The tips to improve smartphone battery life

If you are constantly finding that your smartphone battery conks out before the end of the working day – or at least before you can conveniently tether it to a wall charger – then you’re going to need to do something about it, unless living like a hermit appeals to you. So what can you do to eke out the most battery life from your smartphone?
Switch off services you’re not using.

The first step is to eliminate any battery-sapping services that you do not particularly need. If you only work from 3G/4G services, having your Wi-Fi constantly active and seeking hotspots is a waste of battery power, so you can switch that off when there is no Wi-Fi around.

Likewise, while Bluetooth is great for connecting to headphones, fitness trackers, and other peripherals, it is still using up power even in its low power state. If you’re not using Bluetooth during the day, switch it off to maximize your battery life.

Of course, if you want the most battery power out of your phone and you are not fussed about calls, you can always throw the whole phone into airplane mode, re-enable Wi-Fi to keep it online, or leave it offline you want to avoid communication. While that limits the capabilities of your smartphone, it also saves a lot of battery power.

Dim screens save a lot of power.

Having your screen brightness cranked up to maximum makes it very easy to read in direct sunlight. Still, the display screen on a smartphone can be amongst the worst culprits for sapping the battery, especially if you’re using a large screen smartphone. Crank down the brightness (and disable any automatic brightness setting) to maximize your phone’s battery life.
Android users will find the relevant controls under Settings>Display. Being Android, the exact terminology can vary as to how to disable automatic settings. Still, you should easily set the brightness level simply by swiping down from the top of the screen to bring up the notification blind and adjusting brightness there.

For iPhone users, it is a matter of heading to Settings>Display & Brightness and disabling Auto-Brightness while cranking the Brightness slider down as low as you can tolerate.

Push email to the background

Switching off isn’t just a matter of minimizing your smartphone’s radio chatter, either. Any application that has push or notification style features will use power in providing those services.

Email is the classic example here because push-style email services will constantly check to see if you have an email waiting to be pushed to your smartphone. That is exceptionally handy if you always live and die via email communication. If your needs are more modest, consider disabling push and putting your email on full manual feed. So it only updates when you select it or on a reduced schedule of checking every 15 or 30 minutes.

If you’re an iPhone user, you can adjust the push behavior of mail by heading to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars. A section labeled “Fetch New Data” will most likely be set to “Push.” Tap that, and you’ll have the option to switch Push off and put a Fetch duration of either 15 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly, or fully manual.

On the Android side of the fence, Gmail is always set to push mail. Still, suppose you’re using the email client provided by your phone manufacturer instead. In that case, you may be able to find a setting for changing push or synchronization frequency to save yourself some power.

Disable battery-hungry apps

Mail isn’t the only app that chews power, however. Suppose you are finding your phone gasping for energy throughout the day. In that case, it could be any of several other applications using up fuel, either because you’re constantly using them (which makes sense) or because they’ve got background functions that use up energy even when you are not utilizing their services. Facebook is often cited as a battery drainer, but it’s not the only app that can be quite power-hungry, especially if you play many games on your smartphone.

iPhone users should head to Settings>General>Usage>Battery Usage. From there, you can see how long it’s been since you last charged, but also the battery statistics for all the apps on your phone using power in the last 24 hours and last seven days. You can find out which apps are battery hogs quite simply, and from there, assess quite how important it is that you keep them.

For Android users, head to Settings>Battery. Depending on your phone manufacturer and how heavily they have modified Android’s core OS. You should be able to see the full details of which apps have chewed up the most power, as well as a handy estimate of how long your phone expects to last based on current battery usage statistics.

There are indeed some apps you probably will not want to kill. However, if you find an older app still eating up power or using far more than its fair share, you may want to consider disabling or even uninstalling it when you’re not using it and reinstalling it only when you’re not using need it.

Power saving modes (if you’ve got them)

Many Android phones feature extreme power-saving modes, referred to variously as ultra power saving mode, stamina mode, or battery saver. Apple has had similar modes since iOS 9.

These modes seriously lobotomize your smartphone, leaving only call and texting facilities functional. They are good in an emergency if you want to contact someone or be in contact, but they are not a solution to keeping a smartphone truly “smart.”

External battery helpers

If you have disabled everything you can sensibly disable and you still find that your smartphone battery can not last the distance, you still have a few options open to you.

Suppose your smartphone has both a removable back and battery that gives you the ability to remove and replace the battery. It would be feasible to carry two of them around, although you’d have to keep both charged at once for that to be workable.

The easier option, which works for both sealed and easily replaceable batteries, is an external battery pack or battery case. As the name suggests, battery cases are full cases with embedded batteries within a single case, making them simpler to keep charged because they’re always plugged into your phone’s charging port. They’re most commonly built for Apple’s iPhones, with brands such as Mophie, Incipio, Lifeproof, and others offering battery cases.

External batteries are more of a jack-of-all-trades solution, typically offering power to just any gadget that can take USB power. That means it is feasible to use them to help recharge smartphones, tablets, and even standalone cameras.

The key aspect to check with any battery pack is the mAh (milliamp hours – effectively the “strength”) of the battery against the capacity of your smartphone. To give a concrete example, the iPhone XS has a 2658mAh battery, so a battery pack with 2658mAh capacity could fully refill it.
A battery pack with 6,000mAh capacity could fill it up just a touch over two times, but it will itself take a little longer to charge than one that matches the iPhone XS capacity.