We’ve all been there. You go to use your phone for something essential, only to discover that the battery is low and you don’t have access to a charger. But a few simple steps can greatly prolong your battery power. Here are a few tips.
Colourful graphics and lively animations are what make your phone attractive, but they also drain power faster than anything else. Your phone probably has an auto-adjust function to adapt to ambient light levels, but you can turn down the brightness setting further still. The lower the setting, the more power you save. Setting your screen timeout to 30 seconds will also help. Choose a ringtone (which only needs enough energy to vibrate a speaker membrane) rather than vibrate (which requires enough power to move a motor). These three little steps will make a big difference.
Lots of notifications are needlessly draining power, so turn off all but the essential ones. The same goes for email – set it to download periodically so that your phone isn’t constantly using energy to light up the message screen and trigger a tone. The same goes for GPS and location services, both of which use power for no good reason.
Apps are clever multitaskers, working away in the background while you get on with your life. But they are also making your CPU work and draining power, so turn off the apps you aren’t using and give your CPU a rest.
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are brilliant features, but they’re energy consumers, too, so turn them off unless you are using them. Turn Wi-Fi on again when you’re in range of your own network and you want to use a particular data service.
Finally, research the power saving features that are unique to your phone and make use of them. These are just a few simple steps which will make all the difference to your battery consumption.
