Smartphone Battery Life Tips for iPhone and Android Smartphones

Last Update: August 13, 2015

Battery life is the one characteristic which leads to many Smartphone complaints on how long a battery lasts or what functions and Apps draw too much power. Almost all users have run into situations where their phone runs out of power or when expected battery life is a lot shorter than expected. In this article we will help users extend the battery life of both Android Smartphones and iPhones.

iPhone batteries are designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 full charge and discharge cycles. This is roughly a year and a half of daily battery charging. Your battery will start to deteriorate, at which point, you may wish to replace your battery. Most batteries are designed to last 3 to 5 years, with the average gadget possibly becoming obsolete before then. It makes sense to pay a little attention to how you manage your Smartphone’s battery in order to lengthen the lifespan of your electronics.

Recharging your Smartphone Battery Correctly

Following these tips will help maximize your batteries’ capacity and life span. Batteries will eventually wear out, but there is a lot you can do to extend its shelf life.

• Keep battery capacity greater than 50% as often as possible
• Going from 100% to 0% to often will degrade your batteries’ life span. Only do this once a month to condition your battery
• Some batteries work better if they are slightly below 100% when fully charged
• There are folks who like to charge batteries from 40% to 90% and maintain that range.
• When charging or storing your phone, keep it in a moderate temperature environment. The higher the temperature, the faster it will lose a charge. Do not leave your batteries in the sun or in a hot car.
• Disconnect a battery from a charger after it reaches 100%.
• Try to never allow lithium ion batteries to hit 0% charge
• Wireless chargers are convenient but generate heat and wasted energy
• Power drop is very noticeable at temperatures lower than about 40F/4C.
• Around or below freezing, most batteries do not work well.

Lithium-ion batteries perform optimally at about normal room temperature (68F/20C). If a device warms to 86F/30C, its ability to hold a battery charge drops by about 20%. If the battery is used at 113F/45C — a temperature easily reached by devices that are heavily used or that are in the sun, battery capacity can be reduced by 50%.

If a device or battery feels hot, move to a cooler location, turn off unnecessary apps, or even turn off the device.

Do not store your phone in the bottom of a briefcase or purse, items may block or weaken cellular signals, wasting power.

A healthy, 100% full, lithium battery will self-discharge at about only 5% in the first 24 hours after disconnected from the charger — with only an additional 2% or so per month after that.

General Android SmartPhone Battery Life and iPhone Battery Life Tips

Here are some general tips that can help you maximize the battery performance of any Smartphone:

• Lower the brightness or backlight of your screen.
• Vibrate consumes a lot of power, disable it.
• When going to bed, switch your Smartphone to Airplane Mode.
• Disable push email or constant email checking. Set email synchronization to longer intervals.
• Reduce the number of email accounts checked.
• Avoid using the camera's flash.
• Turn off Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, NFC if you do not use these features. You may want to turn WiFi off whenever you leave the house.
• Download apps and music when plugged into power and WiFi at home.
• Uninstall any Apps you do not use. No sense in wasting power updating Apps constantly.
• Disable background applications.
• When in areas of low or no signal, turn off your Smartphone, or switch it to Airplane mode, otherwise it will use a lot of power looking for a signal.
• When leaving your phone on a desk or counter top at home or work, orient the Smartphone so that it receives the highest signal. You may need to stand it up vertically.
• Use your Smartphone’s Auto-Lock feature and set it to a low number.
• Disable Apps which constantly look up your present location. Google Maps, Facebook, etc.

Apple iOS 7 Battery Life Saving Tips

iOS 7 has many fancy new features which cause battery life to fall off. Here is a list of iOS 7 specific tips on how to restore your battery life under iOS 7.

• Reduce Background App Refresh, this allows Apps in the background to multitask. To disable this feature, select Settings > General > Background App Refresh.
• Turn off the fancy background motion parallax effect, known as Reduce Motion. Settings > General > Accessibility
• Disable Automatic Updating of Apps. Settings > iTunes and Apple Store
• Disable the constant refreshing of Spotlight Search results. Settings > General > Spotlight Search
• Disable AirDrop, which lets you share files at any time. Slide up at the bottom of your screen to turn this off.

Apple iPhone Battery life tips

• Apple has a page with additional iPhone battery life tips.
• Set the brightness of your screen to a lower level. Auto-Brightness may cause your iPhone to be brighter than needed, disable it
• Prevent the iPhone from constantly looking for WiFi networks. Switch off Ask to Join Networks
• Turn off Push notifications, or reduce the number of Apps sending Push notification
• Set your iPhone to Fetch new data hourly or manually
• Disable or reduce the number of Apps that use location services
• Disabling 3G or LTE helps save energy, but who wants a slower phone?
• Turning off sounds made when unlocking and sending e-mail will also help battery life.
• Apps that constantly run, and especially those that track your location such as Google Maps, Twitter, Textplus, Facebook, Pandora, and Skype also drain the battery.
• iOS 4 or newer users can Kill background tasks.
• Having your iPhone Auto-lock will save battery life. Set the Auto-Lock interval to as short a time as possible.
• Disable Siri’s Raise to Speak. General > Siri > Raise to Speak
• When storing your iPhone, Apple recommends charging it to 50%, before storing it.

Android Smartphone Battery Life Tips

Follow the same tips for the iPhone plus run an app like Battery Monitor to help pinpoint what is draining your smartphones battery. Juice Defender and Easy Battery Saver are also apps that help extend Android smartphone battery life.

• Remove unnecessary widgets. These are constantly updated, diminishing battery life.
• Disable vibrating when you tap keys, otherwise known as haptic feedback
• Dropbox allows you to disable Uploading when connected via cellular data. Upload only on WiFi

Never throw batteries in the trash. Recycle them.

We have covered a lot of ground with many different tips to extend your Smartphone’s battery life. Please try to use as many of these as possible, they will help you prevent the dreaded, low battery warning.

One response to “Smartphone Battery Life Tips for iPhone and Android Smartphones”

1. leomark says:

   December 14, 2014 at 12:59 PM

   Battery Saver HD – Battery saver, energy optimization and task killer to save battery.

   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bat.saver

   Reply