There’s no denying it. We demand a lot from our phones. We want them connected all the time, syncing all the time, serving as a GPS device occasionally, and we want our screens so bright that the soon holds little competition to the clarity of our phone screens.
With the crazy demands we put on our phones, it’s only natural that battery power is one of the biggest issues customers experience at large. Some people recommending getting second chargers and batteries, so you’ll always have a backup when you’re on the go and a charger when you’re traveling.
It’s not a bad idea, but frankly I’ve managed to get good battery life on my top-of-the-line phone without having to throw down on backup batteries and multiple chargers. I’ve found that most battery issues people have really don’t have to do with the phones themselves but how we use them.
Display
There’s no doubt that your display screen is the biggest batter drain on your phone. The simplest way to diminish the amount your display drains your battery without having to make cover for your phone outside is to use the auto-brightness control. It uses a dim display for most situations unless you’re outside and competing with sun glare.
If really pressed to conserve your battery, you can turn off auto-brightness and set the brightness level to a very low setting (around 25% or so works best). This will save more battery life than auto-brightness, but don’t expect to easily see your display when outdoors.
Remember to turn off your display when you’re not using it. I prefer to do this manually, but you can also use a screen timeout that turns the screen off after a certain period of inactivity. I personally don’t like a short timeout though as it sometimes blanks the screen while I’m reading.
The Power Control Widget
The essential powerhouse (no pun intended) to keeping your battery usage low is effective use of the “Power control” widget, which is available on most new phones (anything Android 2.1 or higher). This widget, operational from your homescreen, allows you to enable or disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Auto-sync, and brightness levels (low, medium, high, or auto).
To effectively save your battery with this widget, just be conscious of what you have enabled and why you need it enabled. The obvious example is to keep Bluetooth off when not using a Bluetooth device, and only using GPS when you need that directional service (even then, Google does a decent tracking service by using your relationship with Wi-Fi network signals). Also, I only use Wi-Fi when I have a connectable network, otherwise your phone spends battery searching for open Wi-Fi signals.
On using Auto-sync
With Auto-sync, I will usually turn it on periodically to update my phone with new emails and social media notifications and just keep it off between those intervals to save battery. I know that this, for some of you, disables the usability of the phone for you, so it really does depend on what you want out of your phone. Just know that keeping Auto-sync on constantly will take a huge toll on your battery.
Another alternative is to use the (rather expensive but very handy) app Tasker that allows you to set triggers, alarms, and loops for just about any action you can think of, including Auto-sync. This way you can designate short periods to turn on Auto-sync so that important information is “pushed” to your phone as often as you’d like without draining your battery all the time.
Wi-Fi or Mobile 3G/4G?
Typically, using your networks mobile 3G or 4G network will drain more battery than using a Wi-Fi connection. This is mostly due to the fact that your phone signal radio has to pickup mobile network signals from possibly miles away while it picks up a Wi-Fi signal only a few feet away. So try to us Wi-Fi whenever you can; this will also lessen your amount of data usage if you’re on a tiered data plan.
By-line:
Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.
