How to make your phone battery last all day

Smartphones are the must-have gadget, especially with the huge range of apps available, but one downside is that they eat through batteries. If you use the GPS and 3G heavily, you can easily drain a smartphone battery in just a matter of hours. Here are a few tips on getting the most out of your smartphone battery.

Shut off those power-hungry wireless services

When I first got my Nokia N82 in 2008, I loved that it had WiFi, but when I first got it, I mistakenly left the WiFi scanner on and the battery went flat in a few hours. I shut off the scanner and, voila!, my battery stayed strong all day. I still love that I can use WiFi, especially when I’m travelling abroad and can get hit with some ugly data roaming charges, but I only turn the scanner on when I need it.

I also keep the Bluetooth radio off unless I need it. Apart from the power savings, it’s also a security issue. I’m often surprised at how many people leave their Bluetooth radios on and unsecured - sometimes I scan for Bluetooth devices just to see the silly names that people give their devices. The testorone-filled over-the-top names men give their phones are especially entertaining. Less scrupulous people will do a lot more with an unsecured Bluetooth device than just laugh at their daft names.

Shut down power hungry apps

Some apps can chew through your battery so quickly that you can almost see the battery bars melt before your eyes. Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha raised a few eyebrows earlier this year when he blamed untested apps that savage the CPU and drain the battery for 70 percent of returns of the company’s handsets. Some reviewers blamed the company’s Motoblur skin for the problems . Regardless of the cause, it pays to monitor apps to see if they are sucking the life out of your battery.

[caption id=“attachment_52141” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“If you always charge your phone overnight, turn WiFi off, and keep a sharp eye on which apps are power hogs, you can keep your smartphone alive. AFP”] [/caption]

Don’t forget to close apps

I can’t tell you how often I’ve accidentally left an app running in the background only to find my battery flat within a few hours. Be extra careful for those apps that might use GPS. For example, Google Maps now asks me if I want it to continue running to update the location on Latitude, its location-sharing network, but if I want my phone to still function in a few hours, the answer has to be ’no'.

When I’m travelling, data apps running in the background not only drain my battery but also my bank account because my mobile phone provider is more than happy to charge me an arm and a leg for data roaming. When the iPhone first came out, it became almost a clich to read about some road warrior executive who had run up a mobile phone bill of thousands of pounds, dollars or euros while using their data plan abroad.

Set the screen to dim quickly

Just as with your laptop computer, you can save a lot of battery life by changing energy saving settings such as how quickly the screen dims. Nokia smartphones have a setting in Appearance called Active Standby. Other smartphones have a setting called Screen Timeout. It’s best to have this set to 30 seconds or less.

Android phones, since version 1.6 of the operating system, have a Power Control widget that allows you to have quick access on your home screen to a lot of the power saving features I’ve mentioned. Also, newer Android phones have a Power Saver mode. For more tips on how to save power on Android phones, wikiHow has a great and growing list of options.

Power-saving? There’s an app for that

Of course, one of the benefits of smartphones is the universe of apps available for them, and there are even apps to help you spare your battery. For Android, JuiceDefender is one often recommended app, although reviewers say that it can be a bit intimidating . If the options for JuiceDefender confuse you, try Airplane Autoswitch . It simply puts your phone into airplane mode, turning off all of the radios. You can make sure that you get uninterrupted sleep and a longer lasting battery.

For the iPhone, you can try Battery Doctor Pro . The app gives you an estimate of how long your battery will last doing common things such as watching videos or talking on 2G or 3G networks.

Get battery boosters

If you really need to use all those apps and hammer your smartphone all day long, there is another choice: An extra or supplemental battery. I carry two batteries with me, keeping a fresh charged one for spare. I also always carry a USB charger with me so that I keep both batteries topped up whenever I’m near a power outlet.

If you know you’re going to be away from electricity for a while, you can also carry external batteries. Some are little more than batteries in a case with connectors for your phone . Others are clever enough to be integrated into cases for your phone , whilst others even come with solar cells to let the sun help keep your battery topped up .

Many people find that, once they’ve made the switch to smartphones, they don’t want to go back to the longer-lasting feature phones, no matter how quickly their devices run out of juice. But if you develop a few smart habits, such as always charging your phone overnight, always turning WiFi off, and keeping a sharp eye on which apps are power hogs, you can soon find ways to keep your smartphone alive.