Remember the good old days when you were still using a Nokia? Back then, you could text for hours on end without worrying about the battery life. If you were less busy, you would only need to charge your phone once or twice per week.
But things have changed drastically since the introduction of touchscreen smartphones. Our new phones warrant a battery charge at least once a day and being the kiasi people that we are, we carry a portable charger around so that we can complete one more stage of Candy Crush on the MRT.
Here are some recommendations from Computer Guys on how to keep your smartphone running for a longer period of time:
1) Reduce your screen’s brightness level
It is nice to have the brightness level at its maximum when you play games, watch a video or browse photos – but it is not needed. Adjust the screen’s brightness to the lowest level that you are comfortable with and see how much of a difference it makes to your phone’s battery life.
2) Use ringtones instead of vibrations
A common misconception is that putting your phone on silent helps to conserve battery, but that is not the case when you leave the vibration alerts on. Vibration alerts are activated by the shaking of a smart weight in your phone, which eats up more battery power compared to playing a sound through the phone’s speaker for ringtone alerts. Also, do you really need your phone to vibrate every single time you push a button? If not, turn your haptic feedback off.
3) Shorten the screen timeout
Very often, we forget to lock our phones immediately after usage, which leaves the screen powered on for a longer period of time. To avoid accidentally draining your battery like this, set the screen timeout or auto-lock to the shortest duration available.
4) Turn off all non-essential notifications
Your screen lights up every time you get a notification, eating away precious battery life. Look through your notifications to switch off those that you do not need, such as those from game apps or not-so-important social media accounts.
5) Switch off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G/4G accordingly
Wi-Fi eats up less battery power compared to using 3G or 4G, so if you are at home browsing the Internet on your phone, turn off the latter and connect to your Wi-Fi instead. Likewise, remember to turn off your Wi-Fi when you are outside, or your phone will use up a considerable amount of battery trying to search for a network to connect to. Another connection that uses up a ton of power is Bluetooth, so switch it off when not in use.
6) Kill apps after usage
Some apps, especially those that use GPS, are power drains. So kill them when you no longer need them or else these apps will run in the background, causing the battery to deplete faster.
7) Uninstall apps that you no longer use
Some apps run background processes, thereby increasing battery consumption without you realising it. To improve battery performance, take some time out to organise your apps and delete those that you do not need.
8) Use apps to monitor your battery consumption
There are apps available that will help you to utilise your phone more efficiently. For instance, Carat lets you know how much more time you can have on your phone if you kill certain apps. Battery Doctor, on the other hand, is good for monitoring charging cycles so that the battery life is optimised.
What are some of the things that you do to save battery? Let us know in the comments section below!
