Battery Life Saving Tips – Truth or Fiction (Part 1)
The post Battery Life Saving Tips – Truth or Fiction (Part 1) appeared first on RAVPower.
Does it always seem like your phone runs out of battery? If your phone seems to be permanently tethered to a charger or power bank, it can seem like there never is enough power. Thankfully, there are a few quick and easy methods that we can do to maximize our phone battery life. Join us as we explore which methods help and which methods make no difference to battery performance.
Method 1: Turn down the screen brightness
Does It Improve Battery Life? True
Info: A bright screen is one of the BIGGEST battery killers and it’s one of the first things people do to conserve a dwindling battery. It takes a lot of power to light the screen; with the more light used, the more power spent. When using your phone, turn down the brightness (but not so much you cannot see!). If using apps that don’t require the screen to be on such as music players, turn off the screen to prevent it from using valuable battery life.
Method 2: Close unused apps
Does It Improve Battery Life? False
Info: This is another BIG misconception that people seem to have. It almost makes sense – having an app open will use battery power so closing it will help save power, right? Only the infrastructure on Apple and Android phones doesn’t work that way. Apps actually belong in different states including when active, when inactive, when operating in the background, and when suspended. All these states use different amounts of power, including barely any battery power!
So why doesn’t closing apps work? If an app is suspended, it actually uses less battery power to keep in suspension than it does to activate an app that is not running at all. Therefore, while it appears that closing an app means your battery is not being used, the architecture of phones ensures that unused apps are not actually draining a lot of power. Rather, continually closing and opening a completely inactive app is likely to consume more battery power. Even Apple have confirmed that closing unused apps help saving battery.
Method 3: Turn off extras animations, vibrations, and automatic downloads
Does It Improve Battery Life? True
Info: Some of the little things that go into helping you have a more enjoyable phone experience are the things that are the biggest battery drainers. Take for instance vibration alerts. Something as innocuous as that actually costs you precious battery life. Another helpful tool which actually taxes the battery is automatic downloads. While it’s nice to not need to manually download updates that iron out any kinks to your favorite apps, you can ensure you have enough battery life to enjoy those apps by manually updating them. For those serious about saving power, switch off extra animations like Motion on iOS, which adds a parallax effect to icons. Savvy Android users can access the Developer Options which is a hidden menu to scale down animations. It looks flashy and is somewhat cool but ultimately adds nothing aside from a nifty little effect.
Method 4: Switch email retrieval methods
Does It Improve Battery Life? True
Info: Phones typically have three email retrieval methods:
- Push: New emails will automatically arrive at your email inbox in real time
- Fetch: Will routinely check into the email server for new emails on a timed basis
- Manual: The phone will not check with the email server meaning you need to manually check your email inbox
Whereas push allows you to instantly receive new emails, fetch on the other hand has delay between checking. Since push is always connecting to the email server to see if new emails are coming in, a lot more battery is used. To save on battery, switch your email retrieval from push to fetch. If you really want to save on power, you can set it to manual so emails arrive only when you connect yourself. Changing methods is particularly helpful if you have several mail accounts connected or if you constantly receive emails and find that constantly connecting is draining your power.
We hope this clarifies any questions or practices you have to maximize your battery life. Join us next week for Battery Saving Tips Part 2 for another list of battery saving methods and myths.
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The post Battery Life Saving Tips – Truth or Fiction (Part 1) appeared first on RAVPower.