Whether the iOS 5.0.1 update didn’t fix all your battery woes or you’re just looking to improve your iPhone’s daily lifespan, we’ve got a few tips that can help you squeeze a little more juice out of your iDevice. Some are easy, some require a little additional hardware. Either way, these tips should help your iPhone make it through the day (or longer).
Start With The Simple Stuff
There are a few things everyone should do when looking to get a little more power from the iPhone, which for the most part just involves understanding which features have a noticeable impact on the battery. Some are obvious and some are not, but if you turn them off or manage them better your device will stay on for a little longer each day.
Disabling Push Email will let your device idle rather than constantly waiting around for a new message. Sure, you might not get an email seconds after it was sent, but if immediate delivery isn’t critical you should just set your phone to poll your mail servers less often.
Turning off Location Services is another helpful battery saver. Your GPS loves sipping power, so if you keep your apps from constantly tracking your location your iPhone will last a bit longer.
Download over Wi-Fi instead of 3G. If you have any larger downloads, such as a software update, a podcast, music, video, or whatever, you’ll be better off letting Wi-Fi handle the download. First of all, it’ll generally download faster over a Wi-Fi connection so your phone won’t be actively downloading for quite as long. Second, your phone’s 3G radio tends to be a little more battery-hungry so it’ll cause more of a drain regardless.
Disable unnecessary notifications. Every time you receive a notification, your device’s screen lights up to tell you. This takes a little power and you probably don’t need to be notified of every little thing that every app wants to tell you. Go into your iPhone’s notification settings (in the Settings app) and turn off notifications for any app you don’t really care about.
Clear the multitasking queue so you don’t have an endless trail of open apps. Even though Apple designed multitasking to be battery-friendly, suspending a ton of apps still takes its toll. It can be frustrating to manually close a bunch of apps in the multitasking queue, but doing this on a weekly basis can help reduce unwanted battery drain.
Solutions For Power Users
Disabling a few features here and there will provide you with a little extra life, but the difference won’t move mountains. Additionally, you may want a lot of these features on because you need to use them. If you can’t make many (or any) of the sacrifices described above, you still have a few more options.
Buy an external battery, like the Mophie Juice Pack. You should probably have a case on your iPhone anyway, and Mophie’s cases have batteries built-in. They do add some bulk, as the battery has to go somewhere, but it’s not much and a small sacrifice for nearly doubling your iPhone’s run time. Mophie and others also offer several external battery options that you can just plug in and use to receive a boost when needed. You have to charge these devices separately, but it’ll be worth the trouble when you need your phone and its battery is running low.
Buy plenty of extra chargers so you can power your phone wherever you are. This doesn’t necessarily improve your battery life but it improves the likelihood that your iPhone will last as long as you need it. Put a charger in your car, at your desk, by your bed, and anywhere else you frequently find yourself so you never have to go through any trouble to plug it in. You may even want to pick up a solar charger for those times when you’re not near an outlet. Hopefully you won’t find yourself in a situation where you’re that desperate for iPhone power, but if you are then having many charging options should have you covered.
Got any other tips for improving your iPhone’s (or other iDevice’s battery life)? Share ’em in the comments.
Image remixed from originals by PremiumPSD and Marshall Bock.
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