The 8 Best Tips to Increase Your Phone's Battery Life 

Everyone's heard that it's not good for your phone's battery to let it drain completely. We've been hearing this one since the days of the Nokia 5110. 

We've also heard that it's best to keep your phone charged between 40% and 80%. Does science bear this out? 

There was a fad around ten years ago to calibrate your battery. But now we know from research that batteries self-calibrate. And, yes, it is bad for your battery to let it run down completely. 

Plus, most of us have probably experienced a dead phone battery at some point in our lives. There's hardly you can do about the inevitable loss of battery life as your phone ages, but there are certain things you can do to extend your phone's battery life in the meantime. Here are eight tips to help you out! 

Dark Mode 

Dark Mode is a popular new feature in many apps and operating systems, including iOS 13, Android 10, and Windows 10. This feature is designed to reduce eye strain by inverting bright colors.

Switching to Dark Mode can help save battery life, especially if you have an OLED screen. Since individual pixels are essentially turned off in dark areas of the display to achieve true black, Dark Mode can significantly improve battery life. 

How dark mode saves your battery life: 

When you have a white background on a page, your phone essentially turns on all its pixels to create white, which uses more energy than a black background. So when you use Dark Mode, you're setting your phone to use less power every time you look at it.

Apps That Drain The Most Power 

There are plenty of apps and features that quickly drain your phone's battery. Many of them are more of a nuisance than anything else. And some, you'll want to disable to keep your phone working as long as possible between charges. 

And the best way to ensure you can always get the most from your phone is to know its primary consumers. Thankfully, with a few apps installed, you can see what's draining your battery the most for free. 

For instance, Battery Doctor is a free app that will help you diagnose and fix any battery issues on any Android phone. Remember that these apps also consume a good amount of battery power, mainly if they're not used every day. 

Turn Off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 

Both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth use energy even when they're not in use. If you're not actively using either feature, turn them off.

Also, you can turn off 4G LTE if you're connected to Wi-Fi and don't need the faster speed of 4G LTE.

For example, the iPhone's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios are always on. Even when they're not connected to anything, they're scanning for nearby Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices that may be available. And because these radios are constantly working, they drain some extra juice from your battery. 

These two are one of the biggest battery drainers on your smartphone. Turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when they're not needed can extend your battery life by hours. 

Disable Location Services and Background App Refresh 

Location Services and Background App Refresh uses your GPS to track your location. So, both of these features drain your battery, and disabling them will help a lot. 

You can do this individually or turn off each app completely. It is recommended to disable location services if you are not using an app that needs it. For example, Facebook probably doesn't need access to your location 24/7. However, if you have an app like Waze or Google Maps, it would be good to leave the location services on for those specific apps. 

As for the background app refresh feature, this feature allows apps to use your phone's GPS in the background. This can be useful for a few apps, but it's unnecessary and drains your battery for others. You can navigate this by going to Settings>>General>>Background App Refresh and turning it off for apps that don't need to be updated. 

Reduce Screen Brightness and Lock Screen Timeout 

Managing the screen brightness is one of the most effective ways to save battery life. Most phones automatically adjust screen brightness to the environment, but it helps to tweak those settings manually.

The screen is one of the most extensive power drains on any smartphone. You can save a ton of battery by turning down the brightness and setting a shorter screen timeout, so your screen goes dark after only a few seconds when you're not using it. 

And this is also one of the easiest ways to save power. The brighter your screen is, the more power it consumes. In some cases, reducing brightness can double or triple your battery life. 

So, lock your phone's screen timeout setting as low as possible. This will allow a shorter time before the phone locks itself after it's been idle. You can access this by going to the Settings menu, clicking Display > Sleep, and setting it to 30 seconds or longer. If you don't like waiting for your screen to turn back on, use Smart Stay. This feature keeps the screen on while you're using it. 

Turn off Visual Effects 

Visual effects include animations and special graphics when opening or closing apps or switching between home screens. They can be pretty distracting and even annoying. If you're looking to increase your phone's battery life, these effects are wasted battery on something unnecessary. 

There are quite a few visual effects on Android that look cool, but they also chew up battery life. You can turn them all off in the developer options menu. 

To access the developer options menu on most phones, you have to tap on "Build Number" seven times in a row in the Settings -> About Phone menu. 

Once you're in there, scroll down to "Drawing," and then tap on "Windows animation scale" and set it to .5x or off. Do the same for the "Transition animation scale" and "Animator duration scale." Those are the primary culprits for power-hungry animations that slow things down and drain your battery. 

Clear Your Cache Partition 

When you use apps on your Android phone, various data is stored temporarily in the phone's memory, such as logins and website pages. This is called the cache and is designed to make your phone faster. However, sometimes it can get clogged up and slow things down. Clearing the cache partition solves this problem by deleting your phone's temporary data. 

Another benefit of clearing the cache is that it can free up storage space, which may be beneficial if you have an older phone with limited storage. And clearing your system cache can also help increase your phone's battery life. 

To clear your system cache, you'll need to reboot your device in recovery mode; once in recovery mode, use the volume keys to control the options and highlight "wipe cache partition." Then click the power button to select it. Once that's complete, reboot your device normally. 

Charge with a Wall Adapter Instead of a USB 

As mentioned above, the biggest drain on your battery life is usually the screen, but as phones get more advanced, apps also use more battery life. And the easiest way to keep your phone charged is to keep it plugged in to a wall charger whenever possible. Your phone can charge about twice as fast if you're using its wall adapter instead of charging it through your computer's USB port. 

These adapters provide more power than the best USB ports on computers, which means they can quickly deliver power. Phones have become increasingly adept at managing energy that they use higher-speed charging when it's available. 

So there you have it, the top 8 tips to increase your phone's battery life. We hope at least one of these tips helps you out and keeps your phone going strong all day long. Did we miss anything? Let us know your thoughts below, and share this post with your friends and family!