12 Easy Ways to Make Your Battery Life Last Longer

Stop. Quitting. Your. Apps.

21 March, 2018
12 Easy Ways to Make Your Battery Life Last Longer

1. Don't quit your apps​! If you've ever heard that quitting your apps will save battery life, it's a myth. Quitting your apps actually slows down your phone and eats up more battery life.

2. Check which apps use the most battery. If you go to Settings > Battery, you can check to see which apps take up the most battery. You'd be surprised how many nonessential apps, like games, use a ton of battery, and you can change your habits by looking at what's draining your battery.​ It's also a place where you can reevaluate your life decisions.

3. Low Power Mode is your friend​. While you're in Settings > Battery, turn on Low Power Mode. It turns off features like mail fetch, automatic downloads, some visual effects, and reduces your screen brightness. A study conducted by ​WIRED​ found that Low Power Mode uses 30 percent less power than if your phone was in regular mode. Plus, there's not a huge difference between using your phone in regular mode or Low Power Mode. 

4. Turn off Background App Refresh. Background App Refresh is a setting that allows apps to get updated with the latest content while you're not using them. It downloads the latest news or updates to an app. It's an awesome feature because it keeps your phone current, but it takes up a lot of battery life.

To disable go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh​ and turn it off. 

5. Turn off Location Services​. Location Services not only takes up a lot of battery life but is actually ​pretty​ creepy when you think about it. Our own government might be tracking our every move, but we don't have to give away our whereabouts to big corporations if we don't want to. You'd be surprised how many apps — like the selfie app Bestie, Facebook, Shazam, and Google News — want to know your location.

Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services to disable. You can turn off all location services on top, but you probably don't want to do that for apps that require your location to work like Google Maps and Tinder. So leave it on at the top and turn off Location Services for individual apps.​

Yay for saving battery ​and​ preserving (an iota of) your privacy!

6. Turn down your brightness. This is a ​really easy​ way to save battery life. Just swipe up while you're on your home screen and turn it down. Plus, it makes looking at your phone easier on your eyes.

7. Turn off Bluetooth. 

Most people don't use Bluetooth very often, and thus, it doesn't need to be on. While you're turning down your brightness, disable Bluetooth. It's the middle button with the two triangles above your brightness settings.

8. In desperate times, turn on Airplane Mode. Turning your phone on Airplane Mode saves the most battery but obviously disables most of the features you love about your phone. Airplane Mode turns off all cellular data, but if ​your battery is low and you have Wi-Fi, you can still connect. Of course, turning off Wi-Fi in Airplane Mode saves the most battery.

If you are connected to Wi-Fi in Airplane Mode, remember: You can still iMessage, but you can't send SMS, which means you can't text anyone without an iPhone. You also can't make phone calls in Airplane Mode, but who even talks on the phone these days anyway?

To put your phone in Airplane Mode go to Settings > Airplane Mode.

9. Use Wi-Fi whenever it is available. Using 4G or LTE takes up the most battery, so when you're hanging at your friend's house, why not ask her for her Wi-Fi password? It'll save you battery ​and ​you won't eat up all your data so quickly. You should, however, disable the "Ask to Join Networks" feature which is in Settings > Wi-Fi. There's no point in having your phone ​always​ searching for Wi-Fi because what're the chances you find a random open Wi-Fi network?

10. Turn off notifications for apps you don't care about. You probably don't want to receive pesky notifications from most apps: Yes, I know my matches are about to expire on Bumble, and no, I do not care.

Go to Settings > Notifications to choose your notification preferences for each app. Turning off all your notifications would save the most battery, but chances are, you still want to get notifications from Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter.

11. Make sure your laptop is on when charging your phone through your laptop​. If your laptop is off, closed, or in standby mode when your phone is plugged into it, it'll drain your phone battery.

12. Don't use the camera flash. Fact: No one has ever looked good in an iPhone photo taken with flash. Another fact: Flash is insanely blinding and disruptive. A third fact: Flash drains your battery life. So turn it off!

Or you could live life dangerously...

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Credit: Cosmopolitan
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