HOW TO: Extend your phones battery life

Smartphones are notorious for having relatively short battery lives. Currently, most phones use lithium-ion  batteries due to their safety, light weight, low-cost, and ease of manufacture. Because of their high energy density, lithium-ion batteries have the ability to operate at a higher voltage (3.7 volts) versus most other rechargeable phone batteries, some as low as 1.2 volts.

Many companies are working on creating a longer lasting battery but for the time being li-ion is here to stay.  So how can you improve your current battery life? Below are some simple tips to get some extra life out of that battery.

1. Screen

   • In settings, set phone screen to dim.
   • Turn on  auto-brightness to automatically adjust screen brightness based on ambient life.

2. Block ads

   • Install an ad-blocker app.
   • Browsing the internet your phone downloads mobile ads from websites, some of these can drain a large amount of power.

3. Email

   • Your phone automatically downloads all emails your linked email accounts receive. The more email you receive, the higher energy used.
   • Turning off ‘push’ will stop instant downloads of emails. Instead, you can configure your phone to check periodically rather than constantly.

4. Music streaming

   • Store music on your phone rather than stream it online.
   • Streaming uses double the amount of energy than playing directly off your phone.

5. Wi-Fi

   • Wi-Fi is a great way to conserve data usage, however if the wireless reception is poor your phone will waste energy searching for a good signal.
   • In Settings, turn off Wi-Fi if the signal is weak, or turn on Airplane mode to disable both Wi-Fi and data.

6. Battery usage list

   • In Settings, navigate to ‘Battery’. This shows all of your apps and the amount of battery power each consumes.
   • On the battery usage screen, tap the clock button to reveal information about how much battery life each app is using. Some apps running in the background can use quite a bit of energy, such ass email checking for new messages.
   • Disable these apps background activities  in Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

7. Location tracking

   • GPS consumes a large amount of energy constantly following your geographic location.
   • Disable apps location tracking in the app itself or via your phones ‘Location Services’ settings.

8. Push notifications

   • ‘Push notifications’ are alerts sent to your phone from apps. Each time an alert is sent your phones screen lights up for a few seconds.
   • Turning these off means you will not know when an app sends you a notification but will greatly reduce your battery life. In Settings, navigate to Notifications , click on the app and disable ‘Allow Notifications’

To read the full article from NYTimes  click here