When it comes to battery life, no
smartphone has a battery that is
sufficient enough to fulfill our
needs. Every person using a mobile
device feels the need of carrying an
extra battery with him/her. And,
when it comes to Android, the
operating system is known for
sucking your device’s battery within
a short time span. Here are a few
quick tips which only require
tweaking of your device’s settings
which would easily help you get the
best out of your device’s battery.
Network selection mode:
Though switching to 2G mode from
3G won’t save a lot of battery, but it
can be a real life-saver if you are
low on battery and need to save
some juice for crucial minutes later
on. Switching to 2G network makes
the device consume lesser battery.
This is generally because 2G has a
better reception and hence your
device doesn’t have to shout out to
the operators every time asking for a
connection establishment request.
This in turn uses lesser battery.
Note: If you are in an area with
great 3G reception, 3G is a better
option since it consumes lesser
power (that is the whole point of
evolving to a new protocol, right?)
overall.
Here’s how you can force your
android to use 2G.
Screen brightness:
Although auto screen brightness is a
safe bet, for overly bright screens,
manually setting the brightness
would be a better way if you can do
it manually every time. The auto
feature is a good addition, but when
you do it manually, you can assess
at what level of brightness you are
still able to read. Also, just in case
you are too lazy to do it manually,
you can use an application called
Lux Lite to do the hassle for you,
though it will keep running in the
background consuming some battery
on its own.
(Disabling auto, adjusting brightness
automatically)
Close background applications:
Killing background applications
doesn’t really improve on your
performance (KitKat onwards) but
there might be some applications
which could be requesting internet
data in the background by pinging
the servers for requests, ensuring a
connection establishment or
updating in the background. You
should consider killing these
applications instead, in order to
reduce the energy demands of the
device which can be done later on
as well. Also, you can restrict
background data from the mobile
data section to avoid background
applications from fetching data and
in turn give your battery some boost.
Disable GPS:
People are generally smart enough to
keep their GPS off when it isn’t
needed, but what they generally
don’t do is disable the location
reporting and history when they are
actually using GPS. These two
services are pre-bundled with
android and are enabled by default
as soon as you turn on your GPS.
The motive of these two is not
stated clearly anywhere, but they do
keep a track of your location and
help Google Now and related
services use internet to send data to
servers. These two, according to
Google’s help page, are there to
improve your experience, but overall
they consume a lot of battery power
to survey your location. And chances
are you are good without these
turned on. If you wish to turn these
off, you need to go to Settings >
Location > Google Location Reporting
and disable these.
Moreover, when you are not in need
of applications that require your
precise location, you can set the
mode to battery saving to conserve
some battery.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
You should keep your Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi drivers off when you don’t
need them to preserve your battery.
Also, in case of Wi-Fi, even if it is
disabled, the device constantly scans
nearby surroundings for available
networks. You should turn it off as
well. Head to Wi-Fi settings >
Advanced and uncheck the Wi-Fi
scanning option. You will have to
connect to Wi-Fi manually after
doing so but it’s worth the effort to
prevent it from hogging on your
device for power.
Wallpapers and Themes
Live wallpapers are a flashy and fun
thing to have on your device’s home
screen, but again they take too much
battery and you should consider not
using them if you really want your
battery to last longer.
Also, using the default launcher for
your device uses lesser footprint
(Google Now Launcher) as compared
to other launchers and you should
switch to it just in case you are low
on battery.
Darker themes consume lesser
battery as compared to brighter
ones.
Disable Google Now cards
Google Now is a great assistant to
have and once you start using it,
you will find that it is unmatched in
quality. Although you may not use
all of the Google Now services, they
still keep running in the
background. So you might wish to
avoid the battery drain by disabling
the informational cards. For
example, “Nearby Places” card, which
is a seemingly cool feature, gives
you the hangout places nearby that
you don’t usually travel to. I think it
is unnecessary and one could live
without it turned on.
To disable specific cards, go to Now,
scroll to the very bottom and touch
the magic wand icon located at the
lower center of the screen. From
here you can customize the cards
you need and disable the ones you
don’t. As a thumb rule, cards relying
on GPS (such as Travel Time, Nearby
Places etc.) will drain more battery.
So you can disable those to boost
your battery a bit.
Sync
Sync is a feature in which your
device constantly contacts Google’s
servers for downloading emails,
calendar records and other
information in the background. This
uses loads of battery power and you
should shut it down when it is not
needed. Don’t worry; everything will
be synced later when you turn it on
again.
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