How to Increase Battery Life on Your Smartphone

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By Guest Posts on October 16th, 2012

Although we are seeing so many advances and revolutionary improvements to smart phones, less and less focus is being directed towards battery life. Many brands make it obvious they have not (and will not) make it a priority, while others don’t seem to be sacrificing any other feature to offer their users a longer life. Considering the results of testing the battery life for the iPhone 5 are coming up less than stellar, many users are looking for ways to get the most from their smart phone battery.

1) Kill Apps:
In every operating system, there is an option view and manage apps, which can help you keep an eye on what is running at any given time. Many pre-installed apps eat up battery life by consistently running in the background, even if you kill them at start up. Since you can’t uninstall some of the apps themselves, you’ll need the app manager to show you what is running, and allow you to manually kill them. Getting an app killer app is also helpful, where you can set it to automatically kill actively running apps in a specified interval (minutes, half hour, hour etc.), which will buy you battery life through out the day, without maintaining it yourself. These apps are available for every smartphone OS.

2) Be prepared with the necessary tools:
If your smartphone doesn’t have the best battery life to start with, or you have to go long instances without the opportunity to charge, it’s important to be prepared. Buying an additional battery for your phone is a no brainer, but many smart phones these days aren’t designed to give the user access to the battery, let alone allow you the opportunity to remove and replace it. Thankfully there is another solution: a charging booster. Working as a battery pack that can be charged itself, you can use it to give your phone (or any other device) a boost any time, any where, with out needing access to an outlet. This is ideal for emergencies as well, as long as you remember to keep the booster charged, you can replenish your smartphone battery on the go.

3) Choose when to connect:
Nothing eats up battery like connecting to a 3G/4G network or Wifi hotspot. If you’re not using it, disable your Wi-Fi, or any other app that seeks out Wi-Fi hotspots. Same goes for 3G and especially 4G (where it applies). You will often have the opportunity to choose the network you’re connecting to. If you’re in an area with minimal coverage, switching from 4G to 3G alone can increase battery life, and not impact speed or service. From 2G, to 3G, to 4G, each edition takes a harder toll on your battery life, so when you have the option, choose wisely.

4) Personalized settings and battery life management:
Things like a bright display and vibration notifications are great, but not necessary for all day use. Manage your personalized settings and only use vibration when on silent mode, and choose a conservative brightness for your display when you’re not viewing movies or photos. Checking out the status report of your battery consumption is easy on every operating system, but there are some apps that make it easier to determine what is eating away the most life, which helps you determine what settings you can tweak or sacrifice to get a longer life between charges.

5) Basic maintenance:
To protect and extend the life of your battery, charging your phone should be done without any covers or protectors, that may cause the phone to overheat while powering up. Long term exposure to excessive heat (over 95 F, 35 C) such as by leaving your phone in a hot car, or in the sun, can permanently damage your battery, cutting it’s life by almost 40 percent in the course of just a year.

==== About the Author ====
This post was written by Chloe Parker, an editor for MobilePhones.org.uk, where she writes about the latest in technology and smartphone news.


 
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