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Saturday, May 4, 2013

5 tips to boost your iPhone and Android smartphone battery life to make your phones work longer

iPhone battery icon
The battery performance has been long the weakness of smartphones, no matter it is an iPhone, Android phone or a Windows phone, though the battery capacity has been rising up all along. Many people could have experienced such circumstances: their smartphones are going to die but they still need the assistance of their phone. Such conditions would happen especially when you’re on a long train journey or you don’t get a backup battery. People may want to know how to prolong their phone battery life so as to make their phones work longer. That’s what this post is talking about. Here I have collected 5 tips to help you save and boost your phone battery life for emergency use.

Tip 1: Turn off the radios you aren't using.
This might be obvious to some, but this is one of the biggest causes of fast battery drain. Turn off the radios in your phone you aren't using; even when they are idle they suck power. That means switching off the WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth when you don't need them. 

Chances are you will want to keep the cellular radio on in most situations, but if you are in an area with no service, turn off the cellular or just put the phone in Airplane Mode.

Also, turn off all the apps that are using GPS or location; many of them will keep using the GPS to determine where you are and feed you information based on your location. (On the iPhone this is in the Settings menu under Location Services.)

Tip 2: Turn down the screen brightness.
The screen is the biggest power sucker on your phone. Keep the brightness low whenever you can and set the auto-lock so it turns the screen off when you aren't using it. The iPhone and Android phones also have auto-brightness settings, but you are still best keeping the screen in the 30 percent to 50 percent range if you can.

Many even say setting a darker wallpaper will save some power. And Android users, whatever you do: stay away from the live wallpapers. You are just asking for battery drain with those.
battery life tips

Tip 3: Kill the apps you aren't using.
How many apps do you have open on your phone right now? Go on, check. If it's more than 10 you need to heed this advice. Close apps you aren't using, or at least some of them. iOS and Android phones do a decent job of not allowing all open apps to suck your battery, but keeping more than 10 open is never a good idea. On an Android phone also kill the widgets you don't use; even if they look pretty, they are constantly updating and draining your battery.

And for those who don't know, on the iPhone, you can close apps by double-tapping the Home button to bring up the open apps. Then press-and-hold one of the apps so they start to dance. Select the minus button to close the apps. Hit the Home button when you are done. On Android phones, you can go to the "Manage applications" area in settings or you can select the open apps menu and swipe to close the app.

Tip 4: Turn off or limit notifications.
Notifications are very useful, but they can also tax your battery. Be smart about which app notifications are enabled. Do you need notifications from your recipe app or Yelp? Also make sure those apps that are always busy -- like Twitter or Facebook -- aren't always refreshing with new updates and notifying you of them. With email, make sure you don't have notifications enabled for every new message.

Tip 5: Buy a mobile charger or battery-equipped case.
The aforementioned software adjustments will help, but they will only go so far, at least after a day of heavy use. If that extra juice doesn't go far enough, or you don’t want to do these adjustments, you may take the last choice: buy a mobile charger or case on hand. Though a mobile phone charger would cost you some money, it provides quite powerful and quick charging upon your phones, and successfully prolongs your phone work duration. 

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