Most smartphones these days have huge, high-resolution screens, powerful processors and a lot of memory to multitask and handle extremely complex tasks. These tasks consume a lot of power due to heavy usage, so most people have to rely on power banks for backup. The same applies for laptops and tablets, too.
Most smartphones come with lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries that can be recharged quickly, but do not guarantee long life. Users often end up replacing the battery or the device itself, which can be quite expensive in the long run.
Given below are some tips for prolonging battery lifecycle and usage between recharge cycles.
Keep the battery cool. Exposing the battery to high temperatures can put a lot of stress on it. According to research, cycling, high temperature and ageing decrease the performance of the battery over time. Keep the devices in a cool environment to enhance their lifecycle.
Also, avoid exposure to dust to keep vents clean and save the fans from running on overtime, which leads to additional stress.
Go for paid apps. Ad-supported apps reduce battery life by two to three hours on average, as per a study. A phone’s processor is like its brain and ads eat up a lot of that brain power, hence slowing it down.
Not all free apps drain your battery, though, but ads take up extra bandwidth and come with processing burden. Paying for apps would be beneficial and cost effective in the long run.
Turn off location tracking. Apps such as Facebook and Instagram drain the battery as these constantly track users’ location using GPS. Turn off location tracking for apps that do not need tracking.
For most Android devices, go to Settings > Location, and toggle it off to disable location tracking entirely. Functionality to set app-level permissions is only enabled in Android M.
On iOS 9, go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and turn it off on a per-app basis, leaving location access on for just important apps.
Go for partial recharges. Instead of letting the battery cycle all the way from 100 per cent capacity down to zero, keeping the depth of discharge to 50 per cent can increase the number of discharge cycles by three times.
Set the charge threshold to start at 40 per cent capacity and stop at 50 per cent, to optimise for many years of usage.
Turn down display brightness. On most devices, brightness settings are easily accessible and you can also apply screen-dimming techniques through third-party apps like Lux, which overlays an opaque graphic to reduce brightness and change the colour cast of the screen.
However, a software layer only saves power on OLED screens, while LCD screens can only save power by decreasing backlight brightness. Reduce the amount of time your display stays on while inactive to save a fractional amount of battery life.
Schedule app updates when plugged in. Any processor- or bandwidth-intensive activity is likely to consume a lot of CPU power. For this reason, it is best to schedule app updates to happen only over Wi-Fi, or when you are plugged in.
Turn on low-power mode. Not all Android phones come with battery-saver mode, but if you are using Android 5.0 or later, you are likely to have this feature. It automatically kicks in when your battery hits 15 per cent and disables background app refreshes, location tracking and other syncing activity to save battery.
With Android Marshmallow, a new feature called Doze puts your phone in deep-sleep mode when it is lying unused for a long time.
With iOS 9, iPhones have a low-power mode that cuts down on background refreshes, visual effects and automatic downloads. Access this under Settings > Battery.
Go on flight mode. The phone’s distance to a mobile tower can affect standby time. So if you are in a place with no network, turn your smartphone into Airplane mode (also called Flight mode on some devices) to conserve battery life, rather than letting your phone constantly seek a tower.
This turns off Wi-Fi as well, which helps in saving power.
