Does the battery life on your iPhone make you slap your head and say, “Aye, aye, aye?” Smart phones are a wonderful invention. There’s no limit to the things that you can use them for. You can even make phone calls if you’d like! Now we’re just talking crazy! With each update to the iOS operating system, more functionality is added to the phone, but it seems it’s at the expense of battery life. As new versions of the flagship iPhone are released, battery performance is improved, though it still lags behind much of the competition. Through it all, iPhones are continually the most popular handset in the United States. Because of the sheer number that are out there, it’s worth investigating ways to spend more time using the phone than charging it. Let’s see what we can do.
Since we can’t physically install a bigger battery into our phones, we’re left to optimize the battery we do have to make it last as long as possible. When you purchase a new iPhone, every single bell and whistle is included. If you’ve ever looked at the settings, it’s incredible just how many options there are. Some are useful, and some aren’t. There are many places you can “trim the fat”. An easy way to gain battery life is to turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when possible. With both enabled, the phone constantly searches in the background for devices to connect to. I only turn Bluetooth on when I’m getting into my truck, or am about to connect to a wireless speaker. When I’m in the car for a trip to a place I know doesn’t have Wi-Fi, I turn it off because there’s an astronomical number of routers between my house and the destination. To disable both for yourself, simply swipe up from the bottom of the screen and tap the second and third buttons from the left on the top of the window. The second button is Wi-Fi and the third is Bluetooth. If they’re not illuminated, they’re off. You can also go to “Settings” then “Wi-Fi” and toggle the slider next to Wi-Fi to the left. Repeat the process for Bluetooth. Go to “Settings” then “Bluetooth” and toggle the slider next to Bluetooth to the left. Don’t forget to enable everything when needed.
One of the biggest battery drains is the phone’s brightness. The brighter the display is (and the longer it’s on), the more juice is required. With recent updates, Apple has implemented a setting called Auto-Brightness which automatically adjusts the screen brightness to the available light at your location. I’ve had mixed success with it, but feel free to give it a shot. To find it, tap “Settings” then “Display & Brightness” and then toggle “Auto-Brightness” to the right to turn it on. If you’d rather have control over the brightness, slide the slider above “Auto-Brightness” to the level desired. Further to the right is dimmer, while further left is brighter. You can also adjust brightness by swiping up from the bottom of the screen as you did earlier. Use the top slider to adjust brightness in the same manner as on the settings page.
Do you ever close an app when you’re done using it? If so, you’re in the minority! Leaving apps open in the background will use battery unnecessarily. Open apps also use valuable memory which can make odd things happen and not work as they should. To close an app, double-click the “Home” button, and swipe up. Repeat that for all open apps. When you’re finished, click the “Home” button once. This is an important process, and should be done at least every day. Related to this, even though apps are closed by this technique they may still be downloading content to remain updated in the background. These updates can cause unwanted data usage, and the obvious system demands. To ensure that this doesn’t happen, tap “Settings” then “General” then “Background App Refresh”. If you want to stop ALL apps from doing this, toggle the switch next to “Background App Refresh”. If you’d rather control each app’s behavior individual, keep the top slider to the right, and then toggle the corresponding switch next to the app on or off. By the way, if it isn’t clear whether something is turned on or off, if the switch is green, it’s on.
It’s aggravating to get the dreaded 5% battery remaining message when you’re in the middle of something. It’s worse when you get it at 3:00! By using these tips, you’ll gain some battery back to power you through the day. Don’t throw your charger away because you won’t gain extra days, but it will help you to “Free Yourself” to spend less time chained to your wall!