Tired of your iPhone's battery dying so quickly? There are some precautions you can take in order to boost your battery life and conserve power to make it through those days where you aren't able to access a charger for long periods of time. Follow the suggestions below and you'll likely see noticeable benefits in your iPhone's daily battery consumption.
1. Close idle apps that are running in the background
Since Apple has integrated multi-tasking capabilities into the iPhone iOS people have been suffering from increase power usage. The simple way to effectively limit this bump in power consumption is to close all apps running in the background that you are not currently using. It is amazing how many times I've heard people complain about poor iPhone battery life just to see they have dozens of apps running in the background 24 hours a day.
2. Turn of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when not in use
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity can be a real useful feature that the iPhone harnesses. Unfortunately, when you're not looking to take advantage of either your iPhone is unaware of this and is constantly scouring for potential connection possibilities. This uses up valuable battery life that can be saved just by simply turning off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth options when not in use.
3. Limit push notifications and data fetching
Push notifications can be useful for some applications, but there are many such as games that often are set to push by default that really aren't necessary to be. By going through your notification settings and only choosing to allow push notifications from important apps you will increase your iPhone's battery life. The same goes for “fetching” your email data less frequently. If you happen to have your email configured to setup to push new data to you every 15 minutes like I do then switch that interval to every hour and you will certainly see a difference in your battery usage.
4. Lower your screen's brightness
The iPhone screen's is an extremely beautiful and clear display, but keeping it on full brightness can be a huge power waste. Keep your brightness at the halfway mark or lower to conserve battery power.
5. Limit use of location services
Location services are used often in apps that track your GPS coordinates such as Google Maps or even Facebook (for things like geo-tagging of status updates). The catch is sometimes these services are running in the background, but still unnecessarily tracking your location. This can be a MAJOR power drainer so be sure you close out any location services apps immediately after use or disable location services on any applications where it is not necessary for use.
6. As a last resort, you can buy an extended battery accessory
If none of the above options are working well enough you can always buy an extended battery accessories like the Meridian iPhone 5 Extended Battery case or an aftermarket portable battery pack that will charge your phone the same way a USB or wall outlet will.
Photo credit: Mathieu Thouvenin
