They’re super-quick tips, too
Yup, it’s about the most annoying thing in telecommunications since the BT adverts featuring the guy from Love Actually.
Your iPhone has run out of battery. Again.
And you’ve only had it on for, what, about three minutes?
It seems that while Apple is perfectly capable of racking up the highest quarterly profits in the entire history of the world, and creating a phone that has more processing power than NASA had when it sent humans to the moon, it still can’t crack that pesky battery thing.
Until it does, here are some helpful tips for increasing your iPhone battery life:
1. Turn off some of your app notifications
Facebook is a notorious battery life-sucker, and WhatsApp is quite the vampire too.
But they’re by no means the only culprits. The average smartphone owner uses 27 apps a month, according to Nielsen data from mid-2014. So turn off push notifications for the ones you don’t need to hear from every second of the day.
Settings > Notification Centre > [Individual app] > [Then set notifications to none and slide everything else off]
2. Stop leaving it on to charge overnight
There’s lots of different theories online about when to recharge your battery, because lithium-ion batteries such as the one in the iPhone work in mysterious ways.
Basically, they have a limited life-cycle, and can only recharge a certain number of times – and to decreasing proportions of their full charge the more they are used.
The general consensus is to not recharge your battery until it’s relatively close to zero (rather than at, say 85%). When you recharge it, take it off charge just before it hits 100%.
A big no-no is leaving it on charge when it’s already hit 100%. That means no overnight plug-ins for Mr iPhone.
3. Make sure your PC is plugged in when your iPhone is charging off it
Also, make sure your computer is awake, not on hibernate. That’s advice right from the horse’s mouth.
4. Keep your phone cool – but not too cool
Lithium-ion batteries drain faster and risk damage above 35 degrees Celsius, so try to avoid leaving your phone, you know, on top of the stove.
Also, charge it out of its case, as it could overheat otherwise.
These type of batteries also run down faster in sub-zero temperatures, so watch out for that next time you go skiing, and keep it cosy in winter.
5. Turn off 3G
An oldy but a goody – the phone itself gives you this tip when you go to the below area…
Settings > Mobile > Enable 3G [then turn it off]
If you’re really desperate to preserve battery life, turn off all Mobile Data too (in the same location) – although obviously this will stop all internet-dependent services.
6. Turn off WiFi
Settings > Mobile
7. Turn off Bluetooth
Settings > Bluetooth
8. Get emails less frequently
You probably have at least one or two email accounts linked to your iPhone. And your phone is probably set up so that the servers for those accounts are constantly pushing new emails to your phone, as soon as they come in.
Do you really need all those emails immediately?
Or could you set one account – your personal email, say – to only receive email every 30 minutes? If so, go to…
Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data
Then for the email account/s you want to decrease frequency, select that account and change the option from “Push” to “Fetch”.
Go back one step, then scroll down to hit the “Fetch” settings, and decide how often you need your emails to arrive: every 15 minutes, every 30, hourly or manually.
If you don’t need any of your email accounts to update regularly, turn off Push (at the very top of this bit) entirely, and all accounts will follow your “Fetch” settings.
9. Turn down the brightness of your screen
Settings > Wallpaper & Brightness
10. Turn off Location Settings
This cuts off all the background work your phone is doing all the time, tracking your every move so that when you open an app, it can be bang-up-to-date with where you are now.
You can choose for specific apps to know your location and not others. So you might want Maps, Uber and Weather to always know your location for accuracy, but not need WhatsApp or Shazam to.
Settings > Privacy > Location Services
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