10 Amazing Ways To Make Your Phone Battery Last Longer

If it seems like your phone battery just doesn't last as long as it used to, you're not wrong. It doesn't seem like that long ago that you could go a week between charges. Now, if you can go more than a couple of days without plugging your phone in, you're either not using it, or you're doing something the rest of us would love to know. Of course, phones are capable of a whole lot more than they used to be, so there are many more stresses on the battery's life. However, there are a number of strategies you can take to stretch the life of your battery. After all, what good is a mobile phone if you're always plugging it in?

What do you do to make your phone battery last longer?

1. Lower your screen's brightness.

Nothing drains your battery like the thing you're looking at and interacting with the most. The lower you keep your brightness, the less strain it will put on your battery.

2. Charge it in smaller intervals.

With a lithium-ion battery, you don't need to drain the whole battery and then fully charge it, like you would with a nickel-based battery. Even charging it to 100 percent puts stress on the battery, so charging it overnight will degrade the battery. According to the experts, you should aim to keep it at a charge of between 50 and 80 percent.

3. Take a screenshot of directions so you don't need to stay connected to the internet.

Sure, it's not as convenient as having your GPS read the directions out to you, but wouldn't it be worse to have your battery die halfway there and not have access to the rest of the route? And if you're exploring a foreign city on foot, you don't want your phone constantly searching for a connection.

4. Close apps you're not using.

Just because you're not using an app doesn't mean it's not waiting to be used. When they're active, your phone thinks you're multitasking, so those apps drain bits of your battery power, even if you're not using them at the moment. Close all those apps still running in the background, especially Facebook.

5. Don't use the flash on your camera.

If you think your phone's brightness drains the battery, just think of what an ultra-bright burst of light does. Try to take pictures in brighter lighting, where you don't need the flash.

6. Avoid extreme temperatures.

Extreme hot and cold are hard on your battery. At the height of summer and the darkest night of winter, don't leave your phone in your car. Keep your phone near you — or get the best of both worlds and keep it in a Baubax jacket that charges your battery wirelessly — in the winter. However, heat is worse than cold for your phone; at an average temperature of 77 degrees, a lithium-ion battery will lose 20 percent of its capacity in a year.

7. Turn Bluetooth off.

Unless you're connecting to a specific Bluetooth device, turn it off. While it's on, your phone will search around for the nearest Bluetooth device to connect to, wasting energy in the process.

8. Turn off location services.

Locations services require a constant connection between your phone, the network, and GPS satellites, which is much more complicated — and thus more energy-consuming — than just finding a Bluetooth signal.

9. Turn off Wi-Fi.

Again, searching for a strong signal kills your battery. Unless you know there's a good, secure signal nearby, don't bother keeping Wi-Fi on.

10. Turn off vibrate.

Compared to setting off a ringtone, making a little engine vibrate requires a lot of power. Unless you absolutely need the vibrate function on, stick with ringtones (preferably lower volume) to save battery power.