iPhone Save Battery

The frustration of a dead battery will be familiar to every iPhone owner. But what can you do to avoid it, other than use your phone less? Apple is good at squeezing maximum performance out of the hardware in the iPhone and that’s one of the reasons that the iPhone’s battery is comparatively small. The first iPhone had a 1400mAh battery, and seven years later the iPhone 6 has a 1810mAh battery, although the iPhone 6 Plus has a whopping 2910mAh offering.

Many of the current Android flagships have batteries rated over 3000mAh, but then they have much bigger displays - the 6 Plus aside, of course. But that doesn’t mean we still don’t struggle to keep our iPhones going for longer, no matter how big the battery pack. Until the next big leap in battery or charging technology comes along, we’ll have to rely on smarts to get the most out of our iPhones. Here are a few simple tips you can follow to get a whole lot more juice from your Apple smartphone.

iPhone Save Battery Tips

You might consider your iPhone or iPad to be the most amazing technology in the world, but they’re little more than metal-and-glass slabs when out of juice. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be like that. We’ve got some brilliant battery-saving tricks and tips that will help you keep the iPhone’s battery running all day long.

These tips will also help you to get your iPhone to last a little bit longer when you’re away for the weekend without your charging cable; during a power-cut; or when you are pootling along on a slow train, trying to coax your iPhone into surviving what would otherwise be a long and boring journey home.

Keep an eye on Signal Strength

The biggest culprit for rapid battery drain is often a weak signal, but there isn’t a great deal you can do about that. If you’re in an area with a poor signal then you might consider switching Airplane mode on, which stops the constant searching that sucks the life from your phone.

You should also always use Wi-Fi instead of cellular data whenever possible too, as that offers a more stable connection and will stop all that battery-abusing searching for a signal.

Turn on iOS 9 Low Power Mode

There is a new mode in iOS 9 that reduces power requirements when you have 20% battery remaining. Apple claims the new mode will allow you to gain three extra hours of battery life from your iPhone. The Low Power Mode isn’t a default option that happens automatically. When you get to lower battery levels you’ll see a warning flash up and the option to turn on Low Power Mode. Do so and you will notice that the battery indicator turns orange rather than red (or the black it would be if you had plenty of power).

Over on Birchtree they have run tests and found that: "On average, my battery was at 17% at midnight in normal mode, but 49% in Low Power Mode." The big question is, can you enable Low Power Mode without waiting for your iPhone to reach 20%? You can, here’s how.

Go to Settings > Battery > turn on Low Power Mode.

When Low Power Mode is on it will reduce power consumption, stopping Mail fetch, Hey Siri, background app refresh, automatic downloads, and some visual effects. We actually have all those features turned off on our iPhone already, and yet the Low Power Mode still seems to have an effect.

Turn off Apps Notifications

Some apps will spam you with pointless news. How many of the notifications you get do you actually want to see? In most cases, very few. Every one of them is sucking down some battery life, so cut them off at the source. Go to settings > notification centre and tap on any apps you don’t want notifications from. Then choose "none" under the alert style, and turn "badge icon" and "sounds" off.

Change Display Settings

Your display is costly to power, so you want it to shut down quickly when you aren’t using it. Go to Settings > General > Auto-lock and see if you can live with a shorter time before the screen auto-locks.

You should also head to Settings > Wallpaper & brightness and turn "Auto-brightness" off to save some battery. Set the brightness as low as you can and only adjust it up when needed and you’ll save a decent chunk of power – although this might mean you can’t always see your phone screen in direct sunlight.

Which Apps are Using the Battery?

In iOS 9 and 8 you can see exactly which apps are the biggest battery drainers. Go to Settings > General > Battery and scroll down to see which of your apps were the biggest battery guzzlers in the past 24 hours, or last 7 days. Expect to see Facebook up the top, Safari also seems to be quite draining. But obviously these are also frequently used apps.

Not any apps that highlight background activity as battery draining, perhaps you need to address what this background activity is. We discuss this below. Speaking of Facebook... Facebook is being accused of being a battery hog on the iPhone in iOS 9.

