Though some phones live a little longer than others on a single charge, all smartphones suffer from the same basic problem: They do too much. Any 3.7-volt battery small enough to fit into your phone's tiny chassis stands no chance of lasting multiple days under a steady workload of running apps, browsing the Web, sending e-mail, and doing whatever else phones are expected to do. (Oh yeah, making calls.)
The author's HTC Thunderbolt is lucky to survive an entire business day on one charge. But with the tricks in this article, he manages to get home at night with a little juice left in the battery.Most smartphone batteries today are rated at around 5 watt-hours, meaning that they can deliver a constant charge of 1 watt to the device over a period of 5 hours. If your phone actually uses 1 watt per hour, and you pull it off the charger at 7:00 a.m., you can expect it to be dead by lunchtime. So the key to increasing your phone's battery life is to reduce the amount of power the handset uses per hour.
So, if you think that you can maximize your battery life spiritually, then you can leave now! It’s not possible, but you can have a running Android continuously for a business day by follow this tips. Here’s how:
Note: You Can Check “Maximize Your Android Phone’s Battery Life” For Additional Information
1. Shut Unnecessary Services Down
Why you will keep unnecessary services background? They won’t help you, just wasting your battery life. Like I don’t use GPS often. But I found that this service is running background and wasting a lot power. So I disabled it. It can drain the battery the fastest, so when you need battery life over location discovery, turn it off and leave it off. Turn off Wi-Fi as well. It’s another top offender.
2. Remove Task Killer
There's no point bothering with a task killer of any sort on Android 2.2, as Google has changed its code to stop apps killing other apps. There's a manual override hidden in Settings > Applications > Manage Applications, where you're able to Force Stop a running app if you must. But it'll be easier and less stressful to simply surrender control and learn to trust Google.
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3. Keep A Short Screen Timeout
Under your phone's display settings menu, you should find an option labeled 'Screen Timeout' or something similar. This setting controls how long your phone's screen stays lit after receiving input, such as a tap. Every second counts here, so set your timeout to the shortest available time. On most Android phones, the minimum is 15 seconds. If your screen timeout is currently set to 2 minutes, consider reducing that figure to 30 seconds or less.
4. Dim the Screen
You love your smartphone's large, colorful display, but it's the battery's mortal enemy. More than any other component of your phone, the display consumes battery life at a devastating pace. Most phones include an auto-brightness feature that automatically adjusts the screen's brightness to suit ambient lighting levels and system activity. This mode uses less power than constantly running your screen at full brightness would, of course, but you'll get even better results by turning your screen's brightness down to the lowest setting that you can tolerate and leaving it there. Even if you do nothing else suggested in this guide, following this one tip will extend the life of your battery dramatically.
5. Use Android Power Control widget
Put simply, you've got to take control. The best way of maintaining battery life is indeed to dumb-down your all-powerful new phone by switching off features - but do it in a stylish way. Don't just leave everything turned off all the time, or you may as well still be using a Nokia 6610.
Home screen widgets that flip Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and other power-hungry options on and off with a single press take the pain out of switching features off, while Android 1.6 added Google's own power icon strip - set it up by long-pressing and installing the Android Power Control widget on your Home screen.
6. Keep Phone in Where A Good Reception Found
Your phone uses more power when it's seeking a mobile mast connection, so, believe it or not, your battery will last much longer if you leave your phone in a place where it gets a good reception. Put it on the other side of your desk, or on the windowsill. It will make a difference.
An app like Antennas will give you a ridiculously detailed summary of your phone's current network connectivity state and all the masts in the area, if you fancy locating the optimum low-power placement within a three-mile radius of your home.
7. Install A Time-Sensitive Power Manager
There are plenty of time and location sensitive apps on the Android Market which automatically handle your phone's power and communications settings. For example, there's no point leaving your phone connected to the mobile network while you're asleep - so a simple app like Airplane Autoswitch, which kills all radio communications, will save loads of power and also help you sleep uninterrupted by notification pings.
