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Boost your battery life: Smartphones

Posted on 11 Mar 2009 at 17:09

Blank the screen

A large colour LCD places heavy demands on your smartphone's battery, and the less you use it, the longer those power cells will last. Set your smartphone to power down the display after a few minutes of inactivity. If you're using Windows Mobile, go to Start | Settings | Power Management. Don't use screensavers - they don't save screens any more, and they certainly don't save battery power.

Switch off the radios

As with a laptop, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transceivers in your phone drain power whether or not you're connected to a network. In fact, they can drain more power while you're not, since they amplify signals in the hope of making a steady connection. How you do so will differ from phone to phone - either your handset will have some sort of Connection Manager/Comms Manager/Networks control panel (Start | Settings | More | Connections | Wireless Manager in Windows Mobile), or you may be able to switch it off by tapping the Wi-Fi meter at the top of the screen.

Turn off alerts

Vibration features are handy when you don't want to make a noise, but all that jiggling around hits the power cells hard. Unless you need them, turn off vibrating alerts for new emails or text messages, and switch off flashing LEDs that come on when such things occur as well.

Switch off push email

If there's an option to switch off push email and go to manual or scheduled checks, use it. Push email is handy, but not the most efficient use of your data connection, and it means your phone is spending less time in standby than is desirable for maximum battery grunt.

Avoid GPS

Satnav and services such as Google Maps make for cool party tricks, but the burden of establishing a constant GPS satellite signal is a heavy one, and using GPS is one of the fastest ways to ensure you'll have no charge left before the day is out. Go to your Options menu and switch it off, and only enable the GPS receiver when you're lost.

Turn down the volume

Turn down the volume of your ringtones, stick to simple tones over MP3 samples, and mute any alerts if you can. Every noise your phone makes drains the battery, and the louder it is, the more energy you lose.

Don't have fun

Your smartphone means business, doesn't it? So avoid watching videos, listening to music, playing games, updating your profile on Facebook and browsing media-heavy websites. All this stuff gobbles up processing power, and consequently drains your batteries.

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Author: Stuart Andrews