How To Save Your Phone Battery
It’s extremely annoying and even dangerous to have your phone die on you. But these days, it seems like battery life is just getting shorter and shorter. With this in mind, here are a few tricks to help preserve battery power for both iPhones and Androids.
Locate the programs that are draining the most power.
On iPhone, navigate to Settings > Battery, where you’ll find a breakdown of the percentage of battery power used by individual apps over the past twenty-four hours and seven days. For Android, you can go to Settings > Battery to view not just apps but also base components like Android OS and screen brightness. Do you see any trends in apps taking a significant amount of power, even if they aren’t used often? It may be time to look into an alternative option.
Turn off apps running in the background.
Sometimes apps that don’t seem to be in use are still running and draining battery power. On iPhone, a big culprit is the background app refresh feature. You can disable this on an app-by-app basis by going to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Android doesn’t really have a version of this feature, but you can view what apps are running in the background by going to Settings > Apps. You can stop any unnecessary apps from this page.
Dim your display’s brightness.
Even simple things like screen brightness can be a huge battery hog. The best option is to turn it down to the lowest brightness that you’re comfortable with. On iPhone, you can change screen brightness just by swiping up, but for more control go to Settings > Display & Brightness. On Android, brightness can be modified by swiping down, and more settings can be accessed through Settings > Display.
Turn off unnecessary features.
Location sharing, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, AirDrop, and other like features contribute to battery drainage. If you’re not using them, it’s recommended that they be turned off. For iPhone, these features can mostly be turned off by just swiping up. To disable location sharing, navigate to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and turn off location services for individual apps as you see fit. Android users can turn off similar features by swiping down.
Turn on power saving mode.
Okay, it’s a little obvious, but it really does help. You can find this setting on iPhone by going to Settings > Battery and toggling on Low Power Mode. Androids also have a power saving mode that can be accessed by swiping down or by going to Settings > Battery depending on your type of phone. Note: power saving mode stops notifications, so make sure you keep a close eye on your phone.
Adapted from http://www.techspot.com/article/1479-iphone-battery-life-tips/ and http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367542,00.asp