How to Make Your Phone Battery Last longer: 10 Solid Tips

Is your phone draining too much battery and do you want to figure our wat to make your phones battery last longer? You’ve come to the right place!

Since most phones nowadays come with Lithium-ion batteries, it is easy to treat them sensibly – rather than replace them – in case you want to enhance their performance. Lithium-ion batteries come with many perks, i.e., charge density and slim size meaning most of our phones are sleeker than before.

However, these high-tech batteries degrade with time and don’t give long backup compared to when the phone is new. If your battery is draining faster than it should, and you want to know how to make your phone battery last longer, follow these simple -tried, and tested – tips.

How to Make Your Phone Battery Last Longer

Here’s how you can extend your smartphone’s performance and preserve its charging for a long time.

1. Don’t charge it fully

One of the biggest enemies of our smartphones is excessive charging. Most of us charge our phones at night and leave them plugged in the entire night. This results in overcharging, and doing this practice for a long time can lower your battery’s lifespan.

For a durable battery that stays with you for a long time, experts suggest you charge it between 30% and 80%. This means plugging your phone at around 30% and unplugging it when it reaches 80%.

The latest iPhone and even Android smartphones stop charging, for a few hours as soon as the battery reaches the optimized level of 80%. This built-in feature ensures that your phone battery lasts longer, and there’s less stress on it when you leave it plugged in.

You can turn this feature off from the settings. Moreover, experts recommend charging your phone from zero to 100% once a month to prolong its life. Wait until the battery charge comes down to 2 or 3%, then charge it completely. This way, you’ll replace the unused old wattage stored in the battery with a new charge, which consequently helps your phone run faster.

2. Switch to Power Saving Mode

If there’s an electricity outage in your area or you’re stuck in a situation where you want to make the max out of your phone battery, turn on the Power Saving Mode. This way, you are limiting your background app activity which consumes your battery even when idle.

Turning on the Power Saving Mode limits auto-syncing, networking, screen refresh rate, and location services. To save more battery to last even longer, you can customize this mode by turning off the Always on Display, limiting the CPU speed, and decreasing the brightness.

You may have multiple power-saving modes if you have an older Android handset. Each comes with a different ratio between performance and battery usage.

3. When not in Use, Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

There are many things to remember if you want to make the most out of your smartphone in a single charge. Experts say the fewer charge circles, the longer its lifespan. Leaving your Wi-Fi, hotspot, mobile data, and Bluetooth on when not in use eats up the battery relatively fast.

It consumes battery to search and scan for networks and other devices to connect to. So, when not required, make sure to turn off these features. For instance, if your mobile data is turned on for an entire day and you use it occasionally, you are losing battery power.

When your phone is connected to Wi-Fi at home, and you’re commuting to the office where it will connect to another network, it’s okay, even if you don’t disable it. However, if mobile Wi-Fi is on all day long without using it, you should turn it off. The same goes for Bluetooth and hotspot.

4. Slow Charging Instead of Fast

Whatever phone you have, having a fast charger saves the day. Even if your phone’s battery is dead, fast charging gives a long stand-by time in just a few minutes. However, most people are unaware that fast chargers can damage your smartphone battery in the long run.

It can stress out your battery and if done regularly, can lower your battery’s health. To extend the battery life, use standard chargers instead of fast chargers. And keep the fast chargers only for emergencies.

Charging your smartphone slowly ensures that your battery stays strong for years. One tried and tested method to achieve this is connecting your phone to a computer or laptop. One of the best ways on how to make your iPhone battery last longer is not opting for fast charging.

5. Lower Screen Brightness and Timeout

The latest smartphones –Android, iPhone, or any other – come with large-screen real estate. Setting your smartphone’s brightness to extreme not only gives your battery a tough time but also affects your eyes.

Lowering it from the display settings will not only reduce the burden from the battery but will also benefit your eyesight. You can also control the brightness by pulling down the screen.

Don’t forget to disable the auto brightness functionality. If you don’t, it will adjust the screen light based on the user’s perceived needs, and mostly the display is brighter than it should be.