Set it to activate Airplane mode at your usual bedtime, then get it to fire itself up again when you wake up. Simple, and your battery will make it through the night with only a minuscule drain.
8. Turn Off Wi-Fi When You Are Not Using It
Your phone's Wi-Fi radio is a serious battery drainer. While you almost certainly should prefer the improved speed of your home or office Wi-Fi connection to your mobile carrier's wireless broadband for data services, there's no point in leaving the Wi-Fi radio on when you're out and about. Toggle it off when you go out the door, and turn it back on only when you plan to use data services within range of your Wi-Fi network. Android users can add the Wi-Fi toggle widget to their home screen to make this a one-tap process.
9. Disable 3G connectivity
Good old 2G is perfect for calls and texts, so kill 3G unless you're planning a bit of emergency web browsing on your phone. You'll also benefit from the general feeling of increased calmness that follows naturally once you've stopped staring at the 3G icon every two minutes and fretting about what your mobile network connection state is.
10. Turn Bluetooth Off
Likewise Bluetooth is another classic drain on your phone's energy reserves. It's all very well that your handset is fitted with the very latest Bluetooth 3.0 standard but, if you don't actually use it, then turn it off. No matter now much you love using Bluetooth in the car or with your hands-free headset, the extra radio is constantly listening for signals from the outside world. When you aren't in your car, or when you aren't expecting a call that you'll want to take via a headset, turn off the Bluetooth radio. (Besides, walking around with a Bluetooth headset in your ear when you're not actually on a call doesn't do anything positive for your street cred anyway). By turning off Bluetooth when you're not using it, you can add an hour or more to your phone's battery life.
11. Go Easy on the GPS
Another big battery sucker is your phone's GPS unit, which is a little radio that sends and receives signals to and from satellites to triangulate your phone's location on the Earth's surface. Various apps access your phone's GPS to provide services ranging from finding nearby restaurants to checking you in on social networks. As a user, you can revoke these apps' access to your phone's GPS. When you install them, many apps will ask you for permission to use your location. When in doubt, say no. (And if a game, screensaver, or wallpaper app asks for your location, you should be suspicious about why it wants that data in the first place).
12. Don't Use Vibrate
Prefer to have your phone alert you to incoming calls by vibrating rather than playing a ringtone? We understand the inclination; unfortunately, vibrating uses much more power than playing a ringtone does. After all, a ringtone only has to make a tiny membrane in your phone's speaker vibrate enough to produce sound. In contrast, the vibration motor swings a small weight around to make your whole phone shake--and that process takes a lot more juice. If you don't want to be disturbed audibly, consider turning off all notifications and leave the phone in view so you can see when a new call is coming in. This approach is as courteous to your battery as it is to your friends and neighbors.
13. Go Gothic
Modern popular thinking has it that phone screens, particularly OLED versions, use more energy when displaying brighter, whiter colors. So go Gothic. Ditch that vibrant wallpaper and select a nice, dark Home screen background, then enjoy not having to reach for the charger for at least an extra minute every day.
14. Monitor everything
Android 1.6 introduced a menu that lets users see precisely where their battery life is going, with the OS giving you a percentage breakdown of what sucked away all your phone's power in the final few minutes before you actually wanted to use it. Like a mobile black box recorder.
The 'Battery Use' tab under Settings/About Phone will give you a detailed breakdown of what's absorbing the most power, letting you take manual control - and delete any power-hungry apps. Try replacing them with alternatives and see if there's a difference. One rogue app that sucks power on your particular phone could be the problem.
15. Use Power Saver Mode For Android
Newer Android phones include a Power Saver mode that helps manage the phone's various power-sapping features for you. Power Saver mode automatically prevents your apps from updating in the background, dims your screen, reduces the screen timeout setting, disables on-screen animations, and turns off vibration. By default, this mode usually turns on when your battery level drops to 20 percent, but you can set it to kick in at 30 percent instead. And the sooner the phone switches to Power Saver mode, the longer its battery will last.
