As always happens, as soon as a major change arrives for iPhone, it seems like I have a Everready battery installed and by the time I have checked my mail and gone for a short walk, the battery is FLAT!! Well, this time around I am not waiting for a Apple ios7 update to fix the battery drain, I am taking matters into my own hands.Here are 11 tips about how to make your battery last longer.
1. Restore the phone as a new device The most certain way to solve any true battery life problem is by restoring your iPhone as a 'new phone'. Having to reinstall apps is a pain, but this move helps to solve all manner of performance and battery life issues. To factory reset the phone from the handset itself, go to Settings > General and scroll right down to the bottom, to the Reset item. There are options to reset all settings and reset the phone completely. The latter is more drastic, but is sure to flush out any gremlins.
2. Turn it off and on again It’s a bit The IT Crowd, but it’s amazing how often we hear people complain about their iPhone misbehaving without even having tried to properly reset the thing. Rogue apps doing things they shouldn’t is a key reason for battery life issues in any phone, and a proper reset will fix this in many cases. iPhones aren’t really designed to be turned off all that often – and much as we expect you know how to do it, a long press on the power button (around three seconds) brings up a power off slider that turns the phone off properly. For a ‘hard’ software reset, press down on both the Home and power buttons until the screen goes black.
3. Use the quick function toggles, a lot Turning off additional features is the top tip of any frugal battery fiend. iOS 7 makes this much easier than ever before. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and you’ll bring up the Control Center. At the top of this pop-up is an array of five circular icons that toggle features on and off – Airplane mode, Bluetooth,Wi-Fi, Do Not Disturb and auto-rotate. Most people barely use Bluetooth – switch that bad boy right off – and turn Wi-Fi off when out and about unless you really need it. iOS 7 intermittently searches for new Wi-Fi networks, which is a drain on the battery.
4. Turn down screen brightness, dummy As standard iPhones use automatic brightness, taking readings from an ambient light sensor on the phone’s front to determine how bright the IPS screen’s backlight need to be. However, you can still manually determine the base level of brightness while still using this clever sensor. You’ll find the slider (and the auto brightness toggle) in the Wallpapers & Brightness menu of Settings, and also in the Control Center menu, accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.
5. Turn off AirDrop AirDrop is one of iOS’s brand new features. It lets iPhone and Macs talk to each other directly, using Wi-Fi Direct. It’s a neat idea, but it drains battery by searching for nearby iPhones. In iOS devices that support the feature, you’ll find an AirDrop toggle in the Control Center pop-up menu, accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.
6. Turn off elements of the Notifications menu Another new bit in iOS 7 is the pull-down notifications menu. As well as new emails, texts and so on, it can pull in stock market info. This requires the phone to pull it from the net, so it will drain a wee bit of battery. Plus, who really wants stock market info anyway? To turn off stock info within the Notifications bar, go to Settings > Notification Center. Here you’ll find toggles for calendar info, reminders and the stock ticker. 7. Ease up on Mail notifications Push email is one of the joys of the modern smartphone, but easing up on the frequency of email checks will reduce strain on the battery. For the best battery stamina of all, turn off push emails and make the iPhone only search for new data when you manually search. You’ll find these options in Settings > Mail > Fetch New Data. Alternatively, you can set iOS 7 to search for mail every hour, every 30 minutes or every 15 minutes. 8. Invest in a desk dock charger So simple it seems almost offensive to mention it, but charging your phone more often is a must with iOS
7. I recommend investing in a desk charger dock if you work in an office, as it’ll make keeping your phone charged much less of a pain. Apple is likely to improve battery efficiency of iOS 7 in future updates. However, it does appear to be simply a more power-hungry than iOS 6, requiring a bit more careful use if you want your phone to last more than a day.
8. Disable auto app updates; manually update at your convenience iOS 7 will now update your apps in the background. As you're connected to Wi-Fi networks (or the cellular network), your apps will remain up-to-date without bugging you. But this consumes data and power, and should be restricted for when you're free to plug in your iPhone to charge.
Tap the Settings icon, scroll down to iTunes & App Store and turn of the Updates and Apps settings. Another quick power (and data) saving tip, you can allow updates when you're on Wi-Fi only, by deselecting Use Cellular Data at the same time.
9. Turn off 'parallax' motion user interface If you slowly jiggle your iPhone in your hand, you may notice the "parallax" effect of three-dimensional icons sitting on top of your wallpaper. This effect uses internal hardware to sense the direction, speed, and motion of your movements. This, as you might expect, will drain the battery. Though flashy and visually quite cool, it's not wholly necessary if you're a power-user.
To disable the 'moving wallpaper' feature, head to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion, then flick the switch in the off position.
10. Tame your notifications (and your backlit display) Notifications alone don't cause battery drainage, but the sheer act of activating the backlit display will. Applications use notifications to inform you of what's going on in the world, such as new email, text messages, reminders and who is responding to you on social networks. It's wise to set some notifications to "silent" mode, but this requires some tinkering about in the settings.
Head to Settings > Notification Center, then scroll down. Under each category of notifications that you would like to mute, such as low-priority features like Photos or Game Center, tap through to each setting. Under Alert Style, simply tap None (the left-most graphic). Repeat for each setting.
11. Regularly close unused or dormant apps Some iPhone apps don't completely close when they're not longer being used. Instead they lie dormant in the background. When using memory or battery intensive applications, these are still churning up power in the background. It's suggested that when you no longer need to use an app, close it down completely.
In an unlocked state, double-press the Home button on your iPhone, and swipe up on any open app to close it. You can then return to your device by pressing the Home button again, or tapping the very first 'card'.
Summary... hope that helps. If you have any tricks let me know in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment