Keeping Your Phone’s Battery In Check
Knowing how to conserve power on your mobile device can really come in handy. With disasters filling up our news feeds these days, it is important to keep our phone batteries in tip top shape. For day to day use, and, more importantly emergency situations, here are five tips on keeping your phone’s battery in check!
BRIGHTNESS: A phone’s number one battery drainer is the brightness of the screen. Keep the brightness of your screen at 50% or less to help slow down the drain - the lower the better. You will get used to the dimmer screen quite quickly. Only brighten the screen when the application that you are using calls for it or when the environment you are in calls for it. For example, when editing photos on your device or when out in bright day-light.
CONNECTIONS: Your device uses a few antennas to push and pull signals and data. These antennas can be turned on and off as needed. Bluetooth is becoming more commonly used these days. Whether it is connecting to your car or speakers, headphones or your watch. If you’re not connecting to any of these though, Bluetooth does not need to be on? The same goes for WIFI - if you’re in an area for an extended period of time without WIFI available, turn it off. Having these on all the time is unnecessary, and inevitably puts a drain on the battery. Same goes for GPS!
NOTIFICATIONS: This one kind of falls into the same category as the previous tip. The more notifications you have turned on, the more your phone is working in the background to retrieve those notifications. More work equals more battery power expenditures. Do you really need to know when someone has invited you to another game of Candy Crush? Be choosy with which notifications you really need. Prioritize!
POWER-SAVING MODES: It doesn’t matter what type of phone you have, and which operating system is on your phone - they all have an option that automatically turns on when your battery hits a certain threshold. Apple users have an option called “low-battery mode”. Android users have an option called “battery saver mode”. Both are customizable, and help take the guess work out of what you need to turn off or on to squeeze out that extra bit of battery life.
CHARGING: We’re going to save you from all the science behind how batteries work. However, did you know that charging your phone between 20% and 80% is the best thing to do to keep your device’s battery running optimally? In a nutshell, when charging is available - use it! Don’t wait for your battery to be in the red before plugging it in, top it up when you have the chance. Gone are the days when you would have to drain it completely before charging it up. That rule applies to old battery-types, and is in fact, bad for current devices.
There you have it! 5 tips for a healthy battery. Make adjusting these settings when required a habit, and your phone will thank you.