According to reports, and confirmed by Facebook itself, the iOS app uses a lot of resources in the background to run processes. The real issue is the fact that battery drain occurs even if iPhone owners have background app refresh disabled in Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Unfortunately it appears that the only way to stop the battery drain is to remove the app. If you can’t face life without it, you can always access the Facebook website via Safari. Or you can wait – Facebook has told TechCrunch that it is working on a fix.

Stop iPhone battery drain: Disable Bluetooth

If you have Bluetooth on the chances are you don’t need it. Swipe up on Control Centre to check if Bluetooth is on, if it is you will see the B-like icon highlighted in white. Bluetooth is usually left on after an iOS update is installed, so you may not even be aware that it is on. If it is, tap the Bluetooth icon to turn it off. You can also tap General > Bluetooth and set Bluetooth to Off. Bluetooth is considered to be a battery-drainer. If you’re not using it to connect to a speaker, headphones, or other accessory, or to use the new Continuity features in iOS, then switch it off.

Stop the Animations

Some people like how Apple’s parallax feature makes it seem like the wallpaper can move behind the apps; others think it’s dizzying. Either way, it’s one of the biggest offenders of battery life for iOS. You don’t need dynamic backgrounds and parallax "3D" effects. They’re fun but they’re munching your power. Pick a static image or a favourite photo in Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness, then choose "Wallpaper" and turn "Reduce Motion" on in Settings > General > Accessibility.

Get eMail Manually

There’s some argument about the benefits of push email (arriving when sent) versus fetch (the phone checks at pre-agreed intervals), and it really depends on how much email you get and how often you have it syncing.

Push should only send from the server when a mail comes in, and it will be more power efficient than checking every five minutes with fetch, but if you get a lot of email then push could drain the battery faster than fetch with a slower refresh time of an hour.

Assuming you’re only going to check your email once every couple of hours, getting it manually is going to save you power over both options… but you’ll have to actually remember to do it!

Reduce Background Refreshing

People imagine that swiping apps closed in the multitasking menu is saving power, but you really need to be taking a look in Settings > General > Background App refresh to really make a difference.

Allowing apps to refresh themselves like this is a big drain on your battery. Go down the list and turn off everything you don’t need - Facebook in particular can drain your battery really quickly. These apps still refresh when you actually load them up, which is a lot more efficient for your battery.

Kill Location Tracking

Unless you’re actually using the Maps app it’s debatable how useful location tracking is for you. What isn’t up for debate is the fact that it eats your battery. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and turn them all off, or just select apps you don’t want tracking you.

You should also look in Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services, and think about turning off "Frequent Locations", "Location-Based iAds", and maybe "Diagnostics & Usage".

Keep it Cool

Heat is really bad for batteries. Don’t leave your iPhone lying in direct sunlight. If it gets really hot when you’re gaming or when you’re charging it, then remove the case, if you use one.

Cut the iCloud

Do you need everything to sync with iCloud? Go into Settings > iCloud and take a look at the list. Cloud syncing eats power and data, so it’s worth turning off anything you aren’t bothered about – plus you won’t find you’ve suddenly run out of storage and are constantly getting your iPhone moaning at you about it.

How to Extend iPhone Battery Life

Believe it or not, but the more often you charge a battery, the less energy it can hold. Counter-intuitive, I know, but it’s one of the quirks of modern batteries. Over time, the battery remembers the point in its drain at which you recharge it and starts to treat that as its limit. For example, if you always charge your iPhone when it’s still got 75% of its battery left, eventually the battery will start to behave as if it’s total capacity is 75%, not the original 100%.

The way to get around your battery losing capacity in this way is to use your phone as long as possible before charging it. Try waiting until your phone is down to 20% (or even less!) battery before charging. Just make sure not to wait too long.

If all else fails, just get more battery. A few accessory makers like mophie and Kensington offer extended life batteries for the iPhone. If you need so much battery life that none of these tips help you enough, an extended life battery is your best bet. With one, you’ll get days more standby time and many hours more use.