The iPhone naturally offers impressive battery life, but
you can make it perform for even longer between
charges with a few simple tweaks.
The iPhone’s battery performance will easily get
you through a busy day, but there’s still a lot you
can do to increase it further. If you consider that
the screen and wireless connections are the two main battery
hogs and if you manage these two areas well, the benefits
will become obvious immediately. We will show you how to
manage these to increase power and also the areas that can
be tweaked to offer even more battery life between charges.
There are many tweaks you can make to increase battery life
and not all of them are obvious, but when combined you have
the ability to add an hour or two of use every day, which will be
advantageous if you are often away from a power source. Some
of these tweaks require proactive management which can take
a little time in the initial stages, but the addition of the Control
Centre means that you can also make changes in seconds
should your situation require it. If you think logically about
your requirements and take advantage of the advice offered
here, your iPhone could become a much more usable device
overnight and you may even be able to avoid upgrading to a
newer model. It’s time to manage your battery effectively.
1: Automatic brightness
Use Auto-Brightness to set the display to work
at the perfect balance between visibility and
power efficiency. Go to Settings>Display &
Brightness and tap the switch to turn it on.
2: Display time out
Go to Settings>General>Auto-Lock and then
select either 2 minutes or 5 minutes to dim the
screen earlier when not in use. This will save a
great deal of battery power.
3: Use Wi-Fi
Try to connect to Wi-Fi in place of 3G/4G as
much as possible. Wi-Fi uses less power than a
mobile network connection due to the latter’s
signal fluctuations.
4: Set Airplane Mode
When playing a game offline or even if you’re
not touching the iPhone for a while, tap the
Airplane Mode option at the top of Settings to
quickly turn off both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
5: Close unnecessary apps
Despite the fact that apps are frozen when not
in use, you should still double-press the Home
button and swipe them up off the screen to
save power.
6: Background app refreshing
Go to General in Settings and scroll down to
Background App Refresh. Now disable apps
that do not need to update in the background.
The power saving can be significant.
7: Manage location services
Tap Privacy in the left-hand column and then
select Location Services. Scroll through the
list and double-check that apps with ‘Always’
attributed to them actually require the feature.
10: Reduce your apps
Reducing the number of apps you have
installed on your iPhone will not only save
storage space, but also help preserve power. Try
to only install apps and games you need.
8: Slow down email
Go to Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then tap
Fetch New Data. Tap an email account and
change the email retrieval to Manual to save
lots of power immediately.
11: Turn Bluetooth off
You may only need to use Bluetooth
occasionally for connecting to a keyboard or
other accessories, so try disabling it at all other
times. It can drain power quite quickly.
9: Lose the tricks
In Settings>General>Accessibility set Reduce
Motion to On and Zoom to Off. Removing
these unnecessary visual tricks will have a
positive effect on your power usage.
12: Do Not Disturb
Enabling Airplane Mode overnight will save
the most power, but going to Settings>Do
Not Disturb and setting a schedule will have a
positive effect on power usage as well.
13: Monitor your usage
Go to Settings>General>Usage>Battery Usage
to see which apps are using the most power
on your iPhone. You may be able to swap some
with more frugal alternatives.
14: The right charger
Always use official chargers to preserve the
life of your iPhone battery. Replicas may be
cheaper, but they can reduce the longevity of
your battery over a period of time.
15: Simple wallpapers
When selecting a wallpaper in Settings>
Wallpaper, choose a non-dynamic wallpaper.
This will save a small amount of power and also
make the interface clearer in use.