5 Tips to Increase Your Cell Phone’s Battery Life

Poor battery life is a problem that affects all cell phone owners. Even in 2015, with all the advances in smartphone technology, battery life remains the one area that unquestionably needs improvement.

Until the day comes when our phone charging stations are ubiquitously available in stores, restaurants and other public venues, here are 5 practical tips you can apply to boost your cell phone’s battery life:

1. Turn down the brightness

This may sound obvious, but the longer your phone screen is on and the brighter it is, the faster you’ll drain your battery. Turning down your phone’s brightness level and disabling the automatic brightness feature is perhaps the easiest and most effective way to boost your battery life.

2. Turn off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS when not in use

Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS are the biggest and baddest cell phone battery suckers. Keeping any of them turned on means your cell phone is constantly seeking signals and connections from the outside world. Turn these features off when you’re not using them (individually, or all at once by switching to Airplane Mode) and you’ll save at least an hour of precious juice!

3. Close apps running in the background

Running several apps at a time – also referred to as multitasking – is something we’re all guilty of. But the unfortunate reality is that every app you run utilizes a portion of your cell phone’s processor cycles. By trimming or swiping away all the apps you’re not using, you can dramatically reduce your CPU’s workload, thereby decreasing your phone’s power consumption.

4. Don’t use vibrate mode

Unless absolutely necessary, avoid using vibrate. A ringtone is created by making a tiny membrane in your phone’s speaker vibrate just enough to produce sound. In comparison, your phone’s vibration motor needs to rotate a small off-center weight in order to make your phone shake, requiring significantly more power  than a ringtone. If you really can’t be disturbed and want to save power, try turning off all your notifications and leave your phone within sight so you can see when a new call is coming in.

5. Turn off Push mail and notifications

Push notifies you of emails in real time, which may seem handy, but it can quickly drain your phone’s battery life. Rather than allowing email to be pushed to your phone at any time, change your setting either to Fetch (for example, every 30 minutes) or to Manual, which is even more battery-friendly because it only checks for new emails when you open your mail app to check your mail manually.