Extend Your Phone’s Battery Life: Top Tips & Tricks

Dealing with a constantly dying phone battery is so frustrating!

When you first bought your phone, you probably enjoyed hours and hours of use without having to worry about the battery dying. You went to work and didn’t have to remember to bring your charging cable to plug in midday. You may have traveled without needing to carry a portable charger. If you fell asleep without plugging in your phone, you might have even been fine for the first several hours of the next day! 

But lately, it seems like your phone’s battery plunges as soon as you leave the house! You’re carrying chargers and cables and plugging in throughout the day, much to your frustration. 

Let’s figure out some ways to put a stop to battery drain and make your smartphone battery last longer! You may not be able to get back to the amazing battery life your phone had when you first bought it, but you can definitely take action to avoid the irritation of constantly needing to recharge. 

Understanding Why Batteries Die So Fast

What makes a phone battery die so quickly? 

Well, that depends on how you are using it! Phone batteries aren’t designed to last forever. In fact, the lifespan of most lithium-ion batteries is only 300-500 cycles, which means 300-500 times that you can charge your device. If you charge your device every night, that’s only between 1-2 years of battery life. 

Some people only charge their phones when the battery is nearly dead, while others charge it as soon as it displays a lower charge than they are comfortable with. A battery cycle is typically counted as one full charge, from 0 to 100. However, these are estimates because of how everyone charges their phone slightly differently. 

15 Ways to Make Your Phone Battery Last Longer

If you’re ready to get more out of your phone’s battery, these strategies will help!

1. Don’t let your phone battery drop to 0%. 

You may have heard the advice to always let your phone discharge its battery completely before plugging it in. However, that advice was from a time before lithium ion batteries, which can be depleted faster if they are allowed to frequently discharge to 0%. 

To protect your battery life, avoid letting your phone totally run out of battery power. 

2. Don’t always charge your phone to 100%, either. 

This seems counter-intuitive if you’re trying to preserve battery life, but some of today’s tech experts recommend that you avoid charging your phone all the way to 100%. This is because lithium ion batteries can have trouble with extremes – both draining to 0% or continuing to overcharge once you hit 100%. 

3. Reduce your phone’s brightness and turn off automatic screen adjustments. 

Your screen is one of the biggest sources of battery drain. Reducing the brightness will help to preserve your battery. Although you may think that automatic screen adjustments would reduce battery life because you aren’t using as much brightness in low light, the problem is the constant adjustment of the brightness. This is a battery waster. 

4. Shorten the amount of time that your screen stays active before turning off. 

Your phone’s screen goes dark after a certain number of seconds of being idle. You can set this amount of time yourself. Chopping down your screen’s “on time” by just a second or two each time can help keep your phone charged for longer every day! 

5. Use dark mode. 

Another great way to reduce your screen’s impact on your battery life is to use dark mode. You can set your phone to automatically switch to dark mode in low light on either an Android or an iPhone. 

6. Be careful about your use of WiFi. 

It’s true that Wi-Fi uses less battery than connecting to the internet via a network, but Wi-Fi can drain your battery if you are on the move. Your battery may be drained faster if your phone is constantly trying to connect to networks. 

If you’re at home, work, or some other location for an extended period of time, connecting to Wi-Fi will preserve your battery. But if you’re driving, traveling, walking around town, or otherwise moving from place to place, turn off Wi-Fi until you are somewhere that you can connect. 

7. Avoid extreme temperatures. 

Leaving your phone exposed to extreme heat or cold is bad for several reasons, including damaging the battery. Don’t leave your phone in the car in cold or hot temperatures, and avoid leaving your phone in the sun while you’re sunbathing, camping, gardening, or doing any other outdoor activities. 

8. Ditch the Facebook app. 

Facebook and Facebook Messenger are both notorious for battery drain. If you’re not able to delete these apps altogether, a few tricks will help to limit their impact on your phone’s power: 

• Turn off notifications
• Turn off the feature that autoplays videos 
• Turn off location tracking within the app

9. Get rid of animated wallpapers. 

Animated wallpapers, or those that have cool effects, are a great option for personalizing your phone and brightening your day – until you realize that they’re having a negative impact on your battery life. Switch to a still photo that you enjoy instead of a gimmicky moving background. 

10. Turn off your phone’s listening features. 

You know how people love to use Siri, Alexa, or “Okay, Google” to prompt their virtual assistants to activate? These popular features require your phone to constantly listen for those “hotwords,” which uses valuable battery power. Turning off these features will help a lot! 

11. Check your apps. 

Some apps use a lot of battery, even if you don’t realize it. You may not even use the apps very often, but they’re running in the background, utilizing the battery. 

To find out which iPhone apps are draining your battery, follow these steps: 

• Go to Settings on your phone
• Tap “Battery” 
• Look at the Battery Usage for each app. 

You can adjust the settings to look at the previous 24 hours or the previous 7 or 10 days of usage, depending on what version of iOS your phone uses. 

To find out which Android apps are draining your battery, these are the steps to take: 

• Open your Settings
• Choose “Battery”
• Select “Battery usage”
• Scroll down to see the list of apps to determine which ones have used the most battery 

12. Reduce your video time.

Watching videos is a big battery drain. If you need to conserve battery life, avoid watching videos until after you have had a chance to charge your phone. 

13. Use Airplane Mode.

Airplane Mode is a great way to quickly conserve your battery in a pinch. Airplane Mode prevents your phone from using many of its apps, especially those that run in the background without you realizing it.

14. Turn off location tracking. 

There are a few drawbacks to turning off location tracking, like less effective location-based search results, but it’s still useful for reducing your phone’s battery usage.

15. Don’t use fast-charging features or cables. 

A lot of modern phones have built-in features like fast charging, and there are a lot of products on the market like fast-charging cables. Fast charging doesn’t automatically damage your phone but the heat that it generates can cause damage. Most of the time, you should avoid these options. 

The Final Say on Saving Your Phone’s Battery

Preserving your phone’s battery life requires some habit changes, but the effort pays off in less daily frustration. Don’t wait until your phone is constantly in the red. Implement two or three of these battery-extending tips today. Little adjustments like using dark mode, limiting Facebook, and ditching animated wallpapers make a difference over time!