Anoop Verma
THE smartphone has become so deeply enmeshed with our life that we can’t have its battery giving upon us at any point of time. But ever since we upgraded from the feature phones to the smartphones, we are suffering from poor battery life. The so-called dumb phones used to last for as much as 3 days, but a smartphone cannot go beyond one day.
At times new smartphone buyers try to return their phones to the shop complaining that it lasts only for a day, so there must be something wrong with it.
Many smartphone users have resorted using spare USB battery packs, which can recharge the smartphone on the go. Some popular handset models come with specific cases, which can provide extra battery power at the cost of little bit of bulk. One way of improving the battery life of your smartphone is obviously by reducing the usage. But making the phone unusable is surely not the solution.
Here are some tips for prolonging the battery life of your smartphone:
Dim the screen brightness
A large colourful display is something that we love about our smartphones, but it can also lead to loss of battery life. It is the display that consumes more power than any other component of your smartphone. The problem is that latest models of most smartphones use the auto-brightness feature that automatically adjusts the screen’s brightness to suit ambient lighting levels. While this makes it easier for us to use the smartphone in all kinds of lighting conditions, it is a huge drain on the battery. You should set your smartphone screen brightness to its lowest setting in order to save battery power.
Make the screen timeout short
In the display settings menu of your phone, you will find the option called, “Screen Timeout.” This setting controls the time for which your smartphone screen remains alive after receiving in input, which can be a tap. Ideally you should keep the screen timeout set at 15 seconds.
Turn off Bluetooth
We love using Bluetooth for running our hands-free headset, wireless speaker, radio and even for file transfers. But Bluetooth can be a big drain on the power, as it constantly looks for signals from outside world, even if you are not using the feature at that point of time. By turning Bluetooth off when you are not using it, you can add an hour to the battery life of your smartphone.
Turn off WiFi
The phone’s WiFi feature can be as big a drain on battery as the Bluetooth is. So you should keep the WiFi feature on ON position only when you are accessing WiFi signals from a known network. It makes little sense to keep WiFi feature ON when you are accessing data services through 2G or 3G network. You should toggle it OFF when you go out the door, and turn it back ON only when you plan to use data services within range of your WiFi network. Android users can add the WiFi toggle widget to their home screen to make this a one-tap process.
Stop apps from running in the background
It is a well-known fact that smartphone users love to multitask, by keeping more than one app running at the same time. However, this burns a lot of energy. Every app that is running will use its share of the phone’s processor cycles. By killing apps that you aren’t actually using, you can drastically reduce your CPU’s workload and cut down on its power consumption. In new versions of Android, it is very easy to turn-off apps that are not in use. All you need to do is tap the recent apps multitasking button and then swipe the apps OFF the screen to close them.
