Better Battery Usage for Your iPhone

Date Posted:30 June 2012 

iPhones have lots of bells and whistles, but many of these functions are extremely battery hungry, including some that you may not even use. Here are a few useful tips for making your iPhone’s portable power go further between charges.

Turn it off

The first and most obvious way to conserve your battery life is to turn off your phone when you’re not using it. If you don’t take calls after hours or while you’re in bed, then turn it off. It might sound simplistic, but you’d be amazed at how many people leave their phones running just in case someone might call them. You should also turn your phone off when you are in an area with no signal, as the phone will go on searching for one, a function that uses quite a lot of battery power for no good purpose. If you’re out of range, then turn it off.

Features

Features such as surfing the net or taking flash photographs are great to have in a phone, but if you’re serious about conserving your battery, these are the first things to stop using. If you’ve got a perfectly good computer on your desk, check your Facebook on that instead and use the webcam to take that must-have photo of your workmates instead of your phone. Turn the Push notifications function off too and check your email less often to save battery power. Also uninstall any data-heavy apps that you aren’t using regularly, as these may be constantly trying to connect to the Internet without you knowing it and thus draining power.

Ringtone

Fancy ringtones at high volume use up battery life. So does the vibrate function. Turn it off and just use the ringtone at low volume. Your battery will thank you and so will everyone around you.

Call length

Another really obvious, but often overlooked, way to conserve your iPhone’s battery life is to keep the length of your calls to a minimum. Talk time is not only expensive, but it drains your battery as well. If you’re at work and there’s a perfectly good telephone on the desk in front of you (and it’s a business call), then use it instead of your mobile.

Storage

The hotter your phone is, the faster your battery will die. Don’t leave it in a hot car

or in your pocket for long periods of time.

Capabilities

Turn off Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities when you’re not using them, as they really drain your battery. If you don’t use a Bluetooth helmet (for motorcyclists) or a Bluetooth headset, then turn Bluetooth off completely

Backlight

If you don’t need the backlighting to see what’s on the screen, turn it off. It’s only there to help you see it in bright daylight, so if you’re mostly indoors during the day, you don’t need it. Turning the brightness down on your display to the lowest possible setting and avoiding animated backgrounds and other fancy eye candy will also conserve your iPhone’s battery life.