5 tricks to extend your phone’s battery life

If, like me, your smartphone is an extension of your arm and you use it for everything from staying connected to creating content, you will at some point need to do something about that battery life.

As convenient as smartphones are, they have one drawback: battery life. The drawback is even bigger when you’re glued to your device for large parts of the day.

How to extend battery life
Fret not, I’ve compiled a handy guide of my top five tips and tricks to keep your smartphone’s battery going when you need it the most.

1. Adjust screen brightness
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say 80% of your battery drain is directly related to your screen brightness, which can significantly reduce battery life.

The auto-brightness feature is your friend since it adjusts the screen brightness according to the ambient light around you.

Simply head over to your phone’s Display Settings menu and look for the auto-brightness toggle; most new smartphones have this feature.

2. Disable apps
Many of the apps on your phone might run in the background, chowing away at your battery without you even realising it.

To conserve battery life, it’s vital to close all apps you’re not using and disable the background activity toggle as well.

Take it one step further by muting some of those app notifications too, especially the apps created to pull you into a black hole of distraction, such as Facebook, Email and so forth.

3. Disable certain connectivity features
Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi… You don’t need all of them active, all of the time. They all use significant amounts of energy, so when not in use, turn it off.

If, for example, you’re in an area with poor connectivity, your device will constantly try (and fail) to connect to the network.

This will drain your battery faster than you can say “Voetsek MTN/Vodacom/CellC/Telkom”.

Turn it off to prevent your device from constantly searching for a signal.

4. Battery saver mode
If this feature is available (and it should be on most of the latest mobile devices) it will reduce your battery usage by limiting background activity, reducing screen brightness and shutting down certain apps and services.

Even if you don’t want to use it permanently, it might just give you enough juice when you’re running low.

This feature can be found in the phone’s battery settings menu.

5. (Not) good vibrations
A lesser-known battery-saving hack is to disable vibrations. If you receive a lot of notifications and calls throughout the day, all that buzzing is going to drain your battery.

If you don’t need it, disable it to conserve battery. Alternatively, keep the buzzing for the apps that matter and disable everything else.

Disabling the vibration will also reduce distractions if that’s a thing relevant to you (hello, ADHD!)