Getting more screen time from your battery is an amazing feeling, not every smartphone owner gets. At first, when the Android phone’s new, typically, battery life is okay. Your battery is still new anyway. But after some time, after several charge cycles, battery life is what is most affected on a new phone first. However, all is not lost. Here are some battery saving tips to help you extend your Android’s battery life.
These are proven and tested tips to help improve the battery life on any Android phone.
But wait… Before we get into the tips, you deserve to know what’s majorly hitting your battery juice. Luckily, every Android phone usually provides you with in-depth statistics on how your battery juice was spent. So, why is your phone’s battery draining so fast? Here’s why;
Reasons your phone’s battery is draining fast
- Screen time
- Bad cell phone network reception
- Apps
- Background services e.g Location access, Wifi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, automatic sync, etc.
How to check What’s Draining your Phone Battery
Now that you know the top things that drain phone batteries fast, how do you check what’s eating up your phone’s battery? Here’s how to do that;
A caveat; every Android manufacturer tends to customize their user interface differently so the method may vary from one device to another. The guide below uses Xiaomi’s Mi 9T Pro or Redmi K20 Pro running MIUI 12.
- Open your phone’s Settings app
- Go to “Battery & performance”
- Select “Battery Usage stats”
On phones that run Google’s stock Android, like Pixel 4 or Nokia phones, use the guide below.
- Open your phone’s Settings app
- Go to “Battery”
- Tap “More” then select Battery usage
For other phones just search for battery in settings to find the section.
Now, armored with all the necessary info you need to know about your phone’s battery, let’s take a look at the various ways to help extend battery life.
How to extend your Android’s phone battery life
1. Turn off things you’re not using
Smartphones come loaded with a ton of features that are not much-needed for everyone. The case is true, especially with flagship phones. However, across the general market, all Android phones ship with GPS, WIFI, and Bluetooth — the biggest culprits when it comes to battery draining. Another one, and probably the biggest among the batch, is cellular connectivity, especially in areas with spotty coverage.
You should be turning off these features when you’re not using them. One simple trick to use is by turning on Airplane Mode – yes, you don’t need to be necessarily flying – which will switch off all of the connectivity services at once. All of them; Bluetooth, WIFI, GPS, and cellular connectivity.
If you still need to use your phone to send texts and call, change network type. 4G or 5G is not a must. Just switching to 2G or 3G will extend battery life.
If automatic sync isn’t needed, disable it as well.
2. Tweak Screen Settings: refresh rate, time out, Brightness, Ambient Display
Another thing you should be looking into to save a little more juice is the screen. The screen accounts for most of battery use on every android phone. That’s why watching over various aspects here really matters. The first thing to do is to manually take over control of your display brightness by disabling Automatic brightness.
Open the Settings app then select ‘Display’. From here you can tweak a couple of things. You can turn automatic brightness off, reduce screen brightness, and also change screen sleep settings (time taken by your phone’s display to turn off after inactivity) — 30 seconds or a minute is okay.
For some high mid-range and flagship phones, you get additional battery hogging features. Turn off the ambient display, reduce the display refresh rate. All of these settings should be tweaked as advised to save battery life.
3. Go Silent
Keyboard sounds – really unnecessary – should also be turned off. Vibrations should also be turned off.
You can disable vibration by opening the Settings app and then “Sound and vibration.” Again, this will vary from one phone manufacturer to another but the concept is the same. This section allows you to disable vibration and keyboard tones. Another thing to take care of is the annoying notifications. In a typical day, a regular smartphone user receives dozens of notifications. So knock off notifications from the not-so-important apps to help get more life from your battery.
4. Avoid Battery Draining Apps
Battery draining apps are everywhere. And the only way you can save yourself from this mess is by switching to lite or progressive web apps. Lite and progressive web apps(PWAs) are less resource-hungry. These kinds of apps are tailored for android phones with fewer resources so they won’t need much from your battery.
Lite apps are available on Google Play and you can find PWAs inside your favorite browser. Besides, using these two types of apps don’t consume much of your storage space, a plus.
The battery diagnosis we did earlier should help you figure out which apps should be purged immediately.
5. Turn On Power Saving Mode, Seriously
Power saving is a traditional trick used on almost all types of hardware devices with built-in batteries to save on juice. This is your first go-to savior when it comes to pushing your battery for a little bit longer. Power saving mode optimizes your phone by turning off unnecessary features you may not need at all times. Luckily if you use a Samsung, Xiaomi, or Huawei phone, you will have two options; standard battery saver and ultra battery saver. The extreme one is ultra-battery saver which strips down the phone to its essentials.
6. Stay away from Flashy and Animated Wallpapers – and Widgets
Brightly colored wallpapers contribute largely to the screen’s battery drain. It’s advised to use dark-colored wallpapers. And if your phone has an AMOLED screen that’s a plus. AMOLED screens are not backlit so having a dark background means the display’s individual pixels shut down completely thus improving battery life.
Avoid animated or moving wallpapers, too. I know about the coolness, of course, but beware they consume a lot of power. Having too many widgets on your home screen also consumes considerable battery amounts.
7. Go Dark
Dark Mode it is! One of the hotly anticipated features last year was dark mode. Dark mode – available on both Android and iOS – also saves battery life.
How to enable Dark Mode
- Open the Settings app
- Select ‘Display’
- Toggle “dark theme” on
Or… turn dark mode on from the quick settings section – which is shown when swipe down from the top of the screen. Different phones have different ways of calling the feature, too. Samsung calls it Night Mode.
8. Limit Background apps
Apps run in the background most of the time after you’ve left. Many apps in the background will hit your battery life considerably so monitoring them is a good idea.
Open Settings > Apps & Notifications and select the app(s) you wish to stop running in the background. Another thing to do is to select which apps should automatically start immediately your phone is powered on.
A handy third-party app that can help you bring order on background running apps is Greenify. Don’t panic, Greenify is easy to use. You can use the app to manage resource-hungry apps that run in the background.
Download: Greenify
9. Regularly Update Software
Software updates are crucial. They help fix minor bugs in software you didn’t even know existed. If your phone’s battery life deteriorates immensely after a software update, the problem might be the software – other factors kept constant. Running old software can also affect your battery. As such, you should regularly update your Android apps as well.
10. Avoid Battery Hungry Activities
Now that we’ve gone through all the necessary tweaks you should do to save more battery, how about checking your own actions. To save more battery you should avoid performing battery hungry activities. A good example is playing high-interactive games – talk of PUBG, Fortnite, or COD: Mobile. Other activities like recording videos also affect battery life.
11. Bonus Tip: Check Your Phone’s Battery Health
Once you’ve done most of the tips highlighted above, your phone’s battery life should considerably improve. However, if you’re not content about the battery life in general after the implementation, it’s time to check battery health. Read this article on How to Check Battery Health Status on any phone -whether its an Android phone or an iPhone.
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