Android smartphones are powerful, but unfortunately, they
don't have endless battery life. In fact, many Android phone users would be
happy to make it through a single day, hoping that a nightly recharge is
sufficient.
A number of factors have conspired to reduce gadget
endurance over the past several years. Thinner designs with less room for
batteries, larger and brighter screens, faster quad-core processors, more
software that runs in the background, and power-hungry GPS radios all share
responsibility. The move from 3G to 4G networks a few years ago—particularly of
the LTE variety—has also taken its toll.
These tips should apply across just about any Android phone. Try these
tips to extend your handset's battery life:
1. Use a
dark background. If you use a phone with
an AMOLED screen, using black or dark wallpaper can save the battery. This is because such screens light up only
the colored pixels while black pixels remain unaffected. The more dark or black pixels you have on your
screen, the less power your phone will need to illuminate them.
2.
Turn
off location tracking. There
are several apps on your phone that constantly track your location, but not all
may actually need to use this information.
Since GPS tracking does use a lot of power on your smartphone, disable
the location tracking in apps that you don’t need.
3. See
what's sucking the most juice. Navigate to Settings >
Battery to see an organized breakdown of what's consuming your phone's
battery. Applications and features will display in a descending list of battery
hogs. If you see an application you barely use or a feature you never use,
you'll want to uninstall the app or turn off the feature.
4.
Use
lock screen notifications. Enabling lock screen notifications can extend your phone’s
battery life as you can read your notifications without having to unlock and
light up the whole screen.
5.
Reduce
email, Twitter, and Facebook polling. Set
your various messaging apps to "manual" for the polling or refresh
frequency, just as a test, and you'll instantly extend your device's battery
life by a significant amount. Once you see what a difference that makes, try
re-enabling just the most important ones, and possibly reducing their polling
frequency in the process.
6.
Turn
unnecessary hardware radios off. It's
great that today's phones have LTE, NFC, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, but do you
really need all five activated 24 hours per day? Android keeps location-based
apps resident in the background, and the constant drain on your battery will
become noticeable, fast. If your phone has a power control widget, you can use
it to quickly turn on/off GPS (the largest power drain), NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,
and LTE. On stock Android, swipe down to bring up the Notification bar, and
then tap the icon on the top right corner.
7.
Use
the ultra-power saving mode if you have it. Many android mobiles have Ultra Power Saving and
Extreme Power Saving modes, that limits the phone to texting, phone calls, Web
browsing, and Facebook. This can squeeze extra hours or even a day of standby
time out of just a few remaining percentage points of battery.
8.
Trim
apps running in the background. From Settings > Apps, swipe to the left;
you'll see a list of apps that are currently running. Tap on each one to see
what they're for; you can stop any apps that you don't need running in the
background all of the time.
9.
Dump
unnecessary home screen widgets and live wallpaper. Just because they're sitting on the home
screen, seemingly inactive, doesn't mean they're not consuming power. This goes
for widgets that poll status updates in the background, as well as ones that
just sit there but look pretty and animated—not to mention animated live
wallpaper. (But don't dump everything, as part of what makes Android great are
the home screen customizations; just remove the ones you don't use.)
10. Reduce the display brightness. This applies to your phone as well as
laptop. Most smartphones have an auto
brightness feature, but it may help to manually adjust the brightness to make
your phone’s battery last longer.
11. Shorter timeout. All android smartphones allow
you to customize the display timeout time,
You might want to reduce it to a more practical level like 30 seconds,
which will help you increase the battery efficiency of your smartphone.
12. Update your apps only on Wi-Fi. Applications
often get updated to use less battery power, so you should make sure your apps
are up to date. Even if you configured the phone for automatic updates, some
apps still require that you manually install updates.
It is better to install apps or schedule up-dates over
Wi-fi, as being on bandwidth means you’re your phone will consume a
considerable amount of power while up-dating apps. You can also schedule these updates at times
when you are plugged in, given that the phone you use supports it.
13. Keep an eye on signal strength and use airplane
mode. If you're in an area with poor cellular
coverage, the phone will work harder to latch onto a strong-enough signal. This
has an adverse effect on battery life. There's not much you can do about this
one, but keep in mind that this could be the culprit behind a seemingly weak
battery; it's worth popping the phone into Airplane mode if you don't need data
or voice calls. Flight/airplane mode disables all wireless features. Enabling this mode when in areas where
cellarer or Wi-fi coverage is not strong can help in controlling drainage of
your battery.
14. Check the reviews. We conduct battery life tests on every
single Android phone we review. Unsurprisingly, the results vary widely between
handsets, even on the same network. When choosing a phone, make sure that real
world talk time is sufficient. You can't go by what the manufacturer says; we
see variances on the order of several hours of usage in both directions on
a regular basis.
15. Buy a battery case or larger extended
battery. Battery cases combine a hardware
enclosure, which protects your phone, with an extended battery that can double
your phone's endurance. You can find models compatible with popular
Android phones from a variety of manufacturers.
16. Opt for original batteries only. You may save some money on battery purchases
if you go for second-rate batteries, but such products will also deliver a sub-standard
performance. If you find that your phone does not make it through the day even
after using it conservatively, it may be time to get your battery checked.
17. Deactivate vibration and haptic feedback. Having the phone on
ringer and on vibration can drain it. So
you might want to put off vibration unless you absolutely need the additional
awareness. Another way to preserve battery
is by turning off the haptic feedback.
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