Recently, a BTA club member asked for advice about conserving battery power on her older iPhone.
BoomerTECH Adventures guide Chris Toy is an expert in these matters and offered some timely advice for all of us, no matter which iPhone we have.
From Chris:
As time goes on your battery will be able to hold less and less regardless of how much you try to conserve. That’s called standby loss. Even when you’re not actually using your phone, activity is happening in the background. Here are some things to do.
1. Turn off Bluetooth if you don’t need to use it. If it’s on, your phone is looking for something to connect to, and that takes power to both search and actually connect to.
2. Make sure you keep current with software updates. Go to Settings>General>Software update. The updates usually have bug fixes that can help save battery life.
3. If you aren’t sharing files with other Apple devices go to General>AirDrop and turn receiving off. That takes battery power. Remember, you can always turn it back on when needed.
4. Turn off Background App Refresh. Go to General>Background App Refresh and turn it off. Background App Refresh makes your phone work constantly to update information on your apps.
5. If there are Apps you want to use all the time you can keep Background App Refresh on and toggle individual apps on and off individually. If you never use them, delete them. Don’t worry, you can re-download them if needed.
6. Lower the brightness of your screen as much as possible. The screen takes a lot of battery power. Make sure the time your screen goes to sleep or goes to Auto-Lock is as short as possible. You will find these controls in Settings under Display and Brightness.
7. Be sure to close down all your apps after using them, especially if they update in the background.
8. Consider turning off Location Services (Settings>Privacy>Locations Services) when you don’t need them. You need to think carefully about this action because you might miss its features such as labeling the location of your pictures. You can choose which apps to keep active. It’s worth your time to explore this Settings feature.
9. Other things worth reviewing are Notifications, Siri Suggestions, and Hey Siri (hands-free option). These three features all eat up power. Settings>Notifications and Settings>Siri & Search.
10. Turn off iCloud Photos (Settings>Photos>iCloud Photos). Again, another decision you need to think about. By turning off iCloud Photos, your photos will not automatically be sent to the cloud for backup which means you may not be able to see them from other Apple devices like your computer or iPad.
Two last things to think about:
- Letting your phone get to 0% power is a strain on the battery.
- You can always go to Low Power Mode when your charge is running low—Settings>Battery>Low Power Mode.
Remember, you can always check the health of your battery in Settings—Settings>Battery.
Battery image credit: Alexander Andrews at Unsplash
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