If you own an iPhone, it’s safe to say that it might just be an essential extension of your active social circle. As an effective companion helping us accomplish tasks and stay updated, iPhones are a real blessing. That is until the battery begins to drain.
Cue the groans and worry because it’s a real world struggle, especially when we need to make that phone call for work or reply to an email that is of the utmost importance. While keeping our power cords in the car or our handbag is a good idea, we shouldn’t have to plug in more often that we need to.
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To help make the most of your trusty iPhone’s battery life and improve performance without hindering your productivity, take a few minutes to explore settings that are super easy to implement for lasting endurance.
Minimize or turn off “push notifications”
Facebook and Twitter are beneficial in staying connected with family, friends and breaking news as soon as it happens, but these apps require battery power when sending off notifications and updates. Turn off all push notifications from active or unnecessary apps to conserve battery. To identify which culprits use the most energy, head to ‘Battery’ in Settings to look at usage whether from the last 24 hours or seven days; and check out the ‘Background App Refresh’ in the General section to turn off particular apps.
Say goodbye to ‘Siri’
When we’re not getting our karaoke on in the car, we love talking to Siri. But because she always works in the background as a default on iOS and awaiting your cue to talk to her, she is a culprit of battery drain. If you don’t use her and aren’t someone who finds amusement talking to an A.I. of sorts, turn her off manually by heading to ‘Siri’ in the ‘General’ section of Settings.
Enable ‘Low Power Mode’
As an exclusive feature found only on iPhones, ‘Low Power Mode’ is a valuable tool in helping your phone last longer before a charge. However since it temporarily reduces power consumption, mail fetch, background app refresh, automatic downloads, and visual effects are reduced, and “Hey Siri” is turned off. When Low Power Mode is on, the status bar will be yellow and only turn back to green when your iPhone is charged at 80 percent or higher. A study from WIRED found this mode uses 30 percent less power than in regular mode — not a huge difference, but totally helpful.
Dim the screen’s brightness
The beauty of an iPhone is how crisp and clear every image is, but that luxury drains battery life. To maximize smartphone performance, turn down the brightness to help preserve battery — anything less than 50 percent is effective. Head to ‘Display & Brightness’ found in Settings to adjust or pull up from the bottom of your screen and slide to fine-tune. It might seem hard to see at first, but you get use to the dimmer screen after a while. On a similar note, allow your screen to turn off after a few seconds of inactivity.
Disable motion effects and dynamic backgrounds
Did you ever notice when you move your iPhone, the apps move along with you? Known as the parallax effect, these gently moving icons and notifications in iOS are an awesome feature to have, but even though they create depth for an immersive Apple experience, such graphics eat up battery life. Additionally, if you’re utilizing a dynamic background — get rid of it. It might look über stellar, but they too use up battery, so opt for a still image instead.
Disable location services
Location services might be helpful when geotagging on social media, but it drains battery as it pulls from every location you’re at. Most times, apps that don’t even actively require location services are utilizing that feature, while draining battery, like photo editing apps, alarm clocks, and even Siri. While you can turn off all services, it’s probably best not to do so, especially if you rely on location services to work for apps like Google Maps — or even our beloved Starbucks. Head to Settings and check out ‘Location Services’ in ‘Privacy’ to disable any apps that might be using your iPhone to pull location information and that battery juice.
