Smartphone Battery 101: How can I make my phone battery last longer?

The year is 2016, and phone technology has improved to heights that we never thought we’d live to see. The processing speed on smartphones is now like none we have ever seen with devices now being able to have even as much as 6GB RAMs. They did not stop there and we have seen phones have internal storage spaces of up to 128GB, the BlackBerry Priv for example can even be expanded up to 2TB and with the fast QUALCOMM processors, could we ask for something else? Actually, we can, and that’s the battery.

It is rare these days to see smartphones last for more than 24 hours without being charged and that is a major problem. Even with the QuickCharge feature, they have not found a way to prevent the quick drain. Even though the phone makers might not have a cure for this, we have a series of tips that would help you get the bets out of your battery till they get a mode of preventing fast drain.

1 Control your display

Manufacturers have now improved the screen technology so much that the displays are crystal clear. This can even further be enjoyed when your screen brightness is on a high and it’s tempting to always want to see your screen in full glory. What you don’t know is that this is one of the ways in which you are killing your battery. Dim that brightness today and get extra hours from your battery.

2 Screen timeout

The screen timeout is the amount of time your device would stay when idle before the screen goes off itself. Set your screen brightness at a low timeframe and you would be doing yourself a lot of good. The extra amount of time we spend keeping our smartphones on when doing other things also make an impact. Don’t miss that.

3 Kill that Bluetooth

In our bid to go wireless with everything, we are even in the habit of using Bluetooth connections for everything, especially when you are in the habit of depending on hands-free connections. While there is nothing wrong with this, Bluetooth is a connectivity option and something that we have come to know about connectivities is that they drain battery faster than any other system feature. When you aren’t listening to the BT radio or using the hands-free, do your battery a favour and turn it off.

4 Spear the Wi-Fi

This is another connectivity option and we don’t even need to tell you that this drains battery. When you are not using this feature anymore, the system app keeps running underground and tries to get other network in the area. The constant trials of the Wi-Fi feature to search for signals, pick them up and register them all to your device makes it a battery killer.

5 Cut back on location services and GPS

You might be one of those people who are in the habit of constantly monitoring their locations and using the GPS services. You might not even know that this is on due to the fact that you would have given some apps some GPS access which runs the feature underground. The idea here is that you could keep using the feature but just go to your settings tab and set how much power you want it to pull.

6 Clear Background apps.

The ability of these new devices to multitask is one of the greatest powers of smartphones, and it is also one of the greatest battery killers too. Don’t because your phone can run 20 apps at once, open as much as you can. Only keep the apps you are using running and clear the rest. Using the Lollipop and Marshmallow has made clearing the background processes easier, and it’s also pretty smooth if running the older versions of android too.

7 Ditch the vibrations

It takes only a few amount of energy for your smartphone to ring while notifying you of an alert or call or any other things of the sort but when you decide to go the way of vibration, you are placing a heavier load on the battery. It takes a small membrane of the phone speaker to ring but for vibrations, the phone would need to generate enough mechanical energy to set a motor in motion which produces that vibration effect. You are not only draining the battery in the short run, but also impacting the life of your smartphone battery in the long run.

8 Prioritise your notifications

Almost every apps now, if not all of them, are in the habit of cranking up internet time all by themselves to look for updates, add new information to their database and keep afresh and abreast with your activities. Games are not even left out due to the online community that the gaming world is starting to develop now and when these apps find something, they try to let you know by ringing, vibrating, chiming or flashing you the LED. Not only does their jaywalking on the streets of the internet drain your battery, the way they notify you also does damages on its own. Take only the apps you really need and turn on notifications anthem. Kill the notifications on others and even for the ones you have left on, a simple beep would do.

9 Push email

Don’t hate us now. It seems that we are asking you to give up most of the things that you love your smartphone for but we are just helping you make that battery last longer. Instead of having your device always search for new mails, why not set a timeframe for refresh like once in 15, 30, 45 minutes or even more? This would keep your battery safe from the demons that drink its juice.

10. Battery saver modes

Different manufacturers usually have some special kind of battery saving mode on their smartphones and you could take advantage of this to check the power. On Android currently, for example, the Marshmallow 6.0 comes out of the box with some nice features (Hey! Anyone here remembers the Doze feature) that is dedicated at improving your battery life. Take advantage of these and experience new heights of phone use in hours.