3 ways to get more life out of your iPhone or Android battery

3 ways to get more life out of your iPhone or Android battery
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Smartphones these days are incredibly powerful. You can watch videos, text friends, play games and much more, all in the palm of your hand. However, these activities can all drain your battery, which can leave you in a bind if it’s not convenient to charge your phone. Tap or click here for mistakes that shorten the life of your gadgets.

Your smartphone has a few features that help it conserve battery, such as auto-brightness. It shifts your screen’s brightness depending on whether you’re in a light or dark environment to conserve battery life. Both Apple and Android smartphones enable auto-brightness automatically to save battery life.

The good news is that you can also do a few simple things to make your iPhone or Android phone battery last even longer. Here are three simple ways you can make your smartphone charge last longer.

1. Reduce the amount of time your screen stays on

Locking the screen when your smartphone is not in use will save battery life. Setting the lock screen to 30 seconds means that you will have to unlock your mobile phone more frequently, but it will increase your smartphone battery life.

To do this on an iPhone, go to Settings > Display and Brightness > Auto-lock. You can choose from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. The quicker your screen auto-locks, the more juice you save.

For Android, go to Settings > Display > Sleep.

2. Adjust what happens in the background

Smartphones often run various background tasks when they are not in use, such as fetching information for email and other apps. If your device’s battery is super low you can turn off updates for email and social network feeds.

You can even set them to update only when you open and refresh the apps. You’ll want to turn them back on once your battery is fully charged to take full advantage of your apps.

To do this on iPhone: Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Select Off to turn off Background App Refresh.

On Android: Go to Settings > Data Usage > Mobile Data Usage. Then, select an app from the list, and tap Allow background usage to turn off background refreshing.

3. Consider the charger you’re using

Traditional wall chargers will get juice into your battery faster than wireless chargers, so if you need some battery life in a hurry, go that route. Remember that some newer iPhones, like the iPhone 12, do not come with a wall charger (though you can buy one separately). Here’s a great, inexpensive wall charger from Anker for your iPhone 12.

This is a wall charger that works with most handheld devices. Plug your USB-C cable into the wall charger for a charge that is up to three times faster than older models.  The space-saving design of the Anker wall charger makes it a great choice for on-the-go charging.

Remember, too, that some apps are more computationally intensive than others and drain the battery the most. Google Maps is one such app that can reduce battery life. Luckily, you can change your Google Maps settings for the best battery life.

Finally, keep in mind that battery life on smartphones is a limited resource. The rechargeable battery that comes in your smartphone deteriorates with use and should be replaced every few years. Here’s how to check the battery usage of your Android phone.

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