Experts at Mobiles.co.uk offer tips on how to save energy and get the most from your smartphone battery
As smartphones evolve and their features become more intelligent, batteries need to work harder to keep the handset going throughout the day. What’s more, over half (59%) of people consider the battery life of a smartphone to be very important, but how many of us are unknowingly draining unnecessary energy from our handsets every day?
Ahead of The Big Energy Saving Week on the 20th January, experts at online smartphone retailer, Mobiles.co.uk, share five top tips to improve your smartphone’s battery so you can keep it away from the charger for longer.
To get the most out of your smartphone’s battery, firstly you’ll need to understand exactly where your power is going. Analysing battery usage is a great way to see which apps drain the most power from your device. Games with detailed graphics or video streaming apps tend to drain smartphone batteries faster than others due to their nature.
iPhone users can head to Settings > Battery to find their battery usage information. Android users can also view similar information by selecting Settings > Battery. You may need to tap ‘Battery Usage’ if you don’t automatically see a list of apps
If an app is ranking highly because you use it frequently, try to reduce the time spent on it when you need to extend your phone’s battery life.
Every time a notification pops up on the screen, power is being used. While certain notifications are useful, many apps send unnecessary alerts.
To avoid your battery running low, disable the notifications for the majority of apps on your device by turning them off in the settings.
iPhone users can head to Settings> Notifications and tap the name of any app you no longer want to see notifications from. Android users can do the same by going to Settings> Sound and Notification> App Notifications.
Just leave the important notifications on, such as messages and calls.
Your phone’s connectivity, including 5G,4G,3G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, can all eat away at your battery even when you’re not using them, so turn each connection off whenever you don’t need it.
Knowing your Wi-Fi hotspots and utilising them instead of cellular data is a great way to manage battery efficiency. However, if you’re in an area without a WiFi connection be sure to turn WiFi off on your device, otherwise your handset will continue to search for WiFi signal and drain your battery life.
Adjusting some of your device’s basic settings can help to preserve power, but this can often be overlooked.
As an example, smartphones are generally built with vibrant displays but using your phone on full brightness can have a dramatic impact on battery life. Dim your screen or turn on auto-brightness so you’re not using full brightness 24/7 and you should see an improvement in your battery life.
For iPhone users, just swipe up from the bottom of the screen and adjust the brightness quickly. Android users can swipe down from the top of the screen to do the same.
One quick and fail-safe way to extend your phone’s battery life is to enable a specialised power-saving mode, which can be found on most smartphones.
The majority tend to reduce power consumption by disabling non-essential processes. Background activity is often automatically turned off, downloads or updates are prevented, mail fetch is stopped and visual effects and touch features are usually reduced.
For iPhone users, this is called ‘Low Power Mode’ and you’ll find it under Settings > Battery. For Android users, go to Settings> Battery Saver but be aware the title of this mode may vary based on the company that created your smartphone. For example, Samsung has used both Power Saving Mode and Ultra Power Saving Mode on their devices, while Sony has chosen to preserve battery life with STAMINA.
Commenting on the above, Karl Middleton, Mobile Expert at Mobiles.co.uk, says: “The Big Energy Saving Week is here, and if you want to take part then why not start with your smartphone? These tips, although simple, can help to extend your smartphones battery life and prolong the need to plug your smartphone in to recharge.
“It’s small changes like this that when done as a collective, can make a big difference to both your energy bills and the environment.”
For more tips on saving your battery life, please visit: https://www.mobiles.co.uk/blog/how-to-extend-your-phones-battery-life/