I doubt that many of you manage to go 24 hours without that all-important battery recharge. We’ve all been there, you are waiting for that all-important call or text, or need to make or send one yourself…and your battery dies. Smartphones are becoming more immersive, but they still don’t have endless battery life; when it happens, it’s beyond irritating and it always seems to happen at the worst possible times. So, with travel season fast approaching, we have put together a guide on the ways that you can boost the life of your phone battery.

Brightness

The screens on our phones are becoming bigger, brighter, and more powerful, but they’re also sucking the life from the battery at an accelerated pace. Most smartphones include the option to adjust the brightness of the screen. Reducing the brightness uses less battery power and will leave you with extended power.

Screen timeout

Screen timeout controls the amount of time that your screen stays lit up after it receives contact. There is literally no point to it being lit if it’s not being used, so reducing it to the shortest amount of time possible is best practice.

Bluetooth

Having the Bluetooth setting on permanently can reduce the battery life by as much as an hour per day. Yes, we are now provided with endless gadgets and reasons to have it turned on, such as your wireless sound system, activity tracker, or headset but by keeping it on it’s constantly monitoring for devices and using up valuable battery life; be sure to switch it on and off as you need it.

Wi-Fi

Like Bluetooth – your Wi-Fi is killing your battery; while it’s vital to have it on at home, at the office – or anywhere you know that you can save your precious data – you don’t need it on while you are out and about. Turn it off and on as you need it, and see your battery life begin to extend.

Location Services

Location services and GPS are also repeat offenders when it comes to harming the life of your phone’s battery. It’s super convenient to let your apps integrate with your camera and location but is it really necessary? Probably not! Every time you grant permission to an app that isn’t really used, it’s another couple of minutes killing your battery. You can withdraw applications access to location services in your settings

Background Apps
We all do it, exit from an app, and think no more of it, but the app is still running in the background, using up precious battery life! Every app that you open uses a portion of the phone’s processor cycle, using a lot of energy. Some are worse than others, and Facebook is currently investigating reports that its iPhone app is responsible for a significant drain on the battery.

By shutting all of the apps running in the background, you are reducing the processor workload drastically, meaning your battery will last far longer.

Vibrate

It’s not widely known that vibrate uses more battery power than a ring or message tone does, not to mention being more annoying. This is because the vibrate function has to be powerful enough to make the whole unit shake to produce sound, and it does this by rotating a small weight inside the phone.

If you want to save your power, and the patience of your friends and colleagues, turn the vibrate off and leave the phone in your view so that you can see when you have an incoming call or message.

Notifications

It’s as if every app is now updating you in real-time about news, notifications, and likes. This could be in the form of a sound, lighting up the screen, or vibration – all using energy.

It’s likely that you want to be notified with a call or message, but you don’t need to be alerted each time an application pulls through for every app that is capable of doing so. Turning them off will extend your phone’s battery power and leave you with fewer distractions throughout your day!

Email

In the same way, you don’t need push notifications, you don’t need push emails either. Having your phone constantly scanning for new emails is severely wasting the life of your battery.  You can combat this by changing the setting so that it obtains the mail at set intervals.

We hope this guide helps you in extending that all-important battery life! It’s also important to remember that keeping your software up to date is going to keep your phone running in the most efficient way, but if you are still a heavy user, then keeping one of our Printed Power Banks handy gives you extra peace of mind.