Tips to Improve Battery Life

Battery Life – One of the most common problems in our day to day smartphone gadget life is the lackluster battery life of our smartphones. All of us have that one horror story where the phone died on us when we needed the most. While iOS is heavily optimized and is made to work well with the Apple devices, Android devices over the years have been found wanting. This is partly due to the wide range of manufacturers and the open nature of the platform where the individual companies want to leave their mark.
In this article, we will list out a few tips on how to conserve battery life. It depends on individual preferences but if you follow these tips battery life is bound to get better. Before we dive into the tips let’s get some theory out of the way.

Charge Cycles – What are they and Why is it important?

Simply put charge cycles are when a battery goes from zero to 100 and then back to zero. In other words, completely charging and discharging of a rechargeable battery. Most of the phones these days come with Lithium-Ion batteries. The lithium-ion battery works on ion movement between the positive and negative electrodes. The constant movement of these ions in the battery can cause the battery to age quickly and thus hold the charge for lesser time. The battery life depends on the principle that each battery has around 300 charge cycles, however, most of the batteries don’t last that long. Conserving the charge cycles on the battery will dramatically improve battery life of our devices.

Conserve charge cycles

If the phone battery is maintained between 20% and 80%, the battery does not completely die, and neither will it completely charge. This trick will improve battery life exponentially. There might be times when you are at 25%, and you are nowhere near a charger. Times like that it is better to power off the devices.

Turn Off Automatic screen brightness

While this feature at first seems very intelligent, slowly as you go on further you will notice the strain on the phone’s battery life. Our eyes can adjust and see even when the display seems a bit dull. The best brightness setting for most use case scenarios is to set it at 50%. By doing that you can go higher or lower as and when required.

Blank black Background

Having someone as a wallpaper on our phones these days is almost equivalent to having a picture of someone in our wallets. Some of us also like to express ourselves with themes and snazzy transitions. But by doing all the above-mentioned things will strain our display and discharges our battery quickly. When we have a blank background, the screen would only light up the areas that are required which will lead to better battery life.

Turn off animations and use custom launchers

Custom launchers like Nova Launcher get rid of horrible UI of some smartphones which usually try to copy iOS. Turning off animations will significantly benefit the phones and improve battery life of the devices. Nova launcher unlocks far more options which were previously unavailable.

Turn Off Wifi/4G when not in use

When we leave our house, it is better to ensure the Wifi is off on a device. The phone will always be on the lookout for a Wifi signal that it can connect to if it is not turned off. The same goes for the 4G/3G signal. When you know that you are going to be in the place where you will have a constant Wifi signal, it is better to switch off the mobile data. Doing this will conserve the battery and improve battery life.

Use airplane mode

Unless you are a celebrity, you don’t to need to have a constant feed of social media notifications and updates even while sleeping. Put the phone to the Airplane mode and try to avoid using the phone. In fact, this tip also helps when the battery is about to die, and the battery percentage is close to reaching single digits.

Use dark mode when available

Modern-day apps have the option of turning the whole app into some Dark mode. Twitter is an excellent example for that. The dark mode is usually for the night time so that our eyes don’t get strained. But the mode works in improving battery life if it is used sparingly. As we were writing this article, we got news that YouTube just launched Dark Mode for its iOS app and support for Android is coming soon.

Uninstall unwanted apps/Monitor background running apps

We can all agree that Android is a power hungry platform and it is necessary that the ram on the phone should always be available. Keep an eye out for the unwanted apps on the phone. Uninstalling the apps reduces the clutter and also helps keep the focus on the phone’s battery life. Also, keep an eye out for the apps that are running in the background. Always try to have as few apps as possible running on the computer.

Size Matters – Buy Phones with a bigger battery

Buying a phone with a bigger battery ensures that irrespective of the age you would still get longer charge times off it. Phones these days come with 3000 – 4000 mAH batteries which seem to be the norm. When you want to buy a new phone make sure you look out for the battery size. Some manufacturers claim that bigger batteries are required because they optimized the software for it. Irrespective of how optimized the software is nothing beats the size of the battery.

Use original chargers and cables

No matter what happens, hold on to the charger and cable that comes out of the box. In cases where the cable is broken or lost buy a cable from a reputable brand and not some off-market cheap Chinese ones. The reason being the phone charger which comes out of the box is made as per the specifications of the phone. Cheap cables might draw in more power than required and reduce the battery life of the phones and other devices.

Avoid Battery optimization apps

There are a lot of apps on the Play Store which claims that they improve the battery life which cannot be farther away from the truth. Most of the apps are glorified task killers which close the background apps and hope that will make some difference in the battery life department. You can kill the tasks yourself, and usually, task manager apps are already bundled with the phone anyway.

Power Saver Mode – It’s there for a reason

Modern smartphones and the individual UI’s come with power saver modes which improve battery life a lot. It might have been the case with previous versions of Android, but every release of Android has been making some progress in the battery life department and is improving day by day.

Power Banks – The last resort

If everything mentioned in the article doesn’t work for you, invest in a good power bank with a sizeable battery. There are a wide variety of power banks and at all price points. So please research before you take that decision to buy a power bank. One brand that has become famous battery related devices is Anker. If Anker products are available in your market, definitely go for them.

Final Thoughts:

Hope the tips in the article help you in extending the battery life of your phones. It all about being careful and little planning ahead. Don’t charge your devices overnight even if it doesn’t ruin the battery now, in the long run; it is bound to affect the battery life.
Image Credithttps://www.technobezz.com/files/uploads/2016/11/Google-Pixel-battery-life-issues.png

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