Usage Tips

Saving Battery Life on Smart Devices

New smart phone features and capabilities are continuously introduced unlike battery technology, which hasn’t advanced much at all. Do not despair. With careful management you can easily maximise your battery life to enjoy longer smartphone productivity. This guide assists with all major smartphone brands including Apple, Samsung, HTC, Blackberry, Nokia, LG, Sony, Motorola.

Connectivity

4G (if applicable), 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC, Mobile hotspot – all of these connectivity options drain battery life. Managing these and only turning

them on as required will give you a noticeably longer battery life. Enable 4G only when you’re in an area that supports it, and you are actively using data services at the time (browsing the web, downloading etc). Disable 3G/4G when you are using Wifi. Enable Bluetooth only when using it. Enable GPS only when required. Enable mobile hotspot/tethering only when required.

Display Brightness

By default most new smartphones are set to a high brightness setting. By tweaking to a moderate brightness setting, or by using the phone’s lowest brightness setting – which on some smartphones is surprisingly comfortable – the difference in battery life is significant.

Apps

Close unused apps. Those running in the background not only use system resources slowing your phone but they drain battery life. The more apps you have running simultaneously (even if they are not visible on the screen), the larger the battery drain.

On iOS: Press home button twice, swipe up on the applications to close from the popup that opens.

On Android: Open task manager through the settings application to find open and unneeded tasks.

Locking display

When not using the device, hit the screen lock button. When your screen is turned off it is using much less power than if you let it sleep automatically after it has timeout.

Vanity

Live or active wallpapers chew battery life. Using plain wallpapers (in particular black) use fewer system resources and therefore drain less battery. Disabling will save power.

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