Extending Your Battery Life

Extending Your Battery Life


These tips will be divided into two sections.  The first are basic tips that apply to any lithium ion battery, including laptop batteries and smartphones.  The second will apply directly to any Android smartphone and aiding the device in staying charged for extended times.  These will easily give you an additional 10-15% battery span throughout your day, leading to less charging and more usage.

Extension of Lithium Ion Devices


1.  Do not overcharge.  This is a common mistake, especially with laptops.  Giving your battery too much juice will use more cycles, create dependency and overheat the battery.  Overheating is an issue for lithium ion, which means you should also...

2.  Avoid unnecessary overheating.  Do not leave your phone in the sun or any heated area.  This will shorten the overall lifespan of your battery, as well as lead to potential phone damage.

3.  Allow the battery to run low.  Let your battery get below 20% before putting it on charge.  This gives the battery a full cycle and avoids inefficient overcharging.

Extension of Android Devices


1.  Turn off WiFi.  When out of the house and away from your home internet, turn the WiFi signal off.  This can greatly drain battery.  Even at home, if you are not using the web browser or GPS, leave WiFi off.

2.  Turn off Bluetooth.  Bluetooth technology takes a high amount of battery, so keep this off as much as possible.

3.  Dim your screen.  The default setting is for your screen to be at Automatic Brightness, but lowering this can save you a significant amount by a slight dimming.

Under Settings, select Display, then Brightness.  Uncheck Automatic Brightness, then drag the bar to about 10%.  The screen becomes slightly darker, but not by much.

4.  Lower Facebook update refresh.  Surprisingly, Facebook can use up to 10% of your battery life through its constant updates.  If you can go without Facebook on your phone, remove it completely.  Google+ is a good alternative social networking site similar to Facebook, and the G+ app takes up little processing power.

If you MUST have Facebook, then open the app and go to the main screen(this includes news feed, friends, messages etc. not your general news feed) you may have to do this by hitting the back button as the general default is your news feed.  From there, hit the Menu button on the bottom of your phone, and choose Settings.  The default should be 30 minutes or less, but change it to 1 or 2 hours.  Absolutely critical to your battery extension.

5.  Use Advanced Task Killer.  This is the most efficient task manager available on the Android Market.  This will close apps that are running in the background, even when you are not using them.  This does require manual use to operate efficiently.  Some managers will run automatically, but use processing power in order to do so, and therefore take up battery.  ATK is light and efficient, and will save you significant battery use.


Hope these tips work well for you.  Good luck and fortune!


*EXTRA* - After all of this, you still need to make your phone last for days like an old analog device.  There are two products available, and only for certain devices.  The first is an extended battery.  This will increase usage by ~30%, but will also make your phone larger and require a custom back door unit.  The second option is to purchase a juice case which operates as an additional battery.  This can also lead to ~50%+ battery extension.