Improving battery life of your smartphone !!

There has been a lot of buzz going on with the performance of the latest smartphones. There is no denying that the new devices are much better in performance , memory and storage. But one place most them fail to impress is the battery life. Let’s see how we can get some more juice out of them.

My first phone was a Nokia 3310 and I can still recollect that it had enough juice to last for more than 2 days with a single charge. But the current smartphones are having a very difficult time keeping up till end of the day from morning.

The truth about mAH

Most of us are aware that the mAH is the power that the battery can hold. The higher the mAH, more would be the power backup. But one thing that we all ignore is that in most of the latest devices, more mAH does not give more backup. Reason being the following:

1. Processor : The devices boast latest quad core ( even octa core processors) and more number of cores means more power consumed. So when it comes to the battery backup , don’t expect more time from a octa core processor with 3300 mAH than a quad core with 2300 mAH battery.
2. Screen size : Bigger the screen size, more the power it requires to light up the screen.

How to get more juice ??

Now lets see how we can improve the battery life of our smart phone. Our mission is to at least make the device stay away from the power outlet till the time you sleep from morning.

Please note that I will be providing some guidance based on the Android devices since I am currently using an android device 🙂

1. Know the usage : The very first step of any optimization is to know where we are having this battery drain. For that , click on the battery icon on your notification drawer or goto Settings -> Battery and it will list the apps and percentage of power they have used.
   This will give you an idea of the app that is currently using the maximum juice in your device. The screen also shows the approximate time remaining. You need to note that this time is indicative based on your usage history and can vary based on your usage.
2. Avoid unnecessary apps : You need to first make sure that your device does not have unnecessary apps. That includes social networking, IMs and other news reading apps. They all tend to sync unnecessarily and incessantly sometimes. It doesn’t mean that you need to clear off all the apps ( after all you have got a pretty powerful “smartphone” ). You just need to make sure that you don’t have any apps in the battery list that you really use.
   

   One of the most power hungry app that always topped my list was Facebook ( No offence Mark !!) . What I did was to start using the mobile version and added the bookmark to the site in home screen. That drastically improved the battery and I am getting a similar experience as in mobile app.
   I did the same for twitter as well.

3. Turn off the sync :  Most  of you might have experienced  a battery drain even when the phone display is off ( mostly when you have kept the phone idle during the night time). The reason behind this is that your applications  are constantly trying to sync with the cloud. This is something you can’t avoid for a smart phone. But this is something you can take control of .
   If possible ,I would  strongly recommend that you turn off WiFi and data when you are going to sleep. But this may not be practical always. Read on for all of you who need to wake up to the little events that happened in the night.
   First of all,  you need to make sure that you are aware of what all things are getting sync when you your phone is idle. Some of the stuff that get sync are of no practical use.
   To find that , head to Settings -> Accounts . There you will have all the application accounts listed and you can tap on each of them and turn off the sync if not required.
   One major app you need to look our for is Google account. There are a number of syncs listed under this. You may turn off the syncs that you don’t need .
   

   One more place where you can save the sync is on the emails. Most of us has got more than one email accounts ( or clients ) configured. They are also a major source of sync .
   I have set one of my accounts as the primary account and for all the others, I have kept the sync interval to a higher value.

4. Charging habits : You may also improve the battery life and power backup by some tweaks in  your charging habits. For me, I always put my phone on charging mode for the night ( 12 am to 6 am ) . Most of the modern day chargers and phones are smart enough to not over charge the device. This gives me a device with full charge for day to start with and with the above tweaks I can get juice till the end of the day .
5. Brightness : All of us keep the device on for most part of our day for checking notifications or watching videos. This will have a big impact on the battery life.
   The latest devices are having really nice displays and they are pretty bright in normal conditions. I always turn off automatic display and keep it to a minimum ( yet readable in sunlight ) settings.

These are small things I have tried successfully with my smart phone ( One plus two ) . Some of these may not be applicable/acceptable to you. But I can assure you that there is no magic application out there which can improve the battery backup by a tap. You can mix and try some of the above and see if a particular setup works for your style of usage.

With Love
S