While smart-phones have been
largely a boon to mankind, there is one aspect of this technological
marvel that still leaves us wanting for more. It’s a smart-phone’s
battery life.
Although technological advancements have
ensured smart-phones today can carry bigger and better batteries
inside, only some of the phones out there are what you call
‘good-enough’ in this department. There are still a truck load of
smart-phones in the market that have only satisfactory battery lives.
That said there are a number of ways to
improve your phone’s battery life and squeeze out enough juice from it
so it can last longer than you expected. Here are 10 tips and tricks to
help you prolong your smart-phone’s battery life:
Lower Your Phone’s Screen Brightness/Set This To Automatic
Let
your phone automatically decide its optimum screen brightness according
to the ambient environment. In case you want a manual control over its
brightness, it’s advisable you set it close to the 50 per cent mark,
rather than keeping it to a full. Your smart-phone’s bright and vibrant
display consumes a lot of power, therefore keeping a check on it should
improve battery life significantly.
Turn Off Blue-tooth And Wi-Fi When You Don’t Need Them
It’s
a common sight for users to keep their Blue-tooth and/or Wi-Fi on for
far longer than they need them. Sometimes, you share a file via
Blue-tooth and then forget to close it. As for the Wi-Fi, many users
have it open to detect available connections and connect accordingly. An
open Blue-tooth and Wi-Fi are significant power drainers on your phone
since they continuously work to detect nearby signals. Also, keeping
these open unnecessarily is also a threat to your smart-phone
privacy/security.
Keep A Check On Your Location/Gps Tracking
Similar
to your Blue-tooth and Wi-Fi functions, the location tracking feature
that tracks your location using radio waves and satellites (Google Maps
is an example) drains out your phone battery drastically. It is
recommended that you keep this on only when you require navigation, and
keep it close at all other times (to keep a check on your mobile data as
also its battery).
Keep Your Screen Time-out Low
Screen
time-out is the time your smart-phone takes to automatically go into a
sleep mode in the absence of any activity (swipe or tap). Keep the
screen time-out of your phone to a minimum. After all, keeping your
display on when you don’t need it is a genuine waste of battery juice.
Turn Off Notifications From Unnecessary Apps
While
it’s good to receive notifications from useful apps (like news and
email etc.), most apps today tend to send out random notifications that
are really not needed. Take for instance, notifications from games like
Asphalt that ask you to play it for you’ve been away from the race track
for a while now. Seriously, do you really need that?
Also,
it’s advisable to have the phone vibrate function off for notifications
(also in general) to save on your battery juice since vibration drains
it significantly.
Multitasking Is Good, But Close Apps When You’re Done With Them
With
more and more phones having greater RAM memory on-board, multi-tasking
is what you call a walk in the park for a majority of the handsets.
While multi-tasking is good, it is also a battery hog. Keep useful apps
(that you’d generally open) in the background while closing all
unnecessary apps to free your RAM as also keep your battery life in
check. You can always open an app when you need it.
Avoid Using Flash While Taking Photos
Smart-phones
today include an LED flash along with the cameras (heck some even
include flash for the front camera). While an LED flash is a handy
resource in low light, it is also a major battery drainer. Use it only
if you must, and use it wisely.
Don’t Let Your Phone Heat Up Unnecessarily
Today
we are getting phones that have powerful hardware inside a sleek frame.
Therefore, heating is a common phenomenon in most of these handsets.
Heating takes excess toll on your device’s battery life. While you
cannot totally control what’s going on inside your smart-phone, you can
at least keep a check on your phone’s ambient environment. This means,
avoid keeping your smart-phone in direct sunlight or even your pockets
for that matter (especially during summers).
Don’t Wait For Your Phone To Discharge Completely Before Charging
Many
users think it’s wise to drain the battery completely before charging
it fresh. Well, it’s time to smell coffee in that case. Most phones come
with Lithium Ion batteries and in the case of Li-ion batteries,
draining them completely before charging them again may lead to lowering
your battery life or even damaging them in some cases. It’s advisable
you keep charging your phone occasionally, instead of waiting for it to
drain out completely.
Keep A Portable Charger At Hand
It’s
always handy to keep an additional power source with you should your
phone run out of juice at the most unfortunate of times. Portable
chargers or power banks are useful devices and the market is flooded
with some really good ones today.
No comments:
Post a Comment