In depth How to squeeze more juice from your battery
Introduction
The frustration of a dead battery will be familiar to every
iPhone owner. But what can you do to avoid it, other than use your phone
less? Apple is good at squeezing maximum performance
out of the hardware in the iPhone and that's one of the reasons that the
iPhone's battery is comparatively small. The first iPhone had a 1400mAh
battery, and seven years later the iPhone 6 has a 1810mAh battery, although the iPhone 6 Plus has a whopping 2910mAh offering. Many
of the current Android flagships have batteries rated over 3000mAh, but
then they have much bigger displays - the 6 Plus aside, of course. But
that doesn't mean we still don't struggle to keep our iPhones going for
longer, no matter how big the battery pack. Until the
next big leap in battery or charging technology comes along, we'll have
to rely on smarts to get the most out of our iPhones. Here are a few
simple tips you can follow to get a whole lot more juice from your Apple
smartphone.
1. Keep an eye on signal strength
The
biggest culprit for rapid battery drain is often a weak signal, but
there isn't a great deal you can do about that. If you're in an area
with a poor signal then you might consider switching Airplane mode on,
which stops the constant searching that sucks the life from your phone. You
should also always use Wi-Fi instead of cellular data whenever possible
too, as that offers a more stable connection and will stop all that
battery-abusing searching for a signal.
2. Turn off app notifications
Some
apps will spam you with pointless news. How many of the notifications
you get do you actually want to see? In most cases, very few. Every
one of them is sucking down some battery life, so cut them off at the
source. Go to settings > notification centre and tap on any apps you
don't want notifications from. Then choose 'none' under the alert style,
and turn 'badge icon' and 'sounds' off.
Use WiFi wherever possible, turn off notifications and check your settings
3. Change display settings
Your display is costly to power, so you want it to shut down quickly when you aren't using it. Go to Settings > General > Auto-lock and see if you can live with a shorter time before the screen auto-locks. You
should also head to Settings > Wallpaper & brightness and turn
'Auto-brightness' off to save some battery. Set the brightness as low as
you can and only adjust it up when needed and you'll save a decent
chunk of power – although this might mean you can't always see your
phone screen in direct sunlight.
4. Stop the animations
You
don't need dynamic backgrounds and parallax, '3D' effects. They're fun
but they're munching your power. Pick a static image or a favourite
photo in Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness, then choose
'Wallpaper' and turn 'Reduce Motion' on in Settings > General >
Accessibility.
5. Reduce background refreshing
People
imagine that swiping apps closed in the multitasking menu is saving
power, but you really need to be taking a look in Settings > General
> Background App refresh to really make a difference. Allowing
apps to refresh themselves like this is a big drain on your battery. Go
down the list and turn off everything you don't need - Facebook in
particular can drain your battery really quickly. These apps still
refresh when you actually load them up, which is a lot more efficient
for your battery.
Stop background refreshing, get your email manually and check your location settings
6. Get email manually
There's
some argument about the benefits of push email (arriving when sent)
versus fetch (the phone checks at pre-agreed intervals), and it really
depends on how much email you get and how often you have it syncing. Push
should only send from the server when a mail comes in, and it will be
more power efficient than checking every five minutes with fetch, but if
you get a lot of email then push could drain the battery faster than
fetch with a slower refresh time of an hour. Assuming
you're only going to check your email once every couple of hours,
getting it manually is going to save you power over both options… but
you'll have to actually remember to do it!
7. Kill location tracking
Unless you're actually
using the Maps app it's debatable how useful location tracking is for
you. What isn't up for debate is the fact that it eats your battery. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and turn them all off, or just select apps you don't want tracking you. You
should also look in Settings > Privacy > Location Services >
System Services, and think about turning off 'Frequent Locations',
'Location-Based iAds', and maybe 'Diagnostics & Usage'.
8. Keep it cool
Heat
is really bad for batteries. Don't leave your iPhone lying in direct
sunlight. If it gets really hot when you're gaming or when you're
charging it, then remove the case, if you use one. Or only play Infinity Blade 3 in the freezer. Your call.
Update your apps selectively, turn Siri's shortcut off and turn off vibrations
9. Update selectively
Generally
speaking updates are going to bring improvements, but it doesn't hurt
to check the feedback from others before you pull the trigger on a
software update. For iOS newness, you should check in
Settings > General > Software Update to alter the automatic
settings. Don't let your content update automatically either. Go
to Settings > iTunes & App Store and consider turning all
automatic downloads off. That way you can choose when to update and make
sure to use Wi-Fi or hook up to your PC to save power.
10. Turn Siri shortcut off
You'll
find the raise to speak option in Settings > General > Siri and
if you aren't using it, then make sure you turn it off, because that
sensor check is going to impact on the battery as it's constantly
looking for your face touching the phone.
11. Turn off vibrations
In
Settings > Sounds you can toggle 'Vibrate On Ring' to 'Off'. You can
also go to Settings > Sounds > New Mail > Vibration and set it
to 'None'. This disables the motor, and that movement really hurts your
power. Finally, go to Settings > Notification Center
> Mail and tap on the accounts you use, then choose Alerts and set
'Vibration' to none to really cut down the problem.
You don't need everything to sync to the Cloud...
12. Cut the cloud
Do
you need everything to sync with iCloud? Go into Settings > iCloud
and take a look at the list. Cloud syncing eats power and data, so it's
worth turning off anything you aren't bothered about – plus you won't
find you've suddenly run out of storage and are constantly getting your
iPhone moaning at you about it. You can make sure this
only updates when the phone is locked and charging - a good tip if you
want to get the best of both worlds.
