How to Get the Most from Your Battery

Whilst iPhones and iPads get more and more powerful, enabling users to work with more demanding sites, apps and other software, there is often that frustrating aspect of having to deal with a hastily depleting battery life: as soon as you open an app.

Playing any game that requires internet access and battery life can see your frustration levels grow. It’s something that tends to occur at the very time when we need our phones the most and even though developers are working hard on the problem of retaining battery life to keep things running for long before our next charge, here are a few tips on how best to save your all-important battery life.

DO NOT DISTURB

If there are times during the day when you don’t intend to or simply can’t use your phone there’s very little point having it on. However, you don’t need to switch the entire device off just to preserve battery life simply set it to ‘do not disturb’. Better still you can set it to ‘airplane mode’ and your phone will instantly stop network, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi-based connections. A great feature if you’re heading to bed or are unable to use your phone at work, saving you plenty of battery life to use later on.

DARK WALLPAPERS

If you simply have to have a background or image-based backdrop on your phone try to pick one that’s darkly colored or even choose completely blacked out wallpaper. On a device that uses an AMOLED screen, only the coloured pixels will be lit requiring less power to light them.

DISPLAY TIMEOUT

Shortening your screen timeout can drastically help save battery life on your mobile device. If you look at your phone for just a few seconds to check for notifications or other updates then slip it back in your pocket without locking the screen again, an overly long timeout will simply waste your battery.

IDENTIFY BATTERY DRAINING APPS

You can view which apps are the most taxing on your device by going into the settings, tapping on General followed by Usage and then ‘Battery’. If you are not using Facebook but see it is currently draining 10% of your battery in standby, you can close it or even delete it, to download again later when you need it.

TURN OFF LOCATION SERVICES

Unless you are worried about being robbed or need to find your way to a specific destination, there is no need to the use the geolocation feature on IOS. Tracking your location for every hour of the day not only drains the battery but can also lead to privacy and security issues. Do you really want people to know your current location when you send a tweet?

The above tips should help you get the most out of your Apple device. However, if you find they still don’t do enough, you may want to consider buying an external battery pack for extended hours of fun on the go.