5 Tips to Extend Apple iPhone Battery Life

If you’ve become frustrated by your iPhone’s battery capacity, you aren’t alone. The more functionality and apps the device uses, the more power it consumes, and the amount of time the device will operate before it requires a charge may be severely limited.

For most users, what really drains the battery are some small, power hungry features that they may not even know exist and could, for the most part, do without.

If you find your battery isn’t lasting as long as it should, or you merely want to extend battery life beyond what you are getting, here are some settings you can change that will help reduce power consumption.

1.) Automatic updates
The automatic update feature is intended to keep all apps up to date without user intervention. Apple says it was designed to be aware of unnecessary power usage but a bunch of apps updating in one day will unquestionably have an adverse impact on battery life.

Disable the app if you’ll need to go without a charger for an extended period of time. Go to Settings > iTunes > iTunes & App Store and disable Updates. Just don’t forget to enable it later on to keep your apps up to date.

2.) Background refresh
This feature permits multitasking and all apps are set to refresh in the background, but it uses more power and ultimately more data, something to consider if you are not usually on Wi-Fi.

To turn it off, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh where the feature may be disabled globally or selectively by app.

3.) Location Services
The Location Services feature allows apps (and websites) to determine your location using information from mobile phone networks, Wi-Fi, GPS networks, and iBeacons for use in a variety of tasks ranging from setting your phone to the right time zone to helping the app locate nearby shops.

Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services to turn it off globally or selectively.

4.) Spotlight
Spotlight is Apple’s search tool on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch as well as on Macs. In order to perform its job, it is constantly updating its index based on new data.

Go to Settings > General > Spotlight Search, and deselect any categories you don’t feel you would need to search in.

5.) Mophie powerstation XL

Finally, as a serious backup, consider a Mophie or similar portable battery. I carry a fully charged Mophie powerstation XL, which has a 12,000 mAh battery that the manufacturer claims can charge two tablets simultaneously and can recharge any smartphone including an iPhone eight times before the unit will need to be recharged. $71.52 at amazon.com

(Photo: Accura Media Group)