7 Ways to Extend Smartphone Battery Life
Of all electronic devices, the smartphone struggles the most with retaining battery life. In an age when your tablet or laptop can survive for 10+ hours on a single charge, it seems strange that the smartphone battery life falls short so quickly after being purchased as “new.” Many consumers believe that this deficiency is a matter of complacency on the part of smartphone developers. After all, we still flock to the local electronics store to buy the latest Android even though its battery life is practically the same as the last model.
Another theory stems from the fact that smartphone dealers thrive on the 2-year plan. When the contract is up, they want consumers to spend the big bucks to upgrade to something shiny and new. The lure of a full smartphone battery life provides enough motivation for consumers to take the leap.
How to Extend Battery Life
Conspiracy theories aside, sometimes you love your device too much to upgrade, or you can’t upgrade for another year. If that’s the case for you, here are ten ways to extend and conserve smartphone battery life:
Read reviews.
A preventative measure for getting the most out of a smartphone battery life might be obvious, but it’s your best bet for avoiding future disappointment in your device. Look online at customer reviews and pay attention to those who have had the same smartphone for longer than a few months. Of course, someone will be happy with a brand new phone, but will they be happy down the road? This task is more difficult when purchasing a smartphone that has just appeared on the market, but you can still look at brand reviews of old models to get a general idea.
Look for what’s draining your smartphone battery life.
Navigate the “Settings” menu to find “Battery.” This page should show an organized breakdown of what apps or programs are consuming the most battery life. Decide if these are necessary for your needs. If not, shut down or uninstall them.
Reduce social refreshing.
Enable refreshing for only the essential social apps you use. Can you wait until you are home to view new emails or Facebook updates? Cutting down on the polling or refresh frequency of these applications will save considerable smartphone battery life. Do so by turning the less important social services to “manual.”
Use power saving mode.
Many of today’s smartphones like the Galaxy S5 and HTC One come with a power saving option. This mode will limit your phone to its primary functions: calling, texting, and some web-browsing. On those days when you run out of the house with a sliver of smartphone battery life, this mode allows your phone to last most of the day.
Turn down the brightness.
You’d be surprised how much of your smartphone battery life is spent on lighting up that little hand-held screen. If you need to conserve battery, turning down the brightness is an easy solution.
Dump widgets and wallpaper.
That cute little animation in the icons or live wallpaper eat away at your smartphone battery life. While entertaining for a moment, they simply aren’t worth the cost.
Keep an eye on signal strength.
When your bars are low, your phone is working harder to grab ahold of the signal and function normally. Sometimes being in a low signal area cannot be helped. In these circumstances, consider turning on airplane mode to conserve smartphone battery life.
If your phone suffers from diminished battery life, you may not need an upgrade. Perhaps you simply need a battery replacement or other repair. Allow the experts at CPR diagnose the problem and offer repair services to get your smartphone battery life back up to par!
