All iPhone users have lamented the short battery life of their smartphones at some point in time. While portable chargers may come in handy, learning how to maximise your iPhone’s battery life in the first place will save you the hassle of carrying around that precious charger everywhere you go. Here are some ways to do it:
1. Airplane Mode to the Rescue
Switching your phone to Airplane mode can keep your battery from dying out too quickly. Doing so essentially means that all wireless features like GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will be turned off, allowing your phone to take a break from continuously searching for a WiFi connection. This is especially true for times when you’re at areas with weak signal strength, and as a bonus, also prevents your phone from overheating.
MacWorld has tested out this claim, and found that switching a phone to Airplane mode granted more user time — and up to 30 extra minutes of video playback on the iPhone 5.
2. Background App Refresh
iPhone users would know that Apple has kindly included an optimisation feature called the BackGround App Refresh, which automatically updates the apps that you use often. While this might be a really useful feature to have, it is a silent battery killer. Turn the feature off once in a while, especially when you don’t see the need for automatic app upgrades.
3. Don’t Quit Apps
Logically, we quit apps that we are not using, thinking that this will help our batteries last longer since apps don’t run needlessly in the background. But this might not be such a good idea after all, because it means your phone will have to reload the entire app the next time you decide to use it. Doing so also puts a whole lot more stress on the iPhone than if you left the apps running in the first place.
4. Turn Off That iPhone
No, we’re not actually suggesting that you leave your phone switched off to extend its battery life. Rather, we’re saying that it might help to turn your iPhone off at least once a week; this will allow it to reboot for the next use — and will let you enjoy some much-needed detachment from the virtual world at the same time.
Avoid holding down the power button and home button for a hard reset: this could cause some software glitches and contribute to further battery problems.
5. Push & Fetch Email
One feature we might use on our iPhones is the ‘Push’ and ‘Fetch’ functions for our emails: they give us instant notifications whenever we get new emails, and search for new emails when we launch the email app.
Disabling the “Push’ function could help improve battery life, especially if you have multiple email accounts. If you don’t need instant notifications for your emails, switch to ‘Fetch’ function instead. Your phone will then sync new emails at stipulated time intervals. The higher the fetch interval, the better it is for your battery.
6. Use Battery Saving Apps
There are a variety of Battery Saving apps out there that can help you keep tabs on everything that is going on with your iOS device. One such app, Battery Doctor, offers 5 different menus that give you details about the main apps and processes running on your iPhone. It also gives you instructions to how to suspend these processes if they are draining your battery rapidly.
7. Charge Cycle
Users should go through at least 1 charge cycle per month — this involves draining your battery to 0%, and then charging it back to full power. Power cycling, as this is called, helps your phone recalibrate its battery indicator, making it better at estimating battery life.