Frustrated because your phone’s battery seems to last no time at all? Fed up of carrying a charger everywhere you go?
By making a few simple changes to your settings and being more savvy about how you use your phone, you can dramatically improve your phone’s battery life. We’ve picked some of our most popular phones and put together some tips to help you stay connected when your battery’s on the blink.
1. Switch off push email - cutting down the number of times your phone checks for new emails will significantly increase your battery life. Here’s how to do it.
BlackBerry: select Options > Advanced Options > Browser Push and uncheck Enable Push.
HTC phones: go to Inbox > Menu > Settings > Notification Settings and uncheck the Email Notifications box. If you just want to reduce the number of times your phone checks for emails, go to Inbox > Menu > Settings > Send & Receive > Set Download Frequency and choose how often you want to receive emails.
iPhone: tap Settings > Mail > Fetch New Data. If you want to turn off email, set Push to Off. To continue to check your emails, make sure Push is set to On. Tap on Manually or Hourly to change how often your iPhone checks your email.
2. Try to resist playing with your apps - these can drain your battery. If you’re down to your last 10% of juice, avoid playing online games, checking Twitter or updating your Facebook status too often. Instead, save your power in case you have to make essential phone calls, send emails or texts, or get directions using GPS.
3. Turn off Wi-Fi - you can choose to only turn on Wi-Fi when you really need it. Otherwise your phone will search for Wi-Fi networks all the time, which can drain your battery faster than you might think. Here’s how to do it.
BlackBerry: go to Manage Connections and uncheck Wi-Fi.
iPhone or HTC phones: tap Settings then uncheck or switch off Wi-Fi.
4. Don’t use flash on your camera - if you have a flash function on your phone’s camera, try not to use it. Flash photography can drain your battery quickly. You might need to select this manually from the menu when you’re using your camera.
5. Always charge your phone fully – It’s easy to grab a snatched five minutes here and there when you need to boost your battery quickly. But to keep your battery going for longer, most manufacturers recommend you let it discharge fully, then allow it to charge fully each time you plug it in.
6. Set your screen to lock faster – the screen won't always dim immediately when you put your phone down. You can save battery by setting Auto-Lock to activate quickly, or just make sure you put your phone to sleep by pressing the On/Off button when you’re not using it. Here’s how to adjust the Auto-Lock settings.
BlackBerry: select Options > Auto On/Off and enable Auto-Lock.
HTC phones: tap Menu > Settings > Security > Lock Phone and choose to lock your phone immediately.
iPhone: tap Settings > General > Auto-Lock.
7. Dim your screen – The display is often the biggest battery drain on a mobile device – especially if you’ve got a touchscreen phone. And the bigger the screen, the more power it uses. We recommend you turn the brightness down to save battery life. Here’s how to do it.
BlackBerry: select Options > Screen/Keyboard, scroll down to Backlight Brightness and select the level you want.
iPhone and HTC phones: tap Settings > Brightness and adjust the screen brightness.
8. Switch off vibrate – we know you don’t want to miss any messages or calls, but using the vibrate setting uses more battery than you’d expect. If you don’t need it, turn it off and listen for your ringtone instead.
9. Turn your phone off – the last resort. If you’re really worried about saving your battery, turn your phone off when you’re not using it. This means you know you can make an emergency call when you need to, and you don’t need to worry if you’ll have enough battery power left to dial a cab at the end of a long day out.
