One of the biggest problems with smartphones is that they you need to charge at least once in a day. And iPhone is not an exception to that. In reality you may even need to charge multiple times or keep a power bank based on the usage. For example, using iPhone for watching videos, playing high definition games and making long calls will kill the battery as quickly as possible. Though you can’t change much, wrong usage will spoil the battery life over period of time. Here are some simple tips on how to improve your iPhone batter life by using various settings available in iOS. If you are having Android phone, learn more on how to improve Android phone battery life.
First Advice Before Proceeding
Remember the ultimate objective of smartphones are to make you lazy by offering hundreds of options. The point is to use only what you need at the right time. Enabling all options will not only affect your productivity and health but also the phone itself. Let us go ahead with the tips for saving battery life.
1. Disable Location Services
Location services will allow apps tracking your location to offer customized services. For examples, Maps need the location services enabled to know where you are and offer the directions you search for. You will see a small arrow mark on the top bar of your iPhone when an app is using the location services. The problem is though this is a useful service, it will consume the battery heavily.
Also most of the times you don’t use these apps or you don’t need to share your location with that app. In any case, navigate to “Settings > Privacy > Location Services”. Here you can see all the apps using the service and disable the apps you don’t need.
There will be three options – Always , Never and While Using the App. We recommend to choose “While Using the App” option to enable location services only when the app is opened.
Note: Remember some apps like Maps need the location services to work. If disabled these apps will stop working. So remember to disable the service only for those apps you don’t want to use the service.
2. Restrict Notifications
Notifications are useful to get the alert and update yourself instantly. But you should enable the notifications only for the required apps like Messages. Getting lot of notifications from social apps, news apps, emails, messages and from other apps will drain your battery.
Navigate to “Settings > Notifications” and disable the notification for the apps you don’t want to send alerts.
3. Disable Background App Refresh
Almost all apps on your iPhone will get the content in the background when connected to internet. Good examples, are the news and social apps that keep the content up to date by updating in the background. Again think whether you need to keep all the apps up to date throughout the day. This is definitely not required because this background app refresh will consume the battery. Navigate to “Settings > General > Background App Refresh”. Here you can manage which apps are to be refreshed and disable other apps.
4. Adjust the Brightness
The brightness of the screen also consumes the power. In most cases, people keep high brightness even when it is not needed. You can manually reduce the brightness to improve the battery life. But this is not always workable as sometimes you really need the bright screen. Don’t worry, iOS allows simple way to manage the brightness automatically. Go to “Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Auto-Brightness” and turn-on the option. This option should be enabled by default and you can see the indication clearly mentioning that turning off the auto-brightness will affect your battery life.
5. Enable Low Power Mode
When the iPhone is running out of battery there is an option to extend the battery time. This is called low power mode which essentially will disable the background app refresh, automatic downloads, graphical effects, auto email fetching and other power consuming options. Enable low power mode by going to “Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode”. iOS is an intelligent operating system which will automatically ask you to enable low power mode when your battery is going below 20%. This will work even you have disabled the option. So basically you can enable it when the power goes below 20% and charge the phone to disable it automatically.
6. Find High Power Consuming Apps
You can see the battery consumption of apps under “Settings > Battery” section. It shows the consumption for last 24 hours (this will change based on the time and usage) and tap on the clock icon to see on screen and background time.
This is the good way to find which app is using more battery both on screen as well as in the background. You should avoid using those high power consuming apps when your battery is running out of power. The latest iOS version also offers “Battery Health” section to find the current maximum capacity of charging compared to when bought the new iPhone. The lower level indicates that you are using the phone in wrong manner and enable “Optimized Battery Charging” for better performance.
7. Use Wi-Fi Instead of Cellular Refresh
Generally cellular data will take more time than Wi-Fi for updating and downloading content. More screen and processing time will obviously end up in consuming more power. In order to save power and cellular cost, it is better to disable cellular data for background app refresh. This means your apps will get updated only through Wi-Fi thus saving battery life for your iPhone. You can disable cellular data for each app or for the complete iPhone as whole under “Settings > General > Background App Refresh” section.
8. Use Airplane Mode
Whether you use Wi-Fi or cellular data, connecting to internet is one of the main source of power consumption (other than calling). So it is a good idea to disconnect the phone from internet when it is not needed. You can quickly do this by swiping up to open Control Center and tap on the airplane icon. This will enable airplane mode and disconnect your iPhone from internet. Also you can open the Control Center even when the phone is in locked mode.
9. Avoid Overheating or Overcooling
Did you ever take your iPhone to the mountain top where the temperature is freezing -15 degree Celsius? The phone will be frozen and switched off automatically. You can restart only after the phone comes to normal operating temperature range of 0 – 35 degree. This is true when you bring the phone to overheating situations. Even the iOS will show the message that the phone is overheated and needs to be cooled off before starting again. So ensure to use the iPhone within the allowable temperature limit to have a proper battery life for long run.
10. Cleanup Storage Space
Low storage and memory will slow down the apps. This will also start affecting the battery time and usage. Monitor the available space on your phone under “Settings >General > iPhone Storage” and remove all unnecessary apps. You can also use memory cleaner apps for flushing the memory occupied by apps and documents data. Checkout the article on how to speedup your iPhone.
Wrapping Up
Smartphones are smart when you use it smartly. Otherwise it will cost you too much for doing trivial things which can be done by any featured phones. You can for sure extend the battery life of your iPhone by controlling the iOS settings and using it smartly. This will especially help you in emergency situations where you need to hold the power of your iPhone for longer time without charging.
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