10 Tips to improve your smartphone's battery life

Often we find ourselves in a situation when we need our Smartphones the most but the battery runs out on us. Does this sound familiar? Well, believe me you are not the only one, it happens with most smartphone users. In fact, low or poor battery backup is the biggest demon that haunts an Android phone user today. Even if it is not much of a problem when the phone is still new, the battery life will diminish with time. The battery would only last half the time 6 months down the line. Although, the technology has undergone a lot of evolution over the years and it’s a lot more advanced, we are still using the same old technology for phone batteries and are still far away from creating small but long lasting batteries.

So, the question you should be asking yourself is, how you can squeeze the most life or backup out of your phone's battery? What exactly can you do to make it last just a little longer? How to squeeze those extra few minutes? After all those extra few minutes could just be the differentiating factor.

Here are a few tips that should help you squeeze some extra juice out of your phone’s battery.

Review battery usage of various apps and processes

There are apps that use very little battery, while there are some others that could completely drain your phone's battery, if not kept in check. A review of apps putting pressure on your phone's battery is in order at regular intervals. You can go to the settings menu of your Android Phone and see a list of apps in order of their consumption of your Phone’s battery. Review the list and find out the apps that you never use or use just once in a while and are consuming sufficiently large amounts of battery life. You might want to do away with or uninstall such apps.

Make use of that extra power/battery saver or stamina mode option

Most of the Android Phones come preloaded with an extra power saving/battery saver mode or stamina mode that makes your Android Phone’s battery go that extra mile. Various Android Phone makers offer this feature with different names, just look for it in your phone. For example, nexus phones have a battery saver mode, Sony Xperia series has a stamina mode, while the Samsung Galaxy series phones have a power saving mode. Make use of this feature of your Android Smartphone to make the most of your Phone’s battery. Although, it hampers the performance somewhat and is a trade off between performance and battery life, you can still use the battery saver mode when you are not actively using your phone. It is small thing but will stretch the battery life significantly.

Adjust the Screen Brightness

You may wonder how much battery can be saved by turning down the screen brightness. However, the screen of your Android Phone is the biggest battery hog and consumes significant battery life. Turning down the screen brightness and switching off the Auto-brightness, when not watching your favorite video or playing a game on your phone, may save substantial amount of battery life and go a long way in giving you longer battery backup. Believe me you don't need all that brightness all the time.

Close Unnecessary Apps running in the background

There are apps in your phone that are running in the background without you knowing about them and are draining your Phone’s battery. You can go to the settings menu and look for such apps under the Apps heading. Review the apps listed there and turn off the ones you don’t need running in the background and sip your phone’s battery. It may not save a substantial amount of battery life but may save that last bit that may prove useful.

Update Your Apps Regularly

The developers are always on their toes to improve the battery efficiency of their respective Apps. They strive hard to reduce battery usage while fixing other bugs with each and every update of their apps. Therefore, it is always advisable to keep your apps updated and check for new updates on a frequent basis.

Prevent Apps from using Your Location

There are some Apps that use your location to give you customized results according to your location. While these apps may save a lot of time and effort when you actually need them, they use up a lot of power and drain your Phone’s battery faster than you could imagine. It is therefore a good idea to disable your Phone’s location based services and enable them only when you actually need to use them.

Turn off Unnecessary services

Most of the Android phones come loaded with hardware features like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, LTE etc. now-a-days. You use all these service every now and then and have a tendency to keep them switched on all the time. However, these services drain out your Android Phone’s battery faster than you can ever imagine. It is recommended that you switch off these services when not in use and actually turn them on when you need to.

Do not Clutter Your Phone’s Home Screen with Unnecessary Widgets and Live Wallpapers

While the widgets on your Phone’s home screen may look completely harmless and inactive, they suck a lot of power from your Phone’s battery and are actually power hungry. Same goes for live or animated wallpapers, they may look pretty and pleasing to the eye and could come in handy to impress your friends, however, they are among the biggest power hoggers on your Android Phone and your Phone’s battery could definitely perform better without them.

Use a Good Battery Saver App

The Google Play Store offers some good quality battery saver apps that can save you the trouble of going through all those settings and closing apps and processes manually. These apps can actually manage the battery consumption professionally and help you get a lot more out of your Smartphone’s battery. Just type battery saver in the search box in the play store and you will see a large list of battery saver apps. Use your discretion to download and install an app that suits your requirements. There could also be some specially designed apps for your smartphone.

Turn Your Phone off

When you have very little battery left in your smartphone and you need to save it for later, you should just switch off your smartphone and save that little bit for later. The best and most basic way to save battery is to turn off your smartphone.

Well, if all the above tips fail to give you sufficient back up from your Android Phone's battery, perhaps it is time to contemplate changing your Phone’s battery and look for a replacement. Buy a battery with similar specifications as your Phone’s old battery or the battery recommended by your Android Phone’s maker.