Running out of battery isn’t a pleasant feeling and does not fit into the equation of many. But when you have a phone such as the iPhone there are two other reasons as to why you can not afford to run out of battery. The foremost being that the iPhone does not have a removable battery, so you can not carry a spare battery along with you to use in case you run out of battery. And when you have the Jesus phone to flaunt around, there is hardly anything to show without the battery! So make sure you follow the tips mentioned below to have safe your battery for critical times.
Tip 1 : Turn Wi-Fi off when not needed
The most common source of battery drainage in the iPhone is leaving Wi-Fi on when not in use. Wi-Fi sucks up battery as it continuously tries to find available Wi-Fi networks. Although leaving Wi-Fi on can save you a few bucks if you land in a free Wi-Fi hotspot and have set the iPhone to connect automatically to networks, as iPhone uses Wi-Fi as the preferred mode of data transfer rather than EDGE/3G. When in a non-Wi-Fi location for a long time, it is advisable to turn off the Wi-Fi.
Tip 2 : Turn off Bluetooth
We often forget to switch off Bluetooth after we remove the bluetooth headset and are not going to use it in near future. Although bluetooth uses significantly less amount of power than Wi-Fi but that is not a good enough excuse to leave it on! Don’t forget to turn off bluetooth if you do not need to use a bluetooth headset.
Tip 3 : Set Push/Fetch settings appropriately
E-mail savvy guys tend to get aggressive me Push/Fetch settings and set it to minimum so that they get to know about new mails ASAP. But if you can survive by getting to know about new emails a few minutes late then you can save some precious battery life. Push settings work only for MobileMe and for other providers you have the Fetch settings. You can set MobileMe to Fetch also if you do not receive work emails on your MobileMe account.
15 minutes is the least interval you can set to repeatedly check for emails. 30 minutes, hourly and manually are the other settings you can choose with lesser aggressive saving you precious battery time. Also you can disable fetching messages for certain email accounts on which you do not receive frequent/important emails.
Tip 4 : Turn off 3G if not available
Although you didn’t buy the iPhone 3G for turning off the 3G but then the sad part is that 3G service is not available in all parts. So if you do not receive 3G service in your area or you are traveling to a region which does not have 3G, make sure you flip that 3G switch to off to avoid iPhone 3G from searching for 3G networks all the time.
Tip 5 : Minimise use of Location Services
Location services refers to the use of GPS, either by Google Maps or other applications. GPS is a power hog and can suck up power very fast. Apple granted access of GPS to other applications too, if required so that they can locate your current location to server you better. Twitterific is an excellent example of this as it uses your current location data sent by the GPS to serve you tweets of people in areas adjacent to it.
You can set Location Services to Off in the settings menu if you do not want to allow applications to use GPS data. This disables the GPS completely and in order to use Google Maps also, you would have to turn on the location services.
Tip 6 : Set appropriate brightness level
This is a very important tip and should also be practiced in emergency situations. Thankfully you can change the brightness of the screen on your iPhone. Higher levels of brightness suck up battery power faster, leaving you with no battery in critical times. Set the brightness level appropriately and also turn on Auto brightness. Auto brightness uses the integrated light sensors in the iPhone to sense the surrounding lighting conditions and alter the brightness level accordingly.
If you are low on battery, then you should move that brightness slider to extreme left to help your iPhone survive till you reach home or a power outlet. Do not rely on auto brightness to much as it alters the brightness level slightly with respect to what you have set.
Tip 7 : Upgrade to latest firmware
Apple releases firmware updates to the iPhone frequently which have both performance and feature updates. The v2.1 firmware released for the iPhone, according to Apple had significantly better battery life. So you should also check for latest firmware updates for your iPhone and update it accordingly. The best part about the updates is that they are free!
Tip 8 : Minimise auto-lock time
Auto-lock puts your iPhone in sleep mode where it utilises minimum power. If you have set the auto-lock time to a higher level then you can consider it setting it to a lower level to put the iPhone in sleep mode faster after use. You can manually lock the iPhone by soft pressing the power button at the top.
Tip 9 : Shutdown apps before locking
Not many people know about this, but if you lock your phone while an app is running, that is put it in sleep mode then it continues to run the app even in sleep mode. So depending on the app, your iPhone battery drains out. This is applicable even if the phone goes into sleep mode using the auto-lock feature. So shutdown the app by pressing the Home button when you have finished using it.
Tip 10 : Tweak Sound/Vibrate settings
Turning down the volume of your ringtone is an option, but the one that would significantly save battery life is turning off the vibrate option. Vibration uses considerable amount of battery, so turn it off if you are in a silent environment.
These tips can help your iPhone battery last longer. Know any other tips? Don’t forget to share them
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