Increase your phone’s battery life

On modern smartphones the battery barely lasts until the evening, in some cases it doesn’t last more than 6 hours of intense use. Even though the batteries have reached and exceeded 5,000 mAh, it seems that this value is never enough, given that the performance of the phones (now real PCs) is growing at the same time.

If we want to seriously increase the autonomy of modern Android phones and iPhones, we have collected all the best ones in this guide tips for keeping the battery charged for as long as possibleincreasing the general autonomy of the phone without having to replace it or without having to buy new devices.

Many of these suggestions are related to common sense, while others will require you to change some well-established habits, for the sole purpose of getting through the evening with a single battery charge (which is very difficult to do without a minimum of optimization).

READ FIRST: All the ways to charge a smartphone

1) Move your phone away from heat and heat

A good rule to avoid ruining your mobile phone is not to forget it in the car under the sun and not to leave it under heat sources otherwise the battery will drain quickly, until it is completely ruined.

The lithium used in batteries can also become unstable at high temperaturestherefore it is good practice to leave the phone in a place that is as cool as possible: if we are in the car, it is better to always carry it around in a pocket or bag or place it momentarily on the central tunnel, where the sun often doesn’t shine.

We carefully avoid the shelves above the dashboard or the side shelves behind the steering wheel: The sun could get there, quickly draining the battery. We also avoid placing the phone under blankets, duvets or placing them on radiators and stoves: all things that are bad for the circuits and the battery in particular.

For further information we can read the guide above how to cool your smartphone (Android and iPhone).

2) Screen brightness

Another very useful tip for increasing autonomy is reduce the screen brightness. If you keep the screen at maximum brightness all the time, you waste a lot of energy and your battery life decreases dramatically. The new screens produced are really very bright and brilliant but, especially if we are indoors or in a place illuminated by artificial light, it is better to set the brightness below 70%, so as to save a lot of battery.

At night have a high brightness risks damaging your eyes, especially if we often use the phone in bed: it is better to lower the brightness to less than 40%. However, if we are outdoors with a very high sun, we risk not seeing anything on the screen, so it is better to leave the maximum setting.

Many smartphones have a brightness sensor, which regulates the ideal brightness on its own: we recommend not relying too much on it and always changing the brightness value manually.

3) Screen timeout

Lower the time Turning off the screen at 30 seconds or 1 minute maximum helps a lot to increase battery life. In this way, when we are not using the phone, it will be locked and the screen turned off, saving battery.

It makes a big difference if you put the phone in your pocket after a quick glance and the screen turns off quickly, while also avoiding random key presses (which is very common with jeans, which can transmit false inputs to the screen).

4) Use Airplane Mode

One thing that almost no one does is set the Airplane mode at night, when you don’t want to receive phone calls or when you play a video game without wanting to be disturbed. Since you don’t have to turn it off to use the alarm clock on an iPhone or Android smartphone, you need to make sure that it consumes as little battery as possible. With Airplane mode signal and data reception turns off then the phone remains in standby consuming very little energy.

Of course this will prevent you from receiving phone calls and messages which isn’t always a bad thing. Even when you go to the cinema or to places where your mobile phone doesn’t have reception, it’s best to set it to Airplane mode and avoid wasting energy constantly searching for a signal that isn’t there.

5) Prefer Wi-Fi connections

If we want to save energy it is worth uuse Wi-Fi instead of data connectionalso using the Wi-Fi networks available free of charge around the cities.

This method, which might seem contradictory, actually makes sense: Wi-Fi is a very stable connectioncarried out towards a single device (the modem), while the LTE connection makes numerous connections to different cells during our movements, also consuming a lot of energy in the event of a weak or poor signal (it continually searches for a stronger signal).

So to save battery, a Wi-Fi connection is better than any data connection.

6) Turn off unnecessary connections

If we don’t have any usable Wi-Fi network nearby, it’s better to turn off the Wi-Fi (it too always searches for new networks) and we also deactivate Bluetooth and GPS if we don’t use them. Do we want to automate these types of deactivations, perhaps based on locations or certain battery levels?

In this case we recommend reading our guide to Best apps to trigger automatic actions.

7) Reduce or eliminate system sounds

While it may be cool, hearing keyboard noise or unnecessary beeps causes frustration and drains battery power. We keep system sounds to a minimumleaving only the ringtone of the most important calls and messages, so as to save some battery.

8) Disable automatic location services

If you don’t really need automatic location services, you can turn them off to save battery. In this way GPS will only be activated by satellite navigation appsthe only ones that really need localization to work well.

Be careful though: some apps may not work properly, especially those that rely on location to provide information (for example weather apps).

9) Turn off vibration

An often underestimated tip involves turning off vibration. It is not as loud as on older Nokias, sometimes you can barely hear it through jeans.

If the vibration is really too low to generate an effective recall, you might as well turn it off and turn on the vibration on a wrist device like the smartwatch of the smartband.

10) Avoid useless apps

Let’s avoid installing apps that we don’t use or battery optimization apps on our smartphone: apps start automatically and can reduce battery life, as well as slowing down the system. We only install the apps we use at least once a month and uninstall the unnecessary ones.

It is also possible, as already explained, to discover Which apps drain your smartphone’s battery?.

11) Avoid animated wallpapers and widgets

For when beautiful, Live wallpapers and widgets consume a lot of battery (even 20%), so let’s avoid using these graphic frills and limit ourselves to using static wallpapers, so as to significantly increase battery life without losing the beauty of the cute wallpaper on the phone.

If we want to save even more we can use black backgrounds on OLED screens, as seen in the guide on why use black wallpaper on phone.

12) Effective battery charging

To increase battery life it is also important to follow some simple rules how often to charge your smartphone batteryor:

• We do not discharge the battery by bringing it to 0%
• We top up our phone often, before reaching 20%
• We turn on the energy saving as soon as the battery reaches 50%
• We recharge using the original accessories (cable and charger)

On the fast and ultra-fast charging there are different schools of thought, but basically it should be avoided if we can calmly charge at night. We only use fast charging when the phone is running low in the middle of the day, leaving us with slow charging for the night.

By doing so we will obtain an effective and above all safe recharge for the battery, which will be subjected to less heat and less stress from rapid charging (which could, in the long run, damage the battery earlier than expected).

Ricarica wireless

Wireless charging deserves a separate chapternow increasingly widespread on modern phones to the point of having become a real trend on latest generation smartphones.

Generally it is better to avoid it due to the heat generated by the waves but, if we really want to proceed with it, it is better to buy wireless chargers (or wireless charging stand) designed to provide a low speed wireless charging (5W, 10W or 15W), enough to charge your phone in about 2-3 hours.

To learn more we can read the guides above how to use the wireless charger for Android and iPhone smartphones come on how to use wireless charging on your phone (without cables).

Conclusions

By following these tips, valid for any phone, we will be able to increase battery autonomy and always arrive until the evening with the minimum charge necessary to end the day without anxiety and without having to carry a power bank or a charging cable with you.

If we want to delve deeper into the topic of battery life for smartphones, we can read the specific guides on: how Extend Android battery life to the maxthe 10 apps to increase battery life and finally Save battery on iPhone and make it last longer.