Top 14 Easy ways to get more battery life with iOS 8
Today use of mobile is at its peak. People depend on mobile to such an extent that they don’t even carry cash, no physical boarding pass for flight etc. Consider such high dependability on mobile device it is important to know how to increase battery life of your iPhone device.
These tips will also help you to get your iPhone to last a little bit longer when you are away for weekend party without having charging cable or no power connection.
Tips and Tricks to boost the battery life of iOS 8
Below are few tips and tricks that can be used to boost the battery life of your iOS 8.
- Enable low power mode
- Check Battery usage
- Manage Background app refresh
- Switch to Airplane mode
- Stop location tracking apps
- Keep brightness at low
- Save battery using Auto-lock
- Keep primary email account
- Disable Bluetooth
- Disable Wi-Fi
- Turn down volume
- Avoid high end games
- Turn off iCloud
- Disable app auto-update
1. Enable low power mode
Apple has announced “Low Power mode” a new battery-saving feature at WWDC 2015 keynote. Along with this feature, Apple also stated that iOS 9 should help your battery last for an extra hour without even needing that battery saving mode.
If your iOS 8 device battery drops below 20 percent power you’ll get a system pop-up message that warns you of low battery power and offers Low Power mode (shown in screenshot 1). If you wish to turn on Low Power mode simply select it from pop-up message.
Once Low Power mode is enabled it will reduce animations throughout the system, decrease the time before the screen darkens and make all possible efforts to keep your battery life for a bit longer.
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If you wish to enable Low Power mode at any time then you can achieve this from Settings (shown in screenshot 3). This feature is available only in iOS 9 which is coming this fall. You can determine whether Low Power mode is activated or not by simply looking at the battery indicator present at top right side of the screen.
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It is normally green for sufficient battery charge available, red for low battery charge available and yellow if Low Power mode is enabled (shown in screenshot 2 and 3).
2. Check Battery usage
The best way to determine whether there is a problem with the battery with your iPhone is to check Battery Usage statistics in Settings. Simply open Settings by single tap on app. Then navigate as General -> Usage -> Battery Usage.
You can check you Usage and Standby times in Battery Usage view (shown in screenshot 4). The Usage time is for how long you have used the phone since the last charge. In most of the cases, Usage time is quite lower than Standby time.
You can test battery of iPhone by making note of the usage and standby times and then put the device to sleep mode by pressing on/off. Now after five minutes check the changes in the times for usage and standby. If usage time is increased by a minute and standby time have gained five minutes then your device is working perfectly fine.
If you get more than a minute increase on the Usage time then there is something issue with your phone that prevents it from sleeping. It also indicates that you have battery drain problem.
You can also check amount of percentage a particular app consumes your device battery in Battery Usage in two categories viz, last 24 hours and last 7 days (shown in screenshot 4). Based on these statistics you can remove app that consumes more battery.
3. Manage Background app refresh
iOS 8 has a feature called as background app refresh in which the content of the app is refreshed even in background mode.
For eg., you open a news app and after certain time interval, you switch to another app. In this process, the news app goes into the background state whereas the second app is in the foreground state. The content of the news app is refreshed automatically even though it is in the background state. Thus you get updated content of news when you switch back to the news app.
This feature can be useful in certain circumstances, but most of the time this is mere waste in processing power and battery usage.
You can turn off the Background app refresh manually to increase the battery life of your device. Use the below steps to achieve this :
Settings -> General -> Background app refresh
You can enable/disable Background app refresh in this view. If you want to disable this feature only for specific app then this provision is available by selecting the app and disable the feature (shown in screenshot 5).
4. Switch to Airplane mode
Airplane mode when enabled suspends most of your device’s signal transmitting functions and hence you cannot make or receive calls or any messages.
Your iOS 8 device continuously checks for nearby cellular and Wi-Fi networks and thereby decreasing battery power. If you move from one place to another then device attempts to connect with nearest base station thus consuming bat
If you’re sure that you don’t need any send/receive calls, access to internet then you can switch to Airplane mode. Below are alternative for enabling Airplane mode :
A] Using Control Centre (shown in screenshot 6):
- Open Control Centre by swipe up gesture
- Tap on Airplane icon
B] Using Settings (shown in screenshot 7) :
- Tap on Settings app present on Home Screen
- Enable Airplane mode
Once Airplane mode is enabled you can see an Airplane icon on top left of your device (shown in screenshot 6 and 7).
You can use data even though Airplane mode is enabled by simply connecting device Wi-Fi network.
5. Stop location tracking apps
There may be a scenario that you’ve tried all possible attempts to boost battery power but still facing a quick battery drain. So the real culprit may be apps that invokes location-based service from background mode.
Apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps etc. requires your current location and hence invokes location service from background mode. You can disable location service for apps that you don’t want your current location to be shared.
Use the below steps to disable/enable location service (shown in screenshot 8 and 9):
- Open Settings app from Home Screen
- Tap on Privacy
- Tap on Location Services
- Disable location services for all or any specific app that you don’t want to share
6. Keep brightness at low
Brightness is directly related to battery power. If brightness is set to full then the battery will get discharged soon and vice-versa. In the case of a retina device, the battery consumed for brightness is almost double than non-retina device.
You can save battery life by adjusting the brightness of your device. Below are two alternatives to set brightness:
A] Using Control Centre (shown in screenshot 6):
- Open Control Centre by swipe up gesture
- Set brightness by dragging slider
B] Using Settings (shown in screenshot 10):
- Tap on Settings app present on Home Screen
- Tap on Display & Brightness
- Set brightness by dragging slider
The brightness of your device increases when the slider is dragged forward and decreases when slider is dragged backwards. There is provision for Auto-brightness which enabled adjusts the brightness of device automatically. However, Apple claims Auto-brightness is designed to conserve battery power of your device, which may be true to some extent.
7. Save battery using Auto-lock
It is a basic fact that when your iPhone device screen is on (i.e. unlocked) it is consuming battery power. You should lock the device screen when it is not in use. This will save battery power though that may be quite small amount. iOS 8 device screen can be locked by simply pressing power button once.
You can also enable Auto-Lock feature for iPhone device using below steps (shown in screenshot 10 and 11):
- Open Settings app from Home Screenshot
- Select General
- Select Auto-Lock
- Select time-interval from list
The time-interval available are 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 minutes. If you don’t want to lock device screen then checkmark never options present at the bottom (shown in screenshot 11).
8. Keep primary email account
If you have several email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, outlook etc configured on your iPhone device then the device may run out of battery power frequently. This is because every email accounts try to connect the server to get updates and thereby consuming battery life.
It is recommended to keep those email accounts that are importantly configured on your iPhone device. You can manage these email accounts by adding/deleting accounts from Settings (shown in screenshot 12 and 13).
Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Choose account -> Delete Account
9. Disable Bluetooth
It happens much frequently that you forget to turn off bluetooth once it’s work is done. For eg. file transfer from your iPhone to another device, playing music on a headset connected to iPhone via Bluetooth. Bluetooth is generally considered to be a battery-drainer.
You can save battery life by turning off Bluetooth when not in use. Below are two alternatives to turn off bluetooth :
A] Using Control Centre (shown in screenshot 6):
- Open Control Centre by swipe up gesture
- Tap on bluetooth to turn off
B] Using Settings (shown in screenshot 14) :
- Tap on Settings app present on Home Screen
- Tap on General
- Bluetooth
- Turn off bluetooth
10. Disable Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi when turned on starts looking for available network in range thereby consuming device power. If the Wi-Fi signal is poor then your iPhone device will require more power to transmit and receive data. If you no longer require Wi-Fi then it is recommended to disable it since device searches for Wi-Fi networks in background mode.
You can save battery life by turning off Wi-Fi when not in use. Below are two alternatives to turn off Wi-Fi :
A] Using Control Centre (shown in screenshot 6):
- Open Control Centre by swipe up gesture
- Tap on Wi-Fi to turn off
B] Using Settings (shown in screenshot 15):
- Tap on Settings app present on Home Screen
- Tap on WiFi to turn off
11. Turn down volume
Turning down volume of your iPhone device can boost iPhone battery life! This seems to surprise you but its true. If you are playing movie or music on your iPhone device then simply turn its volume down. This can be done by pressing volume down button present of sides of device (shown in screenshot 16).
Using headphones for playing music rather than playing on speaker can save battery of your device. Even the music settings i.e. equaliser also takes up substantial amount of power. You can turn off equaliser as below (shown in screenshot 17):
- Open Settings from Home screen
- Music
- EQ turn off
Screenshot 17
12. Avoid high end games
It is a basic understanding that playing high-end games (such as Temple Run, Subway Surf, FIFA etc.) on your iPhone device can consume more Improve battery power. This is because these high-end games create a large number of threads and consume more memory, processor cycle and GPU units.
Even games that require your location can drain the battery faster since GPS is monitored on a continuous basis. Hence, it is recommended to avoid playing high-end games (shown in screenshot 18) when you are travelling without charger or have low battery power.
13. Turn off iCloud
iCloud is cloud storage where all your data (from iPhone, iPad, Macbook etc) can be stored at central and at a remote location. This helps in creating a backup of your data and can be available instantly when required.
You are already familiar with how to create backup of your iPhone device using iCloud in an earlier article. While performing backup of iPhone on iCloud, a good amount of battery power and data is consumed. It is advised to turn off iCloud if you are running short of battery.
You can turn off this feature using below steps (shown in screenshot 19, 20 and 21):
- Tap on Settings app present on Home screen.
- Tap on iCloud
- Tap on iCloud Drive
- Turn off iCloud Drive
14. Disable app auto-update
Auto-update feature has been introduced in iOS 7 that allows your app to update without manually telling them to do so. The advantage of this feature is that apps will always be up-to-date. However, the limitation is that it can drain your battery since updating app requires heavy amount of data and battery power.
Some people prefer to update app on a select-case basis i.e. selected apps are updated only when required. If you want to stop auto-updating feature you can do so using the below steps (shown in screenshot 22) :
- Tap on Settings app present on Home screen.
- Tap iTunes & App Store
- Switch off updates from Automatic Downloads
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