Smart phone batteryquettes to prolong your battery life.

We are in an era where smart phones have become everyone's companion. Smart phones have replaced things like calculator, video games, newspapers, bedside alarm, clock, compass,music box, telephones, etc. With all these features, smart phones have become more addictive and indispensable and has made everyone glued to them.Unfortunately, owing to its constant usage coupled with many functionalities loaded in smart phones, smart phone batteries barely last us 24 hours without being recharged. It would have been superb if our batteries could last as long as 1 week but cell phone batteries are yet to be improved. As phone users, we cannot increase our batteries' capacities; we can only rely on the phone's settings to squeeze out extra battery juices. In my last post, we discussed some smart phone battery myths that are wrong.  In this article I will be showing you diverse ways to improve on your battery life without rendering your phone unusable.

Image source: http://www.phonandroid.com

Smart phone battryquettes that will improve your battery life.

1. Dim your phone's backlight or brightness. The smart phone's backlight constitutes a large percentage of its energy consumption. The brighter the backlight, the more energy is being drawn from the battery. Some people are of the habit of setting their phone's brightness very high even in the darkest nights. Apart from draining your battery quickly, setting our phone's brightness very high could have a long term damaging effects on our eyes and brains. A good batteryquette will entail setting the brightness to automatic so that the backlight's brightness is automatically increased or dimmed to suit the brightness of the surrounding or  we can outrightly set our phone's brightness low- but not too low to impair user's visibility.This practice will save us a lot of battery juice.

2. Decrease the screen timeout. It is useless having your smart phone's screen on for too long when the phone is idle. Some phones now have motion and proximity sensors to detect when the phone is not being used and either dim the backlight or put it off entirely. As many phones do not have this feature, a good batteryquette requires we set our screen timeout short to reduce the time our phone's backlight stays on in idle mode. The shorter the time the backlight stays on, the more energy is being conserved. It is suggested we set the timeout between 30 to 60 seconds. You can set this timeout by locating your phone's display settings.

3. Turn off your GPS when not in use.  Your GPS draws too much energy from the battery. Turn your phone's GPS off and only use it when necessary. There is no need turning on your phone's GPS on always when you barely make use of it. Some phones allow you to set specific apps to use GPS and thus, only enables GPS when such apps are being used and turns it off when they are not in use. You can change your GPS settings by checking your phone's Location Settings.

4. Turn off your bluetooth and wifi . When turned on, your bluetooth and wifi will continuously scan for a nearby device and network respectively. This continuous scanning saps a huge amount of energy from the battery irrespective of whether the device/network is found or not. Always put them off when not in use; this will save you a great deal of energy.

5. Disable background apps. Background apps are apps that run in the background even when they are not open. Because of the way they are programmed, these apps can steal into the phone's RAM and run without the user's permission; overworking the CPU and consequently draining the battery overtime.Such apps like Whatsapp, facebook messenger, messaging app, playstore , etc run in the background because of the real-time service they provide. They take a chunk of the energy resources and shorten the life of the battery. Disabling background apps will save you a great deal of energy, however, the functionality of the apps may be affected. To disable background apps on your android,go to your Settings > Wireless & networks > Data usage and set “Allow background data” to “Restrict background data"

6. Use the right charger. Always use the charger that came with your phone.A bad charger can damage the battery cells.Have you observed that when you charge your phone with the wrong charger, the battery drains quickly?In the event that the original charger is damaged or lost, an important factor to consider while choosing a charger is the voltage and current rating of the charger. Always check the current and voltage rating of your battery before choosing your charger.Choose a charger whose voltage rating corresponds with (or is a little above)  the voltage rating of the battery (which can be found written on the battery).Using a lower rated charger will likely take ages to charge your battery and may have a long term damaging effect on the battery. A much higher rated battery will likely charge your phone too fast - a process known as quick charge. Quick charging a battery is a very bad charging process as it degrades the battery's capacity very fast. It is highly recommended you visit your phone's outlet to find a right replacement for your charger if you have lost your original charger.

7. Do not leave your battery too long without usage. Most of the smart phones make use of lithium-ion batteries- the best model for smart phones. Despite having many advantages, lithium based batteries tend to degrade overtime when left too long without being used. Most of these batteries have internal circuitry that monitors and controls the charging process. This circuit on their own consumes some amount of power and tends to drain the battery juices when the battery is left too long without being charged. This may result to a total discharge which has an adverse effect on the battery's capacity. This means that the battery will not retain charges for long after being charged. To avoid a complete drain, it is recommended you leave about 40-50% battery life (if you are planning to put off your phone off for a long while) in order to provide an allowance for the drain caused by the battery's internal monitoring circuitry or from the phone's timekeeping circuit

Observing these rules will surely extend your battery life. However, there are certain 'dangerous' practices that people indulge in the bid to prolong their battery life. I highlighted these practices in my previous post and I suggest you  avail yourself this opportunity to check it out.

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