Making the Most of Your iPhone's Battery Life
Q: I try to charge my iPhone as often as I can, but I find that on long work days, it's dead before I get home. Do I need to start carrying a charger with me wherever I go?
A: Consumers have been complaining about the battery life of electronics for as long as mobile devices have been in widespread use. The iPhone is no exception.
With a GPS receiver and fast data speeds -- to name just a couple of the iPhone's many features -- the battery is under a lot of stress. The thing to remember is the most obvious: If it looks like it takes up a lot of battery, it probably does. When you know that you're not going to have access to a charger for several hours, don't download new applications or play games. And, for long road trips, it's smart to invest in a charger for the car; the Belkin model will only run you $24.95 and is available at Apple's online store.Here are a handful of other quick tips and tricks that will help keep your battery going longer:
- Adjust the brightness of your screen: The screen takes up a lot of power. Play around with different levels to see if you need to keep it at 100 percent.
- Turn on the auto-lock function: If you set your phone to auto-lock after only a minute, you won't need to remember to manually turn off your screen when not in use.
- Turn off the vibrate function: When you're playing games (which you shouldn't be doing anyway if you're looking to keep your battery alive for a long time), the vibrate function is terrible for battery life.
- Fetch new data less often: Temporarily set your phone so that it retrieves new email manually, only when you tell it to. Retrieving data every 15 minutes or even hourly will contribute to battery drain.
- Turn off push notifications: They can be incredibly helpful, but if you don't need them, turn them off.
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