How to Preserve Battery Life on Your Android Phone

The Android operating system for smartphones offers a lot of power and flexibility for modern mobile living.  However, such a powerful OS makes high demands on your phone’s hardware.  Low battery power can quickly cramp your style.

Here are some quick tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Android smartphone by keeping your battery power at optimum levels:

1. Change your brightness settings. The brightness of your phone’s screen can quickly consume battery power.  To address this problem, pull up Settings and then tap Display.  Tap Brightness.  Deselect the Automatic Brightness setting if it’s already selected, and you’ll see a sliding bar that lets you choose your desired brightness level.  Set it to the lowest level your eyes can tolerate and then press OK.

2. Turn off Wi-Fi and other features when you’re not using them. Your Wi-Fi connection, when you’re not using it, puts needless extra strain on your battery, even though it’s preferable to your cellular data connection in terms of power consumption.  Be sure to turn it off when you’re not in a service area or when you aren’t using the internet at all.  The same goes for GPS and Bluetooth—if you’re not driving or using wireless headphones at the moment, there’s no need for the additional burden on your battery.

3. Spy on running apps that might be guzzling battery power. From your Main Menu, go to Settings, then About Phone, and then Battery Use.  Here, you will be able to see exactly which apps and phone functions are draining your battery power, by percentage.  You’ll then know which apps to kill or what settings to adjust.

4. Turn off automatic syncing and application updates. Many smartphone users are accustomed to receiving email and app updates on the fly.  However, if you’re trying to preserve battery life, you should turn those features off for the individual apps in question.  Remember, you can always manually check email or update apps on your phone.

5. Turn off animated features. Android comes with many bells and whistles, such as animated scrolling and popup menus.  Animated wallpaper is another popular feature.  Unfortunately, these enhancements can suck your battery dry in no time.  Turn off menu animations by going to Settings, then Display, then Animation.  If you’re currently using animated or “live” wallpaper, go to Settings, then Personalize, then Wallpaper, and select a static picture from your Gallery.

6. Completely drain your battery every now and then. Although it may seem counterintuitive, completely using up all of your battery’s power and then allowing it to recharge can help preserve the battery’s life overall.  You can drain all the power by letting music or videos play continuously.  Once that’s done, simply plug your phone back in and let it recharge.  You might want to do this overnight or during another extended period of time in which you won’t need to use your phone.

The next time you want to get more life out of Android, simply put the above tips into use and you’ll be able to spend more time with your smartphone between charges.  Enjoy!