Thursday, October 7, 2010

18 Tips to Improve your Apple iPhone Battery life

The iPhone is a great device for performing a wide variety of functions, like sending email, watching a movie, getting directions to a destination, playing games, surfing the internet, or of course, making a phone call. One thing that hampers the iPhone’s ability to be a worry-free productivity device is its the battery life. It can vary widely depending on how you use your iPhone. So here are few Tips that will definately increase yourbattery life in your iPhone (They are also applicable to your iPod. Not tested on iPad but you may try it).

  1. Power-cycling the iPhone:  A good place to start out is by power-cycling the iPhone. You can do this by holding down the power button on the top of the iPhone until you see the “Slide to Power Off” screen. Once the iPhone is off, go ahead and push the power button again to turn it on. Use the iPhone as you normally would and see how the battery life is lasting.
  2. Drain the battery fully: Go to Settings -> General -> Auto-Lock and set it to Never. This is to wear the battery down. After the battery discharged and it was shut down for a few minutes push the home button to ‘revive’ it. Once the battery sits a moment it can pull some reserve power. Do this repeatedly until the screen displayed an empty battery image and it wouldn’t stay on for more than a second. Now charge it completely. Now your battery is as good as new.
  3. Avoiding the Extremes: If you want to enhance your iPhone battery lifespan remember to avoid temperature extremes. Avoid using your iPhone at temperatures higher than 95° F (or 35° C) and in very cold environments. Using the iPhone in very hot conditions can inflict permanent battery damage whereas cold temp usage causes temporary battery performance degradation.
  4. Regular Updates: Keep your iPhone software constantly updated to ensure your phone has the latest battery performance maximisation technology.
  5. Optimise the Settings: Some apps are battery draining like viewing videos, gaming, email and so on. Just remember the following battery tips to maximise its life.
    • Minimize use of Location Services by using it only when needed or disabling the location services option.
    • Set your Fetch New Data options to hourly or fetch data manually. Frequent use of mail client only drains the battery faster.
    • Disable your Push Mail client when not needed to avoid receiving mail as they arrive.
  6. Limit Third-party Application Usage: 3 rd party apps like games prevent auto power saving options like screen dimming or switching off hence the battery is constantly at peak performance.
  7. Turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G: When not in use switch off these apps to conserve battery. Also note using Wi-Fi to access the net instead of the cellular network service requires less power.
  8. Use your iPhone regularly: It may sound weird but its true that not using the iPhone for long time at a stretch decreases the battery life. Use it regularly and charge the battery at least once every six months even if you don’t use your iPhone regularly.
  9. Turn off keyboard clicks: If you frequently use your iPhone’s keyboard, navigate to the Sounds pane of Settings  and turn the option for Keyboard clicks off.
  10. Connect iPhone directly to computer to charge: If you are connecting your iPhone to a computer instead of a wall socket to charge it, don’t connect iPhone to your keyboard or another USB hub/bridge. Make sure it is plugged directly into one of your computer’s USB 2.0 ports.
  11. Turn off 3G: If you’re really low on battery, and are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the phone alive for emergency situations, then go and turn off 3G. Hey, EDGE sucks, but it still works.
  12. Turn off EQ: Applying EQ settings to your iPhone apparently drains extra battery. If you’re planning on keeping your phone alive all day, turn the EQ settings off.
  13. Turn Off Vibrate in Games: A lot of games have very frequent vibrations, which drain battery life. If you can, turn them off in the game’s settings.
  14. Don’t download from iTunes or App Store wirelessly: Downloading apps and media is hard on the battery. Just wait until you get home and use your computer.
  15. Turn SSH Off: SSH runs is background and drains battery, this can be turned off from the application BossPrefs OR from default SSH service icon. This runs in the background to detect any network activity and this is the main cause of poor battery time for all jailbreak iPhones.
  16. Turn off Auto-Brightness: Auto brightness changes the iPhone’s screen brightness on the basis of surrounding light which consumes battery through auto brightness process and changing from low brightness to high brightness level. Turing off this process will stop a back end process and constant brightness level will not consume more battery due to change in brightness level.
  17. Lower the Brightness: More screen brightness requires more battery. A reasonable brightness level is between, 25% to 30% which will brighten up the iPhone screen display good for both day and night.
  18. Use your discretion: You understand what’s bad for battery life – doing things that look like they would take a lot of battery life. Just be reasonable. Plan ahead. When you know you won’t charge your phone for hours, don’t go playing games. Resist. Don’t pass your phone around to your friends who say “Oohhh iPhone lemme play.” Don’t take the smart out of smart phone.

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