Tips for better battery life from your iPhone or iPad
Apple’s more powerful iOS devices demand more power to operate. We’ve grown very dependent on them, and it’s frustrating when our iPhone or iPad only seems to make it through part of the day before the battery meter dips into the red. If you ever wonder why your iPhone’s battery drains so quickly, we have the tips for you.
A quickly draining iPhone can be caused by any number of problems. The first thing to do is to restart the phone, to see if that slows down the power loss. To do so, hold down the Sleep/wake button on the top of the phone until you see ‘Slide to power off’ appear on the screen. Allow the iPhone to power down, and then hold the Sleep/wake button again to get it to restart.
You can turn off Background App Refresh for apps that you don’t need constant updates for. Not only will that reduce the apps’ activity, but it can also reduce the amount of data transmitted and received as well – anything requiring the phone’s radio uses lot of juice. To tailor background app refresh ability, go to the Settings app, touch General, and then touch Background App Refresh. You can shut it off all together or alternatively just turn it off for specific apps.
Some apps are more power-hungry than others. Voice over IP (VoIP) apps like Skype can be a problem, along with navigation apps that constantly ping to figure out where they are. Shut down power-hungry apps that you’re not using.
You can also turn down the brightness of your screen – the Retina display on iPhones and iPads requires a lot of power to operate. Turn off unnecessary features you’re not using, too. If you don’t use Bluetooth or never transfer files to anyone using AirDrop, turn them both off.
You can also try restoring the iPhone’s network settings to their factory default. We’ve found in our testing that this can sometimes have a big effect on battery life. To do it, open up Settings > General > Reset. You’ll need to reset Wi-Fi network settings yourself, but your phone will automatically reconnect with your carrier.
As a last ditch effort, you can back up your iOS device either using iCloud backup or iTunes on a host Mac or PC and then restore it – but do not restore your backup. Set it up as a new device, at least temporarily, and see if that improves battery performance. If it does, you’ll at least know that the problem lies with your old software or settings.