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5 ways to make your smartphone battery last LONGER

Last updated on: January 26, 2013 17:54 IST

Smartphones are getting better with every new release. They are getting bigger, packing-in more processing power, and they also tend to have larger batteries. However, in spite of the larger batteries that smartphones sport these days, you would be hard pressed to find an owner managing to get more than two days on a single charge of the phone.

Discussed here are some of the ways that can help you prolong the time between recharges. Although other steps may vary depending on the device, the ones discussed here are common across most platforms and devices.

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5 ways to make your smartphone battery last LONGER

Last updated on: January 26, 2013 17:54 IST

1. Reduce brightness

All smartphones come with an inbuilt auto-brightness option that adjusts the screen's brightness in accordance with system activity and ambient light levels. This feature ensures the screen of your phone uses lesser amounts of power than it would otherwise in full brightness settings.

However, you can go a step further and disable 'Auto-brightness' altogether and instead dim the brightness manually. This would give even better results.

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5 ways to make your smartphone battery last LONGER

Last updated on: January 26, 2013 17:54 IST

2. Choose shorter screen timeouts

After being idle for some time, your device can turn off the screen; this helps in saving battery life to a great degree. While some smartphones can be made to enter this mode through the pressing of a button, some others tend to do so automatically.

You can set the time after which the screen turns off automatically. Known as 'Screen timeout', set this time as low as possible (30-60 seconds is said to be ideal).

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5 ways to make your smartphone battery last LONGER

Last updated on: January 26, 2013 17:54 IST

3. Control the notifications

Push notifications tend to be real power hogs as they are constantly synchronised with servers. For Android phones, one can either turn this feature off altogether through the settings or turn off syncing for certain services only.

The same can also be done with iOS devices through the settings option that allows you to switch off the notifications of each app individually.

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5 ways to make your smartphone battery last LONGER

Last updated on: January 26, 2013 17:54 IST

4. Limit the number of simultaneous apps

If there is an app that you are done using or have no use for then it's a good thing to kill the same instantly.

Most of the apps continue to run in the background unless they are manually killed and thus put unnecessary burden on the battery. This is not helped by the fact that apps consume a lot of battery power.

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5 ways to make your smartphone battery last LONGER

Last updated on: January 26, 2013 17:54 IST

5. Turning off utilities

Turning off the location services helps quite a bit in saving power. Doing so also saves your phone's data usage by a fair margin.

The 'Airplane Mode' disables most wireless aspects of your phone including operator network, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and location services like GPS. Turning off the vibration mode also has a positive effect on the battery life.

In addition to these things, always remember to keep your mobile device in the safe temperature range (32-95 degrees F) for the best battery health.

Are you a gadget/gaming wizard/afficianado? Would you like to write on gadgets, gaming, the Internet, software technologies, OSs and the works for us? Send us a sample of your writing to gadgetsandgaming@rediffmail.com with the subject as 'I'm a tech wizard/afficianado' and we will get in touch with you.