Need more battery? 6 tips to make the phone last longer

How long a phone should lasts once its battery has been charged fully? Different people will give a different answer to this question. The upper ceiling of the battery life in a modern smartphone, even is many wish for it to be true, would be something like what the old Nokias used to provide. Once charged, they would last days. But that is not possible with smartphone. A smartphone does so many things that it just can't last for days, unless you are only using it to make calls. On the other spectrum, we all can agree that a smartphone that is constantly plugged to the charger is no good. In fact, if you are charging your phone more than twice in a day, it is safe to say that it has a poor battery life.

The ideal battery of smartphone nowadays is somewhere in between these two extremes. And most smartphones do manage to meet this ideal line. But just in case, it is not enough for you the user, there are ways to prolong the battery life of your phone. These steps, ideally, shouldn't be required. But in case you need more battery life you can try them.

Switch off GPS

On an Android phone, or even on an iPhone, the GPS, or "Location" as it is identified in the phone, is one of the biggest battery hogs. If you want more battery from your phone, turning it off is a good idea. When you need it again, for example while using a phone-based taxi app like Ola or Uber, you can manually turn it on. Just turning off the GPS, especially on an Android phone, will net you something like 2-3 hours of more battery life.

Use Wi-Fi

Another big battery guzzler in the phone is the telecom network, particular in India where the network is always poor and the phone has to work extra hard to keep the signals nice and proper. The solution? Use Wi-Fi whenever you can. This means when you are at your home or office, ensure that your phone automatically switches to Wi-Fi from 3G or 4G.

Keep the screen on auto

It is tempting to switch of the auto brightness in a phone. On some occasions, the phone's screen is just too dull and you wish for more brightness. On these occasions, even if you manually turn the brightness up, don't forget to put it back on the auto once you have finished reading that big article. The screen is one component that uses the maximum amount of battery. If you keep it on the manual brightness mode, it's battery use will shoot up exponentially.

Check for Rogue apps

On Android, as well as in the iPhones, on occasions you may end up with poor battery life in the phone due to a rogue app. This could be a poorly-coded app or it could be just temporary glitch in some app. If you are seeing abnormal battery drain in your phone go to Settings > Battery and then see the list of apps using battery. Of these some heavy battery users like Screen, Android OS etc are fairly normal. But if you see other apps using more than 10 per cent battery life, there could be some problem with that app. One way to fix this is by restarting the phone. This would get rid of the temporary issues. If it doesn't, you can opt to disable that particular app by going to Settings > Apps.

Tame Facebook

Studies after studies have shown that Facebook app loves to sip battery. Considering it is also one of the most highly used app, Facebook app can have a significant effect on the battery life of a phone. Now, ideally you will not like to tinker with Facebook, especially if you love the service. But if you value the battery life more, you can try turning off notifications in the Facebook app. You can also uninstall it and use Facebook Lite, which is less feature-rich but is frugal with data and battery use. Finally, if you can, you can also try uninstalling or the disabling the app.

Use battery saver mode (in emergency)

Almost all phones nowadays come with the battery saver mode. When applied, some of these modes reduce the phone's performance and switch off some non-critical functionality. A few go even beyond that, apply a monochrome -- black and white user interface -- and turn off everything except critical functionality like calls. It is worth using these modes when you absolutely have more battery life, even if it means reduced functionality. In most phone, you can toggle battery saver mode by going to Settings > Battery.