Hall - Getting The Most From Your Smartphone: Quick Guide: Simple, Fast & Easy Strategies

Becoming a Battery Hacker

The Point:

Most of this book will be dedicated to showing you the absolute best ways to use your smart phone to get the most use out of it.

But in order to get the most use out of it we have to keep the darn thing on, so Ive put together this list of tips and info that will help you get the most use and life out of your cell phone battery.

Over the past 10 years smart phone batteries have taken a gigantic leap forward in effectiveness, especially when considering the amount of applications and tasks that they are able to take over in our daily lives.

Even with these advances that have happened, battery technology in general still has a long way to go, that's why knowing how to maximize your phones battery will help you keep your phone operating at a higher capacity for a longer period of time so that It keeps up with you and not the other way around.

Identify App Vampires

Theres bound to be an app for anything that you need whether scheduling, music or videos but heres the thing once you open the app up on your smartphone and then switch over to another one that app that was once serving you and starts to act more like this

So if youre trying to expand the amount of time your battery will last be sure and close all the apps that you arent using or wont be using soon. This way youll be able to use the apps you actually need for longer and you wont have to worry about your phone turning off.

Now if you want to see where your apps are actually using up your battery just follow this path.

Go to Settings -> General -> Usage -> Battery Usage

Now this screen will only give you the data on the apps that have been using the battery for the last 24 hours but it could help you pick out any apps that you run frequently that you may want to start avoiding.

(Image of Power List From My Phone)

Wi Fi, Your Phones Frenemy

Wi-Fi is great because you dont have to pull from your phones data plan to get access to videos, music and other things.

The problem is that what you save in data you expend in power from your battery.

So if youre set up somewhere with wi-fi then youll want to have some kind of charge going to your phone as well then go for it but if the wi-fi isnt going to do anything for you, you might as well turn it off and save the power on your phone.

Bright Lights, Dead Phone

Turning up your phone screen may make things nice and bright but it will drain your battery very quickly if youre looking at the screen for any amount of time. So unless youre somewhere outside and have to be looking at your phone constantly in the sun turn down the brightness on your phone, save the battery.

To turn your brightness down just head Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Turn down the brightness levels

Refreshing Apps (That Kill Your Battery)

Depending on what apps you have on your phone, chances are that some of them are running in the background, constantly refreshing even if you dont really need them too.

For example, apps like Facebook Messenger often run in the background and will immediately alert you when there is another response in a conversation if you so wish but if its not important or a group chat you can only make the app refresh when you open as opposed to it running automatically in the background.

You can also see which other apps are refreshing in the background unnecessarily and turn those off as needed.

To find out whats refreshing unnecessarily just head to Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh

Buzz, Ding, Off

Now let me ask you a question, is it really necessary for you to know whether one of your friends liked your photo on Instagram?

Or that they responded back to your post on Facebook?

If not then its time to go in and turn off all of the Push Notifications that your phone can receive, its not a huge amount of power that you lose but since this whole section is about battery power, I figured why not?

Heres how to implement it Settings -> General -> Notifications -> Pick the app you no longer wish to receive notifications from anymore.

Only So Many Run Throughs

Your phone battery has a limited number of cycles that it can go through before it goes kaput so try to be economical about it and let your phone battery get very low before you recharge it again.

With my iPhone I usually like to wait until it's at 10% or below before putting it back on the charger.

Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold

At one point heading into the winter months we had a drastic temperature drop during the night and it stayed at that temperature until morning.

My car the day before had been working splendidly with no issues but when waking up on that cold morning and getting into my vehicle I turned the ignition and then... nothing.

Your phone operates under this same principle, in fact anything with a battery follows this same pattern.

What's the lesson to take from this?

Well you'll want to avoid keeping your phone in either extremely warm or extremely cold temperatures.

Batteries are basically self contained chemical reactions that pop juice out the other end for our devices, so extreme temperatures tend to mess with that reaction and create conditions that arent conducive for your phone to work very well.

Okay, Now For The Fun Stuff!

Go Local!

Now one of the most useful things that you can get on your phone are apps that let you know whats going on locally and are specifically created for your area code or town.

All you have to do is go to App Store on your phone and look under the Explore tab and you should have a list of apps that are popular in your local area.

This is great for delivery apps for local restaurants or things like that.