disable Unnecessary Animations and Interactive Wallpapers
While your jumping notifications and interactive Koi fish wallpaper are entertaining, these customizable features drain battery for virtually no payoff (except they do look really cool). If you need to go for a long time on a single charge, try turning any animations or interactive functions off.
Disable any Other Unnecessary Functions
Our phones offer us a blank slate of customizable functionality. Everyone uses their phone in slightly different ways, so think about which apps or functions are using crucial battery life in the background. Things like Bluetooth, fitness trackers, sound equalizers, and even unnecessary vibrations all use up battery life.
By using some of these helpful tips, you’ll have the power to go longer on a single charge. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for any InCharged cell phone charging stations to give your battery a boost whenever you can and remember- you can’t conserve power if your phone isn’t properly charged!
