In depth: 12 Android battery life tips and tricks

Page 1 of 2Introduction: tips 1-6 Getting the most out of your phone's power pack

Batteries are growing bigger with every passing year, but we're not seeing a huge benefit because our Android devices are demanding more and more out of them. Battery life still tops the complaint charts for smartphone owners tired of the daily charging routine.

The first Android smartphone, the HTC Dream, had a 1,150mAh battery, but it also had a 3.2-inch display. The Samsung Galaxy S5 has a 2,800mAh battery and a 5.1-inch display. Average battery capacities have been climbing steadily since 2008, but screen sizes have been keeping pace.

No one really wants to be told that the most obvious route to increased battery life is to use your phone less or worse: turn off some of the features that enticed you to buy it in the first place. So we've pulled together a list of relatively painless tips to keep your Android going that little bit longer.

Most Android device manufacturers have added some form of power-saving mode. You can automatically hobble your phone's features or shut down specific apps when your battery dwindles below a predetermined level.

Stock Android only offers battery stats for now, but Android Lollipop has a battery saver option built in (which means most phones running Android 5 will too in the future). If you can't find a power saving option, check out an app like Juice Defender.

You don't need your phone syncing away through the night, so why not introduce a bedtime routine that automatically silences it and kills your data and Wi-Fi connections? With apps like AutomateIt and Tasker you can also automatically turn things on and off based on triggers and rules you define.

Delve into Settings > Apps and flick over to the 'All' tab to find a complete list of your apps. Anything there that you don't use is a candidate for the uninstall pile. In their infinite wisdom, carriers and manufacturers sometimes block you from uninstalling their apps, but you usually have the option to disable them instead and it's worth doing.

Use power saving mode, stop syncing through the night and disable some apps

You may also consider installing Greenify to get a good look at what is running and automatically hibernate apps that you aren't using, so they aren't eating system resources unless you start them up.

You'll need to root your device to really take full advantage, which is simple enough but will take a little time to manage if you're new to the process. If you do decide to root then you may also consider Titanium Backup Pro for freezing unwanted apps.

The busier your home screen, the more battery life it's going to suck. Get rid of widgets that you don't need, and consider reducing refresh rates. Animation costs power, so ditch the live wallpapers.

If you have a phone with an AMOLED display (such as nearly all of the high end Samsungs or the new Moto X), then use a dark background for the home screen and a dark theme in general. The technology achieves deep blacks by not lighting up those pixels and so dark backgrounds can save you some power.

Hibernate some apps, clean up your home screen and check your display settings

Your screen brightness is going to have a big impact on your battery. Don't rely on auto-brightness because it will generally be set higher than you really need. Reduce brightness manually and keep it as low as is comfortable. You can always pull down the notification shade and tweak it quickly via the quick settings when you have to.

You should also reduce the screen time out in display settings under sleep. The faster your Android device fades to black when not in use, the more power you'll save.

Page 1 of 2Introduction: tips 1-6

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In depth: 12 iPhone battery life tips and tricks

The frustration of a dead battery will be familiar to every iPhone owner. But what can you do to avoid it, other than use your phone less?

Apple is good at squeezing maximum performance out of the hardware in the iPhone and that's one of the reasons that the iPhone's battery is comparatively small. The first iPhone had a 1400mAh battery, and seven years later the iPhone 6 has a 1810mAh battery, although the iPhone 6 Plus has a whopping 2910mAh offering.

Many of the current Android flagships have batteries rated over 3000mAh, but then they have much bigger displays - the 6 Plus aside, of course. But that doesn't mean we still don't struggle to keep our iPhones going for longer, no matter how big the battery pack.

Until the next big leap in battery or charging technology comes along, we'll have to rely on smarts to get the most out of our iPhones. Here are a few simple tips you can follow to get a whole lot more juice from your Apple smartphone.

The biggest culprit for rapid battery drain is often a weak signal, but there isn't a great deal you can do about that. If you're in an area with a poor signal then you might consider switching Airplane mode on, which stops the constant searching that sucks the life from your phone.

You should also always use Wi-Fi instead of cellular data whenever possible too, as that offers a more stable connection and will stop all that battery-abusing searching for a signal.

Some apps will spam you with pointless news. How many of the notifications you get do you actually want to see? In most cases, very few.

Every one of them is sucking down some battery life, so cut them off at the source. Go to settings > notification centre and tap on any apps you don't want notifications from. Then choose 'none' under the alert style, and turn 'badge icon' and 'sounds' off.

Use WiFi wherever possible, turn off notifications and check your settings

Your display is costly to power, so you want it to shut down quickly when you aren't using it.

Go to Settings > General > Auto-lock and see if you can live with a shorter time before the screen auto-locks.

You should also head to Settings > Wallpaper & brightness and turn 'Auto-brightness' off to save some battery. Set the brightness as low as you can and only adjust it up when needed and you'll save a decent chunk of power – although this might mean you can't always see your phone screen in direct sunlight.

You don't need dynamic backgrounds and parallax, '3D' effects. They're fun but they're munching your power. Pick a static image or a favourite photo in Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness, then choose 'Wallpaper' and turn 'Reduce Motion' on in Settings > General > Accessibility.

People imagine that swiping apps closed in the multitasking menu is saving power, but you really need to be taking a look in Settings > General > Background App refresh to really make a difference.

Allowing apps to refresh themselves like this is a big drain on your battery. Go down the list and turn off everything you don't need - Facebook in particular can drain your battery really quickly. These apps still refresh when you actually load them up, which is a lot more efficient for your battery.

Stop background refreshing, get your email manually and check your location settings

There's some argument about the benefits of push email (arriving when sent) versus fetch (the phone checks at pre-agreed intervals), and it really depends on how much email you get and how often you have it syncing.

Push should only send from the server when a mail comes in, and it will be more power efficient than checking every five minutes with fetch, but if you get a lot of email then push could drain the battery faster than fetch with a slower refresh time of an hour.

Assuming you're only going to check your email once every couple of hours, getting it manually is going to save you power over both options… but you'll have to actually remember to do it!

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Sharp's prototype smartwatch makes sacrifices for longer battery life

Sharp's prototype smartwatch has no backlight (credit: PadNews)

Smartwatch makers have gone to some lengths to try to solve the battery problem, and Sharp is the latest to take a crack.

With its first prototype smartwatch, Sharp opts to axe the backlight in favor of a reflective surface that illuminates the wearable's display using light that hits its surface - saving oodles of battery life.

This is a pretty severe trade-off, though, as it gives you great viewing capabilities in sunlight, but zero in the dark.

When do you use your smartwatch most - night or day? This Sharp tech's success depends on that question.

That said, the 1-inch, 8-color Sharp smartwatch is only a prototype for now.

Sharp is reportedly in talks with smartwatch manufacturers over using the screen tech in their devices, so we'll see if this pops up anywhere.

The prototype also saves on battery with special semiconductor memory that reportedly stores and reproduces the on-screen image using less power than standard RAM.

One other device maker, Onyx, tackled the battery problem in October with an e-ink smartwatch, though we've yet to see anything come of that either.

Via Phone Arena

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