I think we can all agree it is the worst feeling seeing your phone’s battery die. When you are out and about, there is no other option than limiting your phone’s usage. There are some obvious ways to improve on your battery like keeping your phone on low power mode. However, in this article we are gonna go much farther than that! So today we are gonna discuss some effective ways to improve your phone’s battery life.
The most obvious ways
So you might be aware of some ways like keeping your phone’s brightness low. Obviously your screen consumes a lot of battery, both LCD and OLED. Another way is to use the low power mode or battery saving mode. This mode will lower background usage to maximize battery output. Maximum people follow this when they suffer battery drainage. This is an effective way too. Anyhow, it doesn’t have much effect on the longevity of the battery’s life.
Dark mode
Using the Dark mode theme on android and IOS can substantially lower your battery usage. This is a much more effective way nowadays as most smartphones use OLED screens. To understand the effect of dark mode on battery usage, you need to understand the difference between LCD and OLED screens.
LCD screens use an LED backlight to determine the brightness of the screen. The amount of brightness set by you will determine how bright the LED backlight will glow. The color of the screen is directly linked to liquid crystals on the display. So even if the screen is black the LED backlight is still on and set on the brightness levels. However, an OLED screen is made up of small pixels which light up themselves. And these pixels are divided into sub pixels made of RGB colors. So, when using light mode, all the pixels light up and for black areas the pixels are turned off. In dark mode the maximum screen is black and hence less number of pixels are lit, hence consuming less battery.
Most smartphones, whether android or IOS have built-in dark mode and if you don’t you can use external apps which provide dark mode access.
Use Wifi instead of Cellular data
When you can, connect to Wifi instead of just using cellular data radios. This is due to a ton of reasons. One of them is being able to broadcast signals from a shorter distance from a Wifi access point than a tower far off. Also, the Wifi access point will produce stronger signals. So when at your house, or at a friends house, work space, ask for the Wifi password.
We won’t recommend that you use public Wifi networks unless they are secure. But if you are at a place which has a secure Wifi network, use it!
It is important to note that you should turn off your wifi antenna if you aren’t using it. In case, you know you are going out and there isn’t any way you are going to use Wifi, disabling it from quick settings will help you save battery. Try turning off the bluetooth antenna too if not in use.
Find out which apps use the most battery
This will take a little investigation, but you need to figure out which applications on your device use up more power, in background and on minimum usage. In IOS and some android phones, when you go into battery settings, you can see which applications are draining your battery in the background without your permission. In order to conserve battery, you can limit permissions that will restrict background usage or disable notifications, force shut these applications and even uninstall them if they aren’t optimized. There is no set amount of battery percentage that is used up by an application. For eg. youtube will obviously use more battery for video encoding. However, unnecessary background usage is a burden on your phone’s battery.
Replace your old battery
We know this isn’t a free way, but replacing an old battery might bring a huge difference in the battery performance of your phone. In IOS, you can check your battery’s health in settings and if it is under 85%, it is time to replace your phone’s battery. There is no built-in way in android to check your battery health, anyhow you can take it to the service centre and get your battery health checked. Replacing the iPhone’s battery might cost you around $60 i.e Rs. 4000 roughly. Android batteries cost less and are easily replaceable at local retailers or repair shops.