How to Boost iPhone Battery Life

In a previous tutorial, we at Geek Insider provided tricks for fixing a very specific battery drain/overheating problem with the iPhone 5. This time we’re showing you ways to combat excessive battery drain in general with iPhone devices.

 

How To Boost iPhone Battery Life

If you find yourself regularly struggling to keep your iPhone battery alive long enough to re-charge, chances are that your current settings are causing your charge to drain at an accelerated rate.

A few simple changes to how your iPhone handles certain features can greatly extend the duration of your battery, and the best part is, many of these features are things you can do without (or at least with less of)!

For proven methods of reducing how quickly your iPhone runs out of juice, try out these five tips below.

1. Reduce Display Brightness

 Though it probably goes without saying, the brighter your default display settings are, the quicker your battery’s charge will be lost. If your iPhone seems to run out of juice far earlier than you would expect, this is quite often one of the biggest culprits.

There are two ways to conserve more charge, assuming you don’t mind working with a somewhat darker screen. Determining which option is best for you largely depends on how much lighting conditions change throughout your day.

• Reduce Default Brightness: If your average illumination doesn’t vary much between work, home, etc., then just go to Settings  -> Brightness & Wallpaper, and move the slider to the left until you find a good balance between dimmer, yet readable.

• Auto-Brightness: If your daily commute varies between exterior and interior areas, or other conditions of varying lighting, you’ll be best served by turning on Auto-Brightness, by going to Settings  -> Brightness & Wallpaper -> Auto-Brightness On. Activating this feature allows your iPhone to determine the appropriate brightness setting based on its ambient light sensor.

2. Turn off wireless features

Most iPhones have built-in wireless data transfer capabilities, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, and 4G LTE. Odds are, you’re not using all of these features on a regular basis, and yet they are still consuming precious battery life regardless. Why not turn off the wireless formats you don’t need at the moment?

Also, considering most phone carriers limit your 3G/4G data use according to your plan, you really don’t want to be using these resources if you have access to a dedicated Wi-Fi hotspot, like at home.

• Turn off Wi-Fi: Settings -> WiFi -> Slide to Off
• Turn off Bluetooth: Settings -> Bluetooth -> Move Slider to Off
• Turn off 3G/4G LTE: Settings -> General -> Cellular -> Slide Enable 3G to Off on some models or Enable LTE to Off (iPhone 5 and newer.)

3. Disable Location services

While having a built-in GPS navigator on your iPhone is certainly handy, if you don’t need directions to a destination or make use of app features that show you restaurants and sites of interest in your current location, all that GPS is doing is wasting valuable resources.

If you need your phone on for the long haul, and aren’t using GPS capabilities, why not just turn them off?

• Turn off Location Services: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Slide to Off

4. Data Push

While the ability to have your iPhone automatically fetch emails and other data is very convenient, odds are the typical user isn’t receiving enough constant transmissions to warrant the battery life used by Data Pushing on a constant basis.

If you’re not overly concerned with automatically receiving emails and other content at all, it may be best if you just disable the feature entirely.

If you aren’t comfortable with the possibility of missing important information, you can just reduce how often Data Push checks for new content instead.

• Turn off Data Push: Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendar -> Fetch New Data -> Slide to Off
• Reduce Mail Fetching Frequency: Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendar -> Fetch New Data -> Select Your Preference

5. Change Auto-Lock Settings

All iPhones have the ability to enter into sleep mode to reduce battery power drain when the device hasn’t been used during a set interval of time, called “Auto-Lock”.

Unless you’re a iPhone power-user, or are easily annoyed by having to unlock your iPhone often, you can easily stretch out your battery’s charge by lowering the time limit for when Auto-Lock activates.

• Change Auto-Lock Settings: Settings -> General -> Auto-Lock -> Select desired interval

In Closing

Using these tips, or a combination thereof, should showed a marked improvement in your iPhone’s battery life. If that’s not the case with your device, it may be due to a faulty battery in your device, especially with older model iPhones.

You may have to buy a new replacement battery for your iPhone if that is the case, but it’s not a bad idea to have the problem looked into at either the Apple store or by your carrier’s before pulling out your wallet.