Smartphones are now a necessity in today’s modern tech-savvy world. While they have nearly replaced the age-old feature phones, we have had to sacrifice on the handset lasting for days together without having to charge. But given the power and processing capabilities, the heavy power consumption was quite justified. The question still remains on how to extract the most out of your battery.
As such battery is soon becoming the most defining feature of the smartphone. Even though Power Banks and other portable chargers have certainly been helpful, they are generally seen as an additional gadget that you are forced to carry, thus adding to the inconvenience. On the other hand, smartphone manufacturers have started pushing the limits of battery capacity and have crossed the 5000 mAh level. Today we see how to make the most of you battery and keep it optimised for maximum efficiency.
Batteries:
Generally smartphone devices use either a lithium-ion (Li-On) battery or a lithium-polymer (Li-Po) battery. Unlike the earlier batteries used, these are way smarter and contrary to the popular belief don’t need to be discharged completely before fully charging them for optimal output. Further, batteries now-a-days are equipped to handle over-charging and don’t necessarily get affected by it. Hence, while it is safe to leave your smartphone for charging all night while you sleep, it is recommended to keep it away from your bed.
How to save battery:
To a certain extent we can definitely make the battery last longer by simple actions that reduce the load on the processor. For starters, reduce the power consumption of the display. Test show that majority of the battery usage is by the display. As such, reducing the brightness of the display would certainly reduce the power consumption. Also Auto brightness (adaptive brightness) mode, though is very useful, tends to keep the brightness higher than required. It is better to keep the brightness lower and then raise it manually as and when required. Similarly black wallpaper can increase the battery life as less power is needed to light them up.
Another major battery killer is the always-ON apps. A classic example would be the contextual ‘OK Google’ feature which continuously keeps listening to you, thereby draining your battery continuously. Given the usefulness of the feature, the app comes with a setting to enable the listening only when in the app and not otherwise, making it more convenient for people who use it rather occasionally. Similarly, widgets which are constantly syncing to the internet and updating tend to consume more power.
While it is said that Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Location services (GPS) can drain the battery when on, in reality turning them off doesn’t make much of a difference. The difference however is seen when the apps which continuously use location services constantly are terminated. However it is always recommended to keep these services turned off when not being used.
Another major tool we hear about when we talk about batteries is task managers. While they essentially just kill all the apps to reduce the processing, they generally tend to do more harm than good. Given that the constantly used apps are terminated, it consumes more power to restart the app rather than just resuming from the last inactive state.
Finally, we come to the battery saving features provided by almost every smartphone maker in the hope of making your battery last a little longer. Android’s very own Battery Saver mode cuts off all unnecessary power consumption and offers only the essential services like calls, texts etc. The other handset makers have similar features on their smartphones like Samsung has Ultra Power Saving Mode, Sony has STAMINA mode and HTC has Extreme Power Saving Mode. While they certainly won’t keep your battery going forever, they will help you at least so that you can make that one last call.
- Jonathan Pereira is a technology enthusiast with a keen eye for mobile and mobile technology. He’s a foodie by heart, and loves both the edible chips and the non-edible silicon chips. Find him on twitter @GoanIdle
