Don’t fret if your Android phone battery disappears before you can get an Uber home- by optimizing a few settings, you might be able to extend its lifespan. Some battery drain occurs because apps are badly designed or embedded with adware that constantly calls home, but other factors usually contribute – apps that frequently get online for updates, apps that wake the phone screen, the high-definition screen itself, which consumes a staggering amount of power.
It was revealed in a survey that 41% of smartphone users want improved battery life for their phones. If your current phone is really frustrating, you might want to look into phones that are known for having better battery life than others. However, try changing some of your smartphone’s features before upgrading it.
Why Batteries Drain
1. Your Brightness Level Is Too High
Your brightness levels matter a lot when it comes to how long your phone lasts, despite the fact that they seem simple. It is better to turn on auto-brightness since it automatically dims your display when in darker areas, saving battery life.
Most times, you will see it’s the screen taking the lead in battery usage when you check battery usage. Right now, my phone counts 72% of its battery usage coming from the screen. In the coming years, battery life will become a bigger issue as technology advances faster than smartphone displays. Until the situation improves, it is essential that you conserve energy.
Auto-brightness is usually found under the Display option of the Settings app on Android phones. If you have an iPhone, you need to start by choosing Accessibility and then Display.
Most smartphones have the ability to set your appearance to either “Dark” or “Light.” along with turning on auto-brightness. By default, the appearance is light, but switching to dark will help you to conserve a little power.
Select the general theme option in Android’s settings app. On iPhones, tap display & brightness.
2. Running Apps in the Background
Whenever you are finished using an app, make sure to fully exit it rather than merely minimize it. It’s also a good idea to go to Settings and determine which apps drain the most battery. Your phone’s battery might be depleted by an app you rarely use or haven’t used for a long time. This app probably runs in the background. Under settings, select the battery section to view your battery life.
In spite of having no unexpected battery-draining apps, it is good to know which apps are the most draining, such as your gaming apps. Therefore, you don’t accidentally use those apps when you’re running low on battery.
3. Spotty Service
Phones with poor reception quietly drain batteries, which is even more annoying than not being able to watch your favorite cat videos. Each second, your cellphone always strives to connect with nearby towers, ensuring that you remain connected to the world. When it cannot, it will try extra hard to reconnect to the network and bring you back online.
In rural areas, massive buildings, or areas with spotty service, you are likely to experience faster phone drains.
Enabling airplane mode is the easiest solution to this problem. When Airplane mode is activated, your antennas will go on break. Your phone will not work as hard to stay connected when all connectivity is turned off. The best time to do this is when you are in a place that doesn’t have good service. Alternately, you can automate Airplane mode using tools like IFTTT.
4. Your Notifications are Too Frequent
Apps that request permission to send notifications based on what’s going on in them are useful for things like emails and social networks. But many of these also use less useful reasons for wanting to send notifications. To uncheck “Show notifications” in less necessary apps, go to settings > apps, then head to those apps and uncheck it.
Fortunately, Android 11 makes it simple to further fine-tune.
For manual notification level adjustment, navigate to Settings > Device > Notifications. You can even choose no notifications or a more battery-friendly compromise. No screen update, no vibrating, no pinging, just silent notifications.
Android’s most recent version has even more granular settings. You can do this by going to settings > apps & notifications, then selecting the particular app. It will also be possible to choose which events the apps will notify of (for instance, WhatsApp’s failed message sending). As well as how they will relay this information (silently, vibrationally, or with sound).
5. Location Services Are All Enabled on Your Device
In terms of battery consumption, GPS is one of the biggest drains. In addition to navigation apps, GPS is used extensively on your smartphone in other ways as well. All applications that track your location, which is typically the majority, use GPS.
The presence of location services makes it easy for apps to know when and where you are. These services can offer directions or provide information about local restaurants. However, your battery power will quickly be depleted if your Phone’s GPS is running all the time. In your phone’s menu bar at the top of the screen, you will see an arrow icon when something is using location services. With regard to location services, you have several options for conserving battery life.
When you are not using an app that uses location services, close it. These apps and services, such as Yelp and Google Maps, provide you with location-based information, which is a common culprit.
When you no longer believe an app needs location access, you may disable it completely or limit the times when it can access your location.
Click Settings, then Privacy, and find the apps you don’t want accessing your location. Now specify whether the app should never access your location information, access it only while it is running, or always access it.
In our opinion, apps that can access your location information no matter what you do should only include navigation and weather apps. Similarly, with this feature, you can get turn-by-turn directions even when navigation apps aren’t on the screen and receive alerts from weather apps indicating a thunderstorm is coming your way.
Additionally, if you aren’t using location services (or simply want to save some power), then you can completely disable them. Turn Location Services off from Settings > Privacy > Location Services.
6. WI-FI Is on Even When You Are Out
Whenever possible, use Wi-Fi with your phone instead of cellular data to preserve its battery life. However, if your phone isn’t connected to a Wi-Fi network, it will constantly look for hotspots, resulting in a rapidly draining battery. Don’t leave your Wi-Fi on when you’re not connected to prevent your battery from being killed by hotspot roaming. Whenever you are in a place that allows you to connect again, turn it back on. Additionally, you can enable Airplane Mode or even turn your phone off while you are not using it to make sure your phone lasts as long as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are the main reasons why your battery drains quickly. It is also true that you cannot completely eliminate these actions, but you can significantly minimize them. The technical revolution over the last few decades has made it more important than ever for technologists to discover better batteries near to software.
Resource:
- survey about smartphone users’ battery concerns: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/04/01/us-smartphone-use-in-2015/
- how display brightness affects battery: https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-save-battery-life-android-1077385/
- understanding phone location settings: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/turn-off-location-tracking-android-ios/
- ways to reduce app background usage: https://www.lifewire.com/reduce-background-data-usage-android-4173934