The first sign of an iPhone coming into its twilight years is a battery that isn’t lasting. You leave the house with 100%, and by the time you’ve arrived at the office, having made a conscious effort not to scroll while on the commute, you still somehow are met with 5%. It’s a pain when you’re not ready to part ways with it yet. Fear not, we’ve got some tips and tricks that should keep your phone fighting fit for a marathon rather than a sprint. Read on for our tips on saving battery life in your iPhone.
Optimize your settings
There are a few little things you can do to make your iPhone battery last longer. The two main ones are to adjust your screen brightness and to use Wi-Fi.
Chances are your screen is too bright, which is doing damage to your eyes anyway, so there’s another reason to turn things down a bit. But you can also turn on auto-brightness on your phone. It means that when the sun hits your screen, your phone will know to turn the brightness down. You’re not wasting energy, and it’s actually possible to read what’s on your screen.
The other way is to not use your data where you can. Connecting to data takes more power, and you typically get charged for a limited amount every month, so it’s best for your wallet and your battery to log into the Wi-Fi wherever possible. While at work, while commuting, in the café, or at home: ask for the Wi-Fi password.
Make use of low-power mode
If you’re looking to extend your battery throughout the day, it would be useful to make a habit of turning on low power mode. You can usually access it via your dashboard (and if not, you can add it to your dashboard in the settings), and you’ll know it’s working because your little battery symbol will turn from green to yellow.
The low power mode allows everything to run, just at a lesser level. You might spot your screen auto-brightness going down, and background refresh will stop, your mail will need to be prompted to come in, etc. But other than that, things tend to run as usual. Your notifications will still come through right away if you’re waiting for someone to reply, for example. Stick it on while you’re driving, while you play live casino games, while you are answering emails, and watching cat videos on YouTube – in fact, just about everything you do on the phone can be done in low power mode. It can only help to make things last longer.
Look at your battery usage
While you’re in the settings to turn on low power mode, you might want to look at your battery usage. Maybe there’s something there that’s eating up all your power. Head to Settings, then Battery to get a full list of your apps and how much power they use, complete with a battery diagnostic. Plus, there are indicators that tell you if an app is refreshing in the background. Maybe this app doesn’t merit this and might as well be dumped and deleted from your phone? Or, you can turn off the option for background refresh by going to Settings, General, then Background App Refresh.
Get a battery replacement
If all else fails and your iPhone has just gotten to that point that it simply will not retain its charge, you can always get a battery replacement. This is a good option if you can’t face or afford a new phone right now. Thanks to a few lawsuits and regulations, Apple now offers battery replacements. You can go into your nearest Apple store and ask them to replace your battery for as little as $49, depending on the model. You can check for yourself how much it would cost to replace the battery on your phone on the Apple support website and even arrange to have it delivered to Apple for repair.