Just about everyone who owns an Apple iPhone wishes their battery would last a little longer. I've had my current iPhone for a little over a year now and I find that I have to charge it throughout the day to avoid being phone-less by 4pm. With that said, here are 6 tips to extend your iPhone's battery life that you might want to try:
- Disable the parallax effect: The parallax effect is what makes the wallpaper and icons tilt as you move your phone. For the iPhone 5, "dynamic" wallpapers drain battery life. To disable this feature go to Settings > General > Accessibility and move the slider for reduce motion to the "on" position.
- Turn Off Location Services: Many apps aside from maps use location services constantly and are a big cause of battery loss. I suggest toggling location services on/off only when you need to utilize your phone's GPS services. To turn location services off go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services
- Prevent Background App Refresh: Background app refresh allows apps to refresh their content while you are performing other tasks. This allows apps to update their content before you open them and therefore constantly consumes battery. To turn background app refresh off go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh
- Fetch Data Manually: Data is fetched for tasks such as checking email. You can either increase the fetch interval (Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data) or you can fetch new data manually (Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and tap manually).
- Don't Automatically Update Apps: Apps will automatically update when new versions are available, but you can change it so that you have to go into the app store and update them manually. This saves battery life because your phone won't be constantly searching for updates. To manually update apps go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > Updates > and move the slider to off.
- Auto-Lock iPhone Sooner: The sooner your phone turns off after inactivity, the less battery it uses. I suggest you go to Settings > General > Auto-Lock and set the interval to 1 minute.
I have experimented with all of these tips and they have tremendously improved my phone's battery life. I would recommend trying a few of them to see the results that you get. Best of luck and feel free to add any additional tips that you have found to work well!