16. Optimize Video And Speaker Sound
At the danger of teaching you to suck eggs, do bear in mind that video watching and playing music through your handset’s speakers is going to nail your battery, so do think about how much of that stuff you do. While we’re on the subject, playing games, using both ring and vibrate and at high volumes are all other things to keep your eye on. We’re not saying don’t have fun but these are all things worth considering if you’re looking to curb your battery profile. There are plenty of battery usage apps as well as some in-phone menus that will give you an idea of what your largest drain on resources is. Hit the Settings menu for a better look and, if you find nothing there, head for the Android Market.
17. Upgrade Your Firmware
You would be surprised how much better 2.x is at retaining battery life than is 1.x. It was a significant upgrade on many levels, but none was more significant than battery life. One of the critical issues that was fixed was the ever-present messages application not going to sleep. Now the tool goes to sleep, thus saving your battery from an untimely demise.
18. Turn Off Keyboard Feedback
This one may not seem so obvious to most users, but that vibration does use power. As often as you use your keyboard, you’re adding to the decline of your battery power click by click by click. This actually serves two purposes. With the feedback turned off, your keyboard will also respond much faster than it would with it on.
19. Emergencies, Do You Need This
When it really hits the fan, you’re coasting on fumes and you need to stay in contact, then it’s time to take drastic action to eke out your power for as long as you can. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth but as well kill synchronizing, volume, vibrations, screen rotation, all background apps and turn your screen brightness right down. You can do most of this in the Settings menu which you can access by hitting the Menu key from the desktop. Once you’ve done all that, put your phone into your pocket and leave it there. No checking every 5 minutes to see how much power you’ve got left.
20. Turn Off Nonessential Notifications
It seems as though almost every app in the app store now polls the Internet in search of updates, news, messages, and other information. When it finds something, the app may chime, light up your screen and display a message, make your LED blink, or do all of the above. And all of these things consume energy. Admittedly you likely don't want to turn off notifications about new text messages or missed calls, but you don't need to be instantly alerted that radboy84 has just bested your score at Booty Blast. Turning off superfluous notifications will help your battery last a little longer, and it will eliminate pointless distractions throughout your day.
21. Keep the Screen Timeout Short
Under your phone's display settings menu, you should find an option labeled 'Screen Timeout' or something similar. This setting controls how long your phone's screen stays lit after receiving input, such as a tap. Every second counts here, so set your timeout to the shortest available time. On most Android phones, the minimum is 15 seconds. If your screen timeout is currently set to 2 minutes, consider reducing that figure to 30 seconds or less.
22. Lower the screen brightness, Dim it
As impressive as it might be to have your stunning OLED screen blazing out so much light that the current inhabitants of the International Space Station have to squint and lower the sun visors when you wake it up, it's completely unnecessary. If you're inside, Android's default 0% brightness setting ought to do. Again, install a brightness widget on your desktop, for easy access when you do need a visibility boost.
23. Remove Social Status Widget
No one's saying you can't use your Android phone's features, but do you really need to be pinged every two minutes about a new Tweet or email? Lower the notification frequency in any apps that constantly update you on the minutiae of everything everyone does, ever, and you'll maybe still have a bit of battery left by bed time. So you can tweet that it's your bed time. Then tweet 'night night'.
24. Switch Off Auto-Sync
If you're not a power-user of the Google life-management apps, turn them off. If you can live without Google Calendar and Gmail, it's possible to do away with auto-sync altogether - just remember to manually sync your Contacts every once in a while, in case you drop your phone in a toilet.
The app MySettings will give you numerous little toggle switches and let you turn auto-sync on and off easily, if you like the idea of having a whole screen full of power-saving icons.
Conclusion : Keep A Spare Battery If You Are Unsatisfied
If you really want to be smug, then do consider buying yourself a spare battery to carry around. That’s the advantage of having phones with a removable battery. Of course, your next problem is remembering to swap batteries in and out of your phone to charge them up but we’ll leave you to deal with that one.
[Special Thanks To PCWorld, techradar, Pocket-lint And TechRepublic]
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