Besides brightness, screen timeout also plays a vital part in battery life. Screen timeout means the duration for which your screen is active or the light is on when you do no activity. If your screen stays on for longer, the battery will die earlier than expected.

You can adjust the screen time by opening Settings > Display > Screen timeout > and changing with options ranging from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. The lower the screen timeout, the better.

6. Manage your Apps Instead of Closing

Closing all apps to keep your battery health upbeat isn’t the right approach. It doesn’t work that way. Force-stopping or quitting apps running in the background can make the situation worse.

Both major operating systems are based on algorithms to auto-manage the power and memory apps use while functioning in the background. By force closing, you are interfering with the smart algorithms.

It is worth mentioning that opening a closed app consumes more battery as compared to returning to an app that’s running in the background. You should consider how much refresh rate and CPU usage your apps are consuming in the background.

Decide which apps you use the most. Also, whether you want social media or other apps running and updating even when they are not in use. One way how to make your iPhone battery last longer is by viewing which apps you need running in the background and refreshed regularly.

To limit or increase the number of apps, Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

While on Android, you can lower the amount of power each app consumes in the background. One alternative to closing these apps is by going to Settings > Apps & Notifications and then under the apps page, Advanced > Battery > Background restriction.

Interesting Read: What is Background Data – Everything You Need to Know

7. Disable Voice Command

We all know how handy voice assistants can be. They are constantly listening to our voice commands. If you’ve enabled voice control assistants on your phone like Siri on iPhone, Google Assistant on Android, and Cortana on Windows phone, they are adding to your battery drain.

Turn this feature off or disable the “Hey Siri” or “OK Google” voice command function. Search by using the browser. This will save a considerable amount of battery.

8. Make Use of Smart Battery Modes

Whether Android or iPhone, all the latest smartphones are incorporated with intelligent battery saver modes. These modes are pretty helpful for battery saving and other functions like CPU usage, notifications, mail fetching, and screen light.

The best thing about these battery-saving modes is that they are auto-enabled when the battery runs low. Furthermore, you can enable them manually based on your choice. Your smartphone will still perform the way it does; however, it will consume much less battery.

Although most people don’t like to turn-on this feature every time, if you are not going to use your mobile for a few hours or don’t want any distractions like notifications, this feature is best for you. Most importantly, it will lower the stress on the battery.

9. Turn on the Dark Mode

All the latest mobiles come with a dark mode which you can turn on anytime to save a massive amount of battery. A test conducted by PhoneBuff on iPhones by turning on the dark mode shows that you can extend its battery life by up to 30%.

Google conducted its own test and found that Google Pixel sucked 63% less battery power when in night mode. AppleInsider says their phones save 60% of energy when used in dark mode.

However, one thing common amongst all these phones is that they were recent models and had OLED screens. Every pixel on these screens glows individually, unlike LCD and LED displays.

It is also worth mentioning that black pixels on OLED screens require no energy at all while darker colours require less power. On the contrary, old technology like LED and LCDs consume the same power irrespective of black or white image.

10. Avoid Sunlight and Heat

As mentioned above, the latest mobile phones come loaded with Lithium-ion batteries and perform optimally when using a phone at room temperature. Exposing your phone to bright sunlight and high temperatures may heat up your smartphone, which is not good at all.

The battery performance will not be up to the mark. Lastly, you’ll have to raise the screen brightness for easy viewing. All these factors eat battery more than when you use your mobile in a shaded area or at room temperature.

Apart from keeping it cool, make sure that your device is dry. Apart from the heat, extreme cold and dampness can affect the longevity of your battery. So, when enjoying at a pool or visiting a beach, make sure you cover it up to prevent it from sunlight and dampness. The same goes for using your mobile in snowy weather.

Conclusion

Modern-day phones come with large screen sizes, bright displays, speedy processors, frequent updates, and incorporate plenty of apps and features that drain batteries more quickly than ever. All these factors when combined with excessive usage, mean quick battery drainage.

The question here is how to make your phone battery last longer. There are many ways to protect your mobile phone’s battery and enhance its lifespan. We’ve discussed some of them in detail to help you make the most out of your phone for a long time.