Apple, BlackBerry, Samsung and other global brands have come up with
smartphones equipped with powerful mobile operating systems such as
Google’s Android, Nokia’s Symbian, Apple’s iOS, etc, that allows users
to play games, listen to mp3s, snap pictures, have access to the Net and
even stream videos.
Given their diverse range of capabilities and multi-functionality
running on a mobile (as in on-the-go) platform, it’s no wonder that battery life has always been a concern for developers, manufacturers and the users themselves.
On average, most smartphone batteries last between one and two days
before being completely depleted, and in need of a recharge.
While we wait for the hardware development to catch up, the
alternative will be to conserve battery life. As it is with our energy
levels, battery life can be effectively utilized and managed, leaving
nothing to go to waste. Without a battery charger or a spare battery
with you everywhere you go, you’ll have to make due with minimizing the
consumption of battery juice.
Here are 10 essential tips how you can conserve your smartphone’s battery.
1. Turn Off Vibrations
Vibrations are great for notifying you about incoming calls or
messages when you’re in the theatre, meetings or other places where it’s
necessary to keep the phone silent. In places where it doesn’t matter,
it will be better for you to use your ringtone as notification if you
want to keep your smartphones on longer.
Vibrations actually use up more power than ringtones.
The sounds produced by ringtones are just very tiny vibrations in your
smartphone’s speaker. Compare that to the shaking of the entire phone
via vibrating a smart weight, playing a ringtone definitely zaps less of
your battery. The same applies for using vibration for tactile
feedback. If you don’t think it’s necessary, then disable vibrations or
at the very least, lessen the magnitude of the vibrations.
2. Dim Your Screen
This one tip affects battery life drastically. It’s obvious that
dimming your screen will reduce your smartphone’s power consumption
since we all have to activate the screen whenever we use our phones. If
our screen is brightly lit up every couple of minutes when we check our
emails and such, it eventually will zap battery juice. Auto-brightness
setting enable the smartphone to adjust the brightness to its optimal
level for reading while conserving battery life.
On the other hand though, you may consider tuning the level
permanently to the dimmest level that you can still read under without
straining your eyes. Doing so may do wonders to your battery life in the
long run.
3. Shorten Screen Timeout
In the same manner, if you wish to minimize the power consumption of
your smartphone of the screen display, you ought to consider shortening the screen timeout. This decides how long the screen will remain lit after you finish interacting with it.
Some of us do not have the habit of ‘locking’ the phone after we we
are done with it; we just let it go lights out by itself. Keeping the
timeout duration short will ensure that the phone doesn’t waste power
when you’re not using it.
4. Switching Off When Inactive
Although it is true that turning on your phone consumes more power than unlocking your phone, switching it off for a couple of hours can save more battery than leaving it on sleep or inactive mode.
If you know you’re not going to touch your phone for an extended period
of time, such as when you’re attending a meeting or sleeping, you can
actually cut down a significant amount of energy consumption if you
simply switch it off.
You might be wondering why you should even bother about battery level
when you’ve a charger with you at home while you sleep. Well, the thing
is that repeated charging for certain kind of batteries eats up the battery volume.
For such batteries, the best way is to conserve as much as you can so
that your battery retains its original capacity as much as possible.
5. Charge Your Battery Correctly
Speaking of phone charging, there are generally two kinds of rechargeable batteries commonly used for smartphones: Lithium-ion (Li-Ion), and Nickel-based batteries: namely Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) and Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd).
The battery capacity in NiCd batteries are reduced every time you recharge them.
Nonetheless, NiCd batteries have longer life cycles i.e. they can be
recharged more often than NiMH batteries before stop working.
Nickel-based batteries should be charged (to the full amount) when
they’re more or less out of power, and not when there’s still a good
amount of energy left.
(Image Source: Slairea)
Li-Ion batteries have the longest life cycle among the three types of
batteries but they also need to be charged more frequently (even when
the battery is not fully used up) to maintain its original capacity. To
keep your battery lasting longer, find out more about the type of
battery that your smartphone uses and maintain the appropriate charging
strategy for optimum usage.
6. Close Unnecessary Apps
Some of us open app after app and don’t bother to close them even
after we no longer need to use them. This multi-tasking capability is a
common feature of smartphones, but it is also a main reason why battery
life gets drained away easily. The worst thing is that you’re losing
battery juice when you are not even using them. Leaving them open will
leave your battery at half-bar in no time.
As often as possible, kill your apps if you are not using them.
There are some valuable apps out there that manage the multitasking
ability of your smartphone to ensure it performs at its best to conserve
battery life without jeopardizing usage. One such Android app is the Advanced Task Killer.
7. Disable GPS
Certain apps eat up more battery juice than others, particularly apps
which utilize the GPS system to track your location. Your smartphone
has a GPS unit that allows the sending and receiving of signals to and
from satellites to determine your exact location, which is integral for
some apps to work, for example, map-based apps like Google Maps or to
check-in on Facebook.
(Image Source: Fotolia)
When left running in the background, some of these apps may continue
to send and receive signals. It takes a lot out of your battery to
continuously do that, even if you aren’t aware of it. Hence, you should
ensure that those particular apps are closed when you really don’t need
them. A more extreme way is to disable location services when prompted
by these apps. It may slow down the efficiency of these apps but you
won’t be tracked on your location and some users deliberately do that
for privacy reasons.
8. No Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G/4G When Not in Use
Energy is consumed whenever your smartphone searches for signals,
Wi-Fi, 3G or Bluetooth etc. When the reception is poor, the phone will
continue scanning to attain a good connection. Repeated searches for these signals can easily make your battery level drop a notch.
What I’m saying is that you should turn off your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
when you don’t need to be connected. One convenient way to do it is to
switch to ‘Airplane Mode’ or just switch your phone off when you know
you can’t get any signal.
On the other hand, when you need good reception for your smartphone,
place or position your phone in high connectivity zones. This will
prevent your smartphones from constantly seeking for a connection and
wasting your precious battery power switching from one signal to the
other.
9. Minimize Notifications
With constant connectivity to the Internet, we tend to get
notifications on our smartphones all the time, be it updates on the
latest news, emails, high scores from games, add-ons for apps etc. But
I’m sure that you would only want to be notified on the more essential
stuffs like new text messages, or messages from Whatsapp.
(Image Source: Taakoses)
Not only is it annoying to constantly receive irrelevant notifications that can actually wait, it is also a powersucker for each of these notifications. Every incoming notification will light up your screen, make a sound alert or vibrate.
Manage your settings well and disable unnecessary notifications to
save a little battery power (and avoid being frustrated with these
constant notifications).
10. Maintain Cool Temperature
Some of us might have observed that our battery runs out faster when our smartphones are warm. Put simply, don’t leave your smartphones under direct sunlight or in any place that is hot.
One of the more common occurrences would be leaving the smartphone in a car parked under the sun. The battery will function optimally in cooler environments, so do look out for, and try to avoid, scenarios where your phone is exposed to unnecessary and excessive heat.
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