Having your iPhone battery die on you early on in the day or night is a major first-world problem. For those who remember, the time of flip phones and Nokia’s were almost a comfort to know that your battery would last days on end without a charge, and you wouldn’t need to carry a cable around with you everywhere you went.
That is not so much of a luxury anymore as we’ve ditched the longlife batteries in favor of apps, big bright screens and mobile web accessibility. Here are some sure-fire ways to preserve your iPhone battery life as much as possible in iOS 8.
1. Identify the energy-suckers
If you follow your settings, you’ll be able to see which apps are running in the background, and how much power they’re consuming. Turn the biggest culprits off, (like Facebook) and if you check it, make sure to close it when you’re finished.
2. Location
Apps that track your location in the background waste hours of precious iPhone battery life. We advise going through each app individually and turning off the location services, with the exception of Find my iPhone – which would be useful if it were ever lost (knock on wood).
3. Dim it
This might seem obvious, but dimming your screen will invaluably give more sweet battery juice.
Wired did the math a while back and found the iPhone 4 went from 6.5 hours (dimmed 50%) versus 3.5 hours at full brightness. That’s a huge difference. Unless you really really need your screen at full brightness (you show-off) then consider turning it down.
4. Update it manually
Turn off automatic app updates in your control panel and you’ll be grateful. Depending on how many apps you have installed on your device, your phone’s battery could be getting used up at random times just for sporadic software updates. The best is to update them manually when you have the time (and battery life to spare).
5. Reduce Motion
The parallax effect on your phone is super cool, but it’s not totally necessary, and it sucks the life out of your battery. Consider turning it off for increased iPhone battery life performance.
6. Fetch, don’t Push
You might not realize it, but it’s possible that all your data is set to push. That means emails get downloaded to your phone immediately when they arrive on the server. While that might be convenient, it drains the heck out of your battery. Instead, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendar > Fetch New data. You can set it to fetch every quarter-hour. Which might also help with your addiction for checking your email.
7. Wifi is your Friend
When you’re at home, or at the office, or anywhere really where there is a secure, reliable wifi network, turn that on instead of riding on your cellular network. This accomplishes two things: you’ll get more surfing out of your mobile data plan, and secondly, you’ll get more battery life with which to do so.