How to Save Smartphone Battery With 7 Simple Tips

Linda Shetty July 19, 2022 | 07:31

Until someone invents a better battery, it's worth reminding smartphone owners that a little power management goes a long way.

Tips help you save smartphone battery. Photo: tech connect magazine

While some of these tricks may be old hat, they will still help you maximize battery life go a lot longer between charges.

Until someone invents a better battery, it's worth reminding smartphone owners that a little power management goes a long way. While some of these tricks may be old hat, they will still help you maximize battery life go a lot longer between charges.

1. Turn off background apps

Many applications continue to run in the background long after you think you've closed them. For example, GPS-based services such as a map app like Waze or a game such as Pokémon GO! that track your location place a heavy strain on battery life and can continue running – even after you think you've stopped using them.

On an iPhone, turning off apps can be as simple as accessing the app manager and swiping the apps off your screen. Android phones have more granular settings than iOS does for power management, said Jack Gold, principal analyst with J. Gold Associates, and most Android experts agree it's generally not advisable to manually stop apps on your own.

Instead, you can limit certain apps' ability to consume power in the background, as we'll cover in step 3 – and if you're using Android 9 or higher, you can lean on the operating system's Adaptive Battery feature, located in the Battery section of the system settings, to automatically limit the amount of power made available to apps you don't use often.

2. Turn off location services

Smartphones have built-in GPS functions, which is great when you want to know how far away you are from a location or if you need directions to the nearest coffee shop. But more often than not, users don't need location services. Turn that off, as it's using your smartphone's antennas to constantly search for your location.

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3. Find and disable apps that use the most power using background activity

Snapchat, Facebook, WhatsApp Messenger, Netflix, and Amazon Shopping also top the list of apps that can suck a battery dry. Also look for any news or weather alert app as a possible power-draining culprit.

Some apps are constantly updating you with information that you may not need.

"The apps that are engaging the various radios and doing autonomous communication in the background are the ones that will be draining the battery the most," said Jordan Mayerson, CEO of Hoplite Power.

Open the Battery section of your phone's system settings, then either scroll down that screen to find the app-by-app breakdown or press the three-dot menu icon in the upper-right corner and select "Battery usage" (with more recent versions of Android). Tap any app with a high usage percentage alongside it and see how often it's burning through battery power in the background, as the Computer world.

For any app that's using a high amount of battery power in the background, look through the app's settings and see if you can disable some of its background features. For instance, many news and social media apps will automatically connect to the internet and refresh data every hour (or even more frequently) – even when you aren't actively using them.

If your phone has Android 9 or higher, you can also go a step further and restrict an app's ability to use the battery in the background at the system level. Find the app in the Battery section of system settings and then look for the "Background restriction" option.

4. Use Airplane mode

Airplane mode will save some energy, particularly if you are on an airplane or somewhere where there is no coverage, in which case the phone will continuously search for connections and waste power.

If you're driving and you don't have a Bluetooth connection via your car's infotainment system, that may also be a good time to switch to Airplane mode before you begin a trip. And, if you don't need Bluetooth, turn that off, too.

Even if you need to be connected to cellular, turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will save some power.

5. Silence Your Phone

A phone constantly beeping and buzzing with notifications is annoying and a battery drain, so knock it off.

Your phone has to trigger an internal motor to buzz, which—you guessed it—uses energy. Go into the sounds and vibration settings and turn vibration intensity down. Here, you can also disable haptic feedback so it doesn't vibrate when you type or touch the screen.

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6. Turn On Power Saving Mode

Think you're going to be stuck in a situation where you need your phone battery to last longer than it normally does? Switch your phone into power saver mode, which automatically cuts back on functions that may eat battery life.

On the Samsung Galaxy S10, for instance, there are two options. The first limits the display brightness, CPU speed, and network usage. The second strip your phone down to just the essential apps and services.

Samsung phones also offer Device Maintenance, which weeds out crashed apps, bad pieces of data, and other impurities that can take up memory on your phone and suck up energy, as the pcmag.

7. Wi-Fi Is Your Friend

Network data is strenuous on your battery, so use Wi-Fi whenever possible.

You can stop your phone from using cellular data by turning off mobile data services from the quick settings panel on your phone. You can also make use of Airplane Mode to disable all data network features and switch on Wi-Fi, though this will disrupt incoming calls and SMS texts.