14 Quick Tips to improve your iPhone's Battery life
We all know one of the main issues Apple faces when selling its devices is how much battery life they have. In Apple's keynotes the thing we find ourselves waiting for in their new devices is the cost and their battery life.
We know it is hard to get a great battery life in a modern day smartphone. Firstly the size of the iPhone makes it almost impossible to fit a battery in it, let alone a big powerful one.
The iPhone 6 is the thinnest iPhone yet and it won't surprise me if Apple only intend to keep getting thinner. Secondly the iPhone does a lot; A LOT! From tracking your location, constantly checking for phone signal, playing high intensity Metal games, being and iPod, a health and fitness guru. It’s not surprising your phone gets drained so quickly.
This is a guide you can follow to optimise your phone for power saving, you may have to make a few sacrifices but there are some tips that you can follow and it won't make any difference to you... Well, other than increasing battery life on your phone.
Let’s begin.
1. Background App Refreshing
I had never heard of this tip until I took my 3 year old iPhone 4s to an Apple store in Bristol. They informed me a few things I could do to improve my battery. Essentially what this will do is stop apps constantly looking for data to show you. What apps do this?
A lot.
An good example would be Facebook messenger. It is constantly checking for incoming data to show you who is online or to give you message notifications. Turning this off for most apps will significantly help your battery life.
Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and turn off all apps you think shouldn't be updating in the background. Some apps you might want to leave on, like Facebook messenger as if you want to see messages as they come through it could be handy.
2. Location Services
This is one of the well known ones. If you are constantly checking satellites and public IP addresses to find your location, you are going to be using a lot of battery. To make the most of your battery it would be best to turn this off entirely but if you need to use certain GPS tracking apps then having it on for just those would still save you a massive amount of battery.
Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and either switch it off or go to the apps that use it and turn off all the ones that you don't need.
3. Quit Your Apps
With the introduction of multitasking within iOS we entered a realm where many people forget to actually quit their apps and just 'Home Button' out. I went to quit all my apps last night and it surprised me how many apps I had actually used in one day. The problem is that if you have apps crashing in the background whilst you are just sorting out your emails you phone has to try and deal with it all and it just gets too much.
To quit your background apps Double press the home button and swipe the apps up. This closes them properly and stops the potential of them crashing without you realising it (it's a multi touch device, so you can do more than one at a time).
4. Don't use dynamic wallpapers and perspective Zoom.
A fancy addition to iOS 7 was having backgrounds that respond to your movements. Although this can look great, it uses a lot of power by tapping into you accelerometer, motion sensors and GPU (Graphic Processing Unit).
To stop this, while changing your wallpaper, pick a still image and Zoom fully out. This will stop the unnecessary use of your accelerometer.
5. Push EMail
In order to push email through to your phone so you are fully up to date, your phone maintains a regular connection to the mail servers. This constant stream of data takes its toll on your battery.
By turning push email off you can save a lot of battery. Your mail will still update when you open the app anyway or yu can set your device to 'fetch' the data at regular intervals.
Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and turn off Push and turn all accounts to manual or set a fetch timer.
6. Restart once a week
Do you remember those old PC laptops that would lock when you shut the lid and when you opened them they would be so much slower than before. That is what you are doing with your iPhone.
Imagine never turning off your PC... It can lower performance and increase the power your using.
By restarting your iPhone you are re-initiating all the processes that have been running since the last time you restarted it giving a fresh start and cutting off anything that failed to shutdown properly.
7. Disable Push Notifications
You know all those annoying notifications you get from apps that you installed a year ago but have only used once? You can get rid of those and it will help increase your battery life too.
Go to Settings > Notifications and edit which apps you need to receive notifications from.
8. Don’t Send diagnostics and usage data
Your phone will automatically send data to Apple and unless you turn it off it will continue to sip away at your iPhones battery on log file at a time. Stop this constant stream of data to gain a little extra battery life.
go to Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & Usage and choose Don't Send
9. Keep your iPhone cool
Although there is an issue of your phone battery running out when it is in a cold environment, it is actually better for the health of the battery for it to be kept cool. It will run more efficiently and will waste less battery power.
10. Don't let your iphone get too hot
Although this sound a lot like point 9, what we mean is we are referring to is when your phone starts to warm up whilst using certain apps. This is often due to a software issue or glitch and if you let it get to hot it can damage your battery permanently.
You can also help it stay cool by not leaving your device in hot places (car, etc.). Taking off your phone case. Keeping your iPhone out of direct sunlight.
One of the worse things for this can be using your iPhone for satellite navigation in the windscreen of your car while it's plugged in. The Heat generated by processing the maps data, having your 3G/4G connection on all the time, the GPS chip at Maximum, the direct sunlight (in the summer at least) and the heat generated by charging the battery while it's plugged in - is literally the worst thing you can do to your phone. If you're going to do this buy an iPhone mount that attaches to the AirCon vent on the dash and blast cool air at it 100% of the time!
11. Turn off Auto-Brightness
Auto brightness is your iPhone using the brightness sensor on the front to constantly ask,
“how bright is it?”
“Is it still this bright?”
“What about now?”
This, quite obviously uses power and by disabling it you will extend your battery life.
Go to Settings > Display & Brightness and turn Auto-Brightness off.
12. Turn off "snazzy" visual effects
iOS 8 has some great animations that make the iPhone look very premium. These however use, you guessed it, power.
Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion and turn it on.
13. Don't restore from iTunes backup - Use iCloud backups
Most important advice I ever give. If you do nothing else, do this!
The Problem with an iTunes backup is that you're saving an exact copy of the software which could potentially have a glitch that wastes your battery back on your phone (most Genius appointments at the Apple stores are resolved by doing this).
If you backup to iCloud, you are getting your software straight from Apple. This effectively gives you a new install of iOS instead of the old one you copied off your phone.
14. Restore to factory settings
If all else fails, before sending your phone to the dust, do a complete factory reset and setup your phone up as new.
This will ensure your phone is completely clear of any software glitches that may be ruining your battery.
We suggest putting your iPhone into DFU mode by plugging into a PC or Mac, opening iTunes and holding down the Home and Power buttons together for 8 seconds and then while continuing to hold down the home button, let go of the power button. After another 8 seconds you should notice iTunes telling you that 'iTunes has detected a device in Recovery Mode...' - you're now in DFU mode and can download and install a fresh new version of iOS.
So there we have it. Let us know how you get on and if these help to make a difference!