3 Battery-Saving Tips for Your Smartphone

From self-driving cars to smartwatches, technology is advancing at an incredible pace. Batteries, unfortunately, have not seen much improvement in at least a decade.

If you’re like me and you find your smartphone running out of juice often, here are a few tricks to slow down smartphone battery drain.

1. Not using Bluetooth or WiFi? Turn them off.
If I’m going out for a jog, I like to listen to music on my wireless Bluetooth headphones. But after my run, if I forget to disable Bluetooth on my phone, it sucks the life out of my battery. Turn off Bluetooth when you’re not using it and you’ll charge your battery less often.

WiFi is, of course, a smart alternative to using mobile data. But you’ll save your battery by turning WiFi off when you’re not using it. Whenever WiFi is turned on, it takes a toll on your battery because your device constantly searches for wireless networks in the background.

Chances are your smartphone has a shortcut to turn these connectivity tools off quickly and easily. On most smartphones, you can find this shortcut by going to the homescreen, then sliding up or down with your finger. This will display Bluetooth or WiFi icons that you can toggle on and off.

2. Shorten your screen-lock time.
When you stop actively using your phone, there’s a brief interval before your screen goes dark. You can adjust the interval in general setting on most devices. The shorter the interval, the longer your battery will last.

3. Take control of your app activity.
Applications can drain your battery life when they send “push” notifications to your phone, like a Facebook alert when someone likes your photo. When you first install a new application, most phones allow these notifications by default. But your battery will last longer if you turn off the push notifications you don’t need in the app settings on your device.

You can also close the apps you’re not using. I’m a multitasker and I like to have several apps open at once, usually my email, Google Maps and NPR (because, hey, I am a progressive CREDO Mobile customer who likes her NPR). When I’m done using those apps and I know I’m not going to be looking at my phone for a while, I close all my apps at once. Another good idea is to close apps that use more battery, especially those with video or image content.

If you have a CREDO smartphone, you can learn more about these battery-saving tips in our Device Support section.