If you are new to the world of smartphones, by now you have probably realized that battery life is a universal issue. Across every phone model and operating system (although I do hear that Windows Phone 7 does run very light), battery life is a common problem with many help/advice threads on multiple forums still open and active.
Part of the reason battery life is such a pervasive issue is that there are a variety of ways to improve battery life, but each of them comes with the price of sacrificing some nifty feature of your phone. And then there are these work-around battery life-saver apps, some of which work amazingly and others that just make matters worse. Still amidst all the battery life confusion, there are still some proven methods.
Display
The primary source of your draining battery is your screen. For the most part, I’ve found the auto-brightness control to work fairly well. But if I’m really trying to get the most out of my battery (say, if I know I won’t be able to charge it for a while), I will disable automatic brightness control and set it to a very low brightness level (around 25%).
Remember that having a long screen timeout (the amount of inactivity time before your screen goes dark) will also slowly drain your battery. If it’s over a minute, it will definitely have an effect. However, I personally find that having a 15 second timeout is too short, and interrupts me just while I’m reading something on my phone. I keep it set at one minute, and hit the power button on the phone to turn off my screen rather than letting my phone sit and timeout.
Power Control
Another alternative that I find works extremely well is adding the “Power control” widget to one of your home screens. This allows you to quickly switch between auto-brightness, very low, medium, and very high (which I use if there’s a lot of sunlight competing with the screen) brightness levels. This power control widget should come on any remotely new phone (running Android 2.1 or higher).
In addition to setting brightness, the Power control widget also allows you to enable and disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and Auto-sync. Unfortunately, it does not have a feature to enable and disable mobile wireless (3G/4G networks), but I have found that the quickest way to do this pull down the “status bar” at the top of your phone (where all the notifications and battery life and time is), and click or unclick “Mobile data.”
Deciding whether or not to enable these features in Power control again comes down to preference. Obviously, use Bluetooth if you want to talk hand-free. As for Wi-Fi and GPS, I use it as I need it (and as it’s available, for Wi-Fi). You don’t need GPS running if you aren’t using any apps requiring them, and remember that apps requiring GPS will prompt you to enable GPS as you use them. If you are on the road or in an area where you can’t access Wi-Fi, disable it. Otherwise, your phone will use its battery locating different Wi-Fi signals that you can’t use anyway.
Auto-sync is where it really comes down to preference. I personally am fine with keeping it off and then turning it on periodically when I want my Facebook, Gmail, and Weather apps to sync with my phone. This will save battery tremendously.
Wi-Fi vs Mobile Wireless
This is one of the age-old questions of smartphones: Is it better on my battery to use Wi-Fi if it’s available or to use my network’s wireless data signal. This does of course depend on the strength of the network signal and also the speed (2G saves more than 3G which generally saves more than 4G in terms of battery life though even this is not absolute). But, in general, I’ve found that Wi-Fi will take less battery than connecting to your mobile wireless network because, once connected to Wi-Fi, your phone doesn’t have to refresh that connection to keep the signal. Of course, you should experiment between the two on your own network, but you will probably find that Wi-Fi will save more battery. Also, if you are on a limited data plan, Wi-Fi will save your data usage too.
This guest contribution was submitted by Lenore Holditch, who specializes in writing about top online colleges